Tür-zu-Tür-Vertrieb: Was ist das Erfolgsrezept irischer Versorgungsunternehmen?
Im Energieversorgungsbereich hängt Erfolg oder Misserfolg des Haustürgeschäfts davon ab, in welchem Land man als Vertreter:in aktiv ist. Im Vereinigten Königreich zum Beispiel zögern Versorgungsunternehmen davor, allzu viele Ressourcen in den Tür-zu-Tür-Verkauf zu investieren, da immer die Gefahr besteht, dass durch diese Praxis ihr Markenruf geschädigt wird. In Dänemark gilt diese Art des Direktvertriebs sogar als ein Eingriff in die Privatsphäre und ist daher gesetzlich verboten.
In Irland hingegen ist das Haustürgeschäft eine beliebte und erfolgreiche Verkaufsmethode von Energieversorgungsunternehmen. Große Anbieter wie Vodafone und SSE Airtricity investieren beträchtliche Summen in ihr Haustürgeschäft und erzielen auch tatsächlich eine hohe Rendite. Diese Art des Vertriebs ist zum Eckpfeiler ihres Geschäfts geworden.
Doch wieso sind irische Unternehmen im Gegensatz zu ihren ausländischen Pendants so erfolgreich beim Verkauf an der Haustür? Irische Versorgungsunternehmen wissen, wieso das Haustürgeschäft in anderen Ländern so verpönt ist, und haben sich daher bewusst dazu entschlossen, es besser zu machen. Unter anderem nutzen sie daher Vertriebssoftware für regulierte Branchen, mit der sie sowohl ihre Kundschaft als auch ihre Marke schützen.
Irische Versorgungsunternehmen setzen Schutzmaßnahmen um, um Fehler und Fehlverkäufe zu vermeiden
Bevor ein Unternehmen Vertreter:innen losschickt, um sein Angebot von Tür zu Tür zu bewerben, muss es zunächst einige Kontrollmaßnahmen für ein effektives Gebietsmanagement umsetzen. Ohne diese Maßnahmen steigt das Risiko, dass jemand im Außendienst versucht, Kund:innen zu täuschen oder Verkäufe zu registrieren, die gar nicht stattgefunden haben. Wenn das nämlich passiert, leidet darunter nicht nur der Ruf der Marke, sondern das Unternehmen muss unter Umständen Strafgelder in Millionenhöhe zahlen. Im schlimmsten Fall wird der Gesetzgeber einschreiten und das Haustürgeschäft vollständig verbieten.
Ob einer dieser Fälle eintritt, hängt natürlich maßgeblich von den Aktivitäten der Vertreter:innen ab (auf das Vertretermanagement werden wir gleich noch genauer eingehen). Doch um proaktiv unnötige Risiken zu vermeiden, können Unternehmen sich eines wichtigen Hilfsmittels bedienen: der richtigen Vertriebssoftware.
Irische Energieversorgungsunternehmen zum Beispiel nutzen die Formulare von PSI, um zu verhindern, dass ihre Vertreter:innen die falschen Produkte verkaufen. In diesen Formularen werden Produkte aus einer vorbereiteten Produktliste aufgeführt und anhand der Kundenantworten auf vorherige Fragen gefiltert. Da Kund:innen dann nicht mehr dem Kauf eines Produkts zustimmen können, für das sie sich gar nicht qualifizieren, kann die Anzahl an Kaufrücktritten reduziert werden. Dies ist eine effektive Schutzmaßnahme gegen beabsichtigte und versehentliche Fehlverkäufe.
Wir arbeiten immer eng mit unseren Kund:innen zusammen, damit die Skripts in ihren Formularen Vertreter:innen genau aufzeigen, was diese mit Kund:innen besprechen sollen. Dadurch sinkt das Risiko, dass Vertreter:innen aufgrund mangelnder Informationen falsche Versprechungen machen. Die Logik des Systems und die daraus resultierenden Einzelschritte sind so gestaltet, dass Vertreter:innen immer den korrekten Interaktionsablauf mit dem:der jeweiligen Kund:in durchlaufen und somit niemals die falschen Fragen stellen.
Irische Energieversorgungsunternehmen nutzen Vertriebssoftware für das Vertretermanagement
Wie bereits erwähnt sind die Aktivitäten von Vertreter:innen im Außendienst ein wichtiger Faktor für ein erfolgreiches Haustürgeschäft. Da Ihre Mitarbeiter:innen jedoch alleine unterwegs sind, haben Sie die knifflige Aufgabe, ihre Aktivitäten zu lenken, ohne direkte Kontrolle über ihr Verhalten zu haben.
In Irland stellten diese Bedingungen früher ein Problem dar, sofern Vertreter:innen rein auf Provision arbeiteten. Es kam dann nämlich sehr häufig vor, dass Vertreter:innen ihren Kund:innen absichtlich falsche Versprechungen machten oder dass sie zusätzliche Formulare ausfüllten, um ihre Quoten zu verbessern. Wenn diese Vertreter:innen nur mit Klemmbrett und Papierformularen ausgestattet sind, ist ein effektives Gebietsmanagement schier unmöglich. Mit der richtigen Vertriebssoftware allerdings holen Sie sich die Kontrolle zurück.
Mit PSI sorgen Sie dafür, dass alle Außendienstaktivitäten geokodiert und mit entsprechenden Zeitangaben versehen sind. Auf diese Weise können Sie dann problemlos unehrliches Verhalten aufspüren, beispielsweise falls ein Vertreter abends um 22:30 Uhr einen Verkauf registriert oder sich während der Registrierung weit weg vom Zuhause des:der jeweiligen Kund:in befindet.
Durch die GPS-Lokalisierung können sich Energieversorgungsunternehmen im Ernstfall auch besser gegen Kundenbeschwerden schützen. Das PSI-System erstellt nämlich eine eindeutige Beweiskette, damit Unternehmen genau nachvollziehen können, wie jede einzelne Verkaufsinteraktion zustande gekommen ist. Falls ein Unternehmen sich dann gegen eine Beschwerde wehren muss, stehen diese Informationen innerhalb von Minuten (statt Wochen) bereit.
PSI unterstützt Unternehmen außerdem dabei, dass ihre Vertreter:innen ein effektives Training für den Außendienst erhalten. Irische Energieversorgungsunternehmen können Schulungsmaterialien direkt auf die Geräte ihrer Vertreter:innen hochladen, damit diese immer und überall Zugriff auf die nötigen Arbeitsinformationen haben. Daneben werden auch Daten zur Vertreterperformance erhoben, sodass Teamleitende mit PSI ganz leicht bestimmen können, in welchen Bereichen sich einzelne Mitarbeiter:innen noch verbessern müssen.
Irische Energieversorgungsunternehmen wissen, dass ein perfektes Onboarding zu einem erhöhten Kundenvertrauen führt
Für ein erfolgreiches Haustürgeschäft ist es unerlässlich, Kund:innen vor Fehlverkäufen zu schützen. Aber das ist nicht der einzige wichtige Aspekt, der im Rahmen von Kundeninteraktionen zu beachten ist. Um Ihre Marke zu schützen, müssen Sie auch Vertrauen zu Ihrer Kundschaft aufbauen. Dazu gehört ebenso ein effizientes, zuverlässiges Kundenerlebnis wie ein effektives Vertretermanagement.
Ist der Verwaltungsprozess papierbasiert, besteht ein größeres Risiko, dass Fehler geschehen, die Ihrem Markenruf schaden – selbst wenn Ihr:e Vertreter:in an der Tür alles richtig gemacht hat. In Irland merkten Unternehmensverantwortliche früh, dass Papierformulare in dem Zeitfenster zwischen dem Verkaufsabschluss an der Haustür und der Rückkehr ins Büro leicht beschädigt werden oder verloren gehen können. Auch lagen Formulare, ehe sie das Backoffice erreichten, mitunter tagelang im Eingangsfach, bevor sie manuell bearbeitet wurden.
Wenn Kund:innen zu lange warten müssen, um den Status ihrer Bestellung zu erfahren – oder schlimmer noch, wenn ihre Bestellung nicht im System gefunden wird –, dann werden sie natürlich schnell eine schlechte Meinung über Ihr Unternehmen entwickeln.
Irische Versorgungsunternehmen wollten dieses Risiko nicht mehr eingehen und entledigten sich kurzerhand des zugrunde liegenden Problems: Nachdem ein Verkauf in PSI registriert wurde, wird dieser sofort vom Vertretergerät entfernt und zur Verarbeitung weitergeleitet. Dieser Prozess ist vollständig automatisiert, sodass die üblichen Verzögerungen, wie man sie von der manuellen Verarbeitung kennt, eliminiert werden. Vertriebsteams bietet PSI darüber hinaus eine einfache Möglichkeit, zusätzliche Dokumente hochzuladen (zum Beispiel die Zustimmung des:der Vermieter:in), wodurch wiederum das Risiko von Kaufrücktritten reduziert wird.
Die PSI-Plattform wird kontinuierlich weiterentwickelt, damit irische Versorgungsunternehmen künftig noch mehr Tools zur Verfügung stehen, um eine Vertrauensbasis mit ihren Kund:innen zu etablieren. Während der Pandemie führten wir zum Beispiel Remote-Unterschriften als neue Option auf der Plattform ein, damit Vertreter:innen Verträge und andere Dokumente an Kundengeräte senden und Kund:innen die Dokumente aus sicherer Distanz prüfen und unterzeichnen konnten. Auch Kund:innen, die ihre Bankinformationen nicht an der Tür mitteilen möchten, profitieren von dieser Option: Sie haben nun eine alternative Möglichkeit für die Angabe dieser sensiblen Daten.
Da die Sicherheit von Kundendaten heute von größter Wichtigkeit ist, erleichtert PSI Nutzer:innen zudem die Compliance mit Bestimmungen wie der DSGVO. Bankinformationen von Kund:innen werden aus dem System entfernt, nachdem ein Verkauf genehmigt wurde, und alle sensiblen Kundendaten werden nach drei Jahren standardmäßig automatisch gelöscht. Bei Bedarf kann das System auch so konfiguriert werden, dass die Daten schon nach kürzerer Zeit gelöscht werden. Mithilfe von PSI können Sie auch effektiv mit Agenturen für Außendienstservices zusammenarbeiten: Agenturmitarbeitende sehen ausschließlich die Unternehmens- und Kundendaten, die sie tatsächlich zur Durchführung ihrer Aufgaben benötigen.
Wenn auch Sie Ihre Vertriebskampagnen effizienter gestalten möchten, kontaktieren Sie uns. Wir erklären Ihnen gerne, wie PSI Ihnen weiterhelfen kann. Alternativ können Sie auch unseren Leitfaden zu den Vertriebslösungen von PSI durchlesen.
Door-to-door sales: why Ireland’s utility companies have the edge in the field
If you look at door-to-door selling in the utilities market, you’ll see a wide variation in success around the world. In the UK, for example, utilities companies are hesitant to put too much into field sales for fear of damaging their brand reputation. In Denmark, doorstep selling is seen as a privacy intrusion and prohibited by law.
But in Ireland, door-to-door is a thriving sales channel for telco and utilities companies. Major players like Vodafone and SSE Airtricity invest considerably in their field sales, and see such a clear return on that investment that door-to-door campaigns are a core pillar of their operations.
The reason why things are different in Ireland isn’t the Irish people are simply more receptive to door-to-door sales reps. It’s that the utilities companies here have seen the issues that have made doorstep selling so contentious in other countries and committed to doing it right – including using sales software designed for regulated industries to ensure their customers and their brand are always protected.
Ireland has protection against mistakes and mis-selling
When you’re embarking on a door-to-door campaign, it’s essential to have controls in place for effective territory management. Without those controls, it’s too easy for bad actors in the field to mislead customers or report sales that never happened – not only will your brand reputation take a hit if that happens, but you could also risk fines in the millions, and legislators might even step in to ban door-to-door selling altogether.
While sales rep behaviour plays a huge role in that – and we’ll talk about rep management shortly – there are features your sales software should have to ensure door-to-door selling doesn’t get your brand into trouble.
For example, Ireland’s energy companies are using PSI’s journeys to prevent the wrong products being sold to customers. The products in the journeys are drawn from a set product list and filtered by answers to previous questions, meaning fewer broken sales as customers can’t agree to a product they later find out they’re not eligible for. It’s a guard against both intentional and accidental mis-selling.
We always work with our clients’ assurance teams to make sure the scripting in their journeys is exactly what reps need to be saying to customers, which reduces the risk of reps misrepresenting a product because they don’t have the answers they need. The logic and journey of the system is designed to always take reps on the correct path with a customer, so that they never see questions that shouldn’t come up.
Ireland’s energy companies use sales software to manage rep behaviour
As we’ve said, sales rep behaviour is critical to making door-to-door field sales work. When you send reps out to knock on doors, you’re faced with the challenge of managing them while having no direct control over what they’re doing on their routes.
In Ireland that used to be a real problem in the days of commission-only sales reps, when reps were notorious for either misleading customers or filling out forms themselves in order to record sales. When those sales reps are only armed with a clipboard and paper, effective territory management is almost impossible – but with the right sales software, it’s a different story.
At PSI, we learned to make sure everything a rep does while they’re out on their route is geocoded and time-stamped. That means you can immediately see if a rep is logging a new sale at 10:30pm or far from a customer’s address, and the data keeps them honest.
That GPS location data also gives Ireland’s energy companies more assurance in case they do find themselves facing a customer complaint. The PSI system gives companies a clear trail of evidence so that they can know exactly what happened with any given sale, and the information can be retrieved in minutes rather than weeks should a brand need to protect itself.
At PSI, we also made it easier to ensure that reps have received the right field sales training. Ireland’s energy companies can upload training materials directly to a rep’s device so that they always have access to what they need, while the ability to capture and report on rep performance data gives a clear indication of where each member of the team needs to focus their training.
Ireland’s energy companies know that perfect onboarding builds customer trust
While ensuring customers are protected from mis-selling is a key part of making your door-to-door sales a success, it’s not the only aspect. Protecting your brand in the field is also a case of building trust with consumers, which includes delivering an efficient, reliable customer experience as much as it does managing rep behaviour.
When the process relies on paper, for example, it’s easy for mistakes to harm your brand reputation even if your sales rep did everything right on the doorstep. Ireland learned early how paper forms could get lost or damaged in the time between completing a sale and returning it to the back office team. And when it did reach the back office, it might have been sitting there for a week waiting for manual processing.
If customers are left waiting too long to hear back about the status of their order – or worse, if their details are lost altogether – it’s easy for them to form the perception that your company isn’t looking out for them.
Ireland’s energy companies eliminated that risk by doing away with the core problem. Once a sale is captured in PSI, it immediately comes off a rep’s device and is sent to be processed. Everything is automated, removing the delay that always comes with manually handling data. It’s also simple for sales teams to upload additional documentation like landlord’s consent, reducing the chance of broken sales.
We’re also continually evolving the PSI platform to give Ireland’s energy companies more tools for building trust with customers. During Covid we integrated remote signatures, allowing reps to send contracts and documentation to a customer’s own device, where they can review and sign at a safe distance. This functionality also gives customers another way to enter their bank details if they don’t want to hand them over at the door.
And in an age where the security of customer data is paramount, PSI makes it easy to comply with regulations like GDPR. Customer bank details are purged as soon as a sale is approved and the system automatically clears all sensitive customer data after three years as standard, and can be configured to purge more regularly if needed. PSI is also designed to take field sales agency partnerships into account, by making sure that agencies can’t see any company and customer data beyond what they need to fulfil their role.
If you’re ready to take your sales campaigns to the next level, speak to us to find out more about how PSI can help, or read our guide to PSI’s sales solutions.
How our pre-configured sales solutions give customers a head start
When people hear the term “pre-configured”, they might think that’s code for constraints and limitations. They picture an off-the-shelf solution that might meet a need right now but offers little room for customisation – the software equivalent of a microwave ready meal.
Now to be fair, there’s some software out there that fits this bill. It’s stretched thin to serve a too-broad audience, and in an attempt to meet the needs of a thousand dissimilar businesses, it fails to satisfy most of them.
But to think of pre-configured software in these terms does it a huge disservice. At PSI, our goal with a pre-configured solution isn’t to sell to as many companies as possible. Instead we’re only looking to serve the select sectors we work in – telco and energy. And we’re essentially packaging up the systems that are best practice in those industries.
It’s not a limitation, it’s a head start. We can continue to build upon the solution, evolving and further customising the platform to your needs after you’re up and running – and crucially, making sales.
So what exactly do you get with a pre-configured sales solution?
The first thing is speed. We’re using a tried-and-tested recipe that’s based on our learning from all the custom implementations we’ve built up until this point – and by using this recipe, we save you a lot of headaches, and you win back a lot of valuable selling time.
While every telco is unique and will have their own requirements that others don’t, there are some things that every telco sales solution needs to have – a set of products, address data, a sales form, customer communications, and so on. It doesn’t make sense to use valuable time and resources building each of those elements from scratch for every project when they already exist.
Rather than starting from a blank slate, a pre-configured solution means you’re able to begin with all the essential elements you need to complete a sale or speed up a delivery. And because it’s already fully wrapped up, it’s a solution that you can go live within a matter of weeks, compared to the many months you’d need to wait for a fully bespoke solution.
And even though it’s pre-configured, that doesn’t mean you get what you’re given. There is still room to add your own branded communications and logos, to tailor things to your product list, and to incorporate any additional questions or adaptations to the customer journey once the core foundation has been laid.
But as well as speed, you’re also getting expertise. PSI’s pre-configured sales solution is built off the back of every one of our previous integrations, strengthened by every learning we’ve gained when things have gone right, and when we’ve had the chance to learn or refine our platform.
It’s also designed specifically for the telco and energy sectors, meaning it’s sophisticated enough to incorporate ever-changing industry-specific regulations and security factors into the sales process, and update quickly to meet new requirements.
Don’t let sales platform perfectionism hold you back
With any software product launch, there’s an important balance to strike between achieving a comprehensive solution and a solution that doesn’t take an age to build. There’s no use rushing out a platform that’s lacking the features your sales team needs to do their job – but at the same time, too much perfectionism can stop a product from ever going live.
The advantage of a pre-configured platform is that “complete” and “quick” don’t have to be mutually exclusive – and just because a solution comes configured a certain way on day one, that doesn’t mean it’s the only shape it’s ever going to have.
With PSI’s pre-configured platform, you launch with everything that’s already designed and built, then add on additional features as and when you need them after launch. When you have a day one solution that’s already deployed and working, it’s not a huge project to scale it up and add in multiple channels later.
Even if you had the luxury of resources and time to launch with everything on your features list, sometimes that’s still not the best way forward. You often have to try things out in the field before you know for sure what needs to be added or what isn’t working. Otherwise, you can delay the launch for the sake of custom features that are based on untested assumptions.
For instance, we previously worked on an extensive custom build for a client that wanted to focus on sales rep engagement right from the jump. So they asked for features like a step counter and an integration with Spotify to make routes more interesting, as well as leaderboards and gamification to incentivise sales performance.
But when they launched the platform, those features went largely unused – it turned out the reps cared more about completing sales and getting paid than having fun on their routes.
A faster launch is a safer launch
When you’re building a fully bespoke solution from a blank slate, delays have the potential to derail the entire project. The longer it goes on, the greater the risk that you’ll just never go live – the business will move on in the background and targets will change, and the goalposts for your solution keep getting moved as the specification tries to keep up.
Then there’s the human element. If your sales team aren’t fully invested in the project, they’ll start losing confidence in it as delivery drags on. Even if they are invested at the beginning, there’s the possibility that they will also disengage if the solution takes too long, or even move on from their role before seeing it through to completion. Whatever the case, that kind of engagement is difficult to win back once it’s been lost.
One of the easily overlooked benefits of launching with a pre-configured sales solution is that it keeps the momentum of the project high. Rather than everyone getting excited during the planning phase but tiring through the months it takes to piece that vision together, they can have access to the staging system within weeks and start getting to grips with a real, working product.
That can also help with change management. There’s nothing worse than spending months building a complicated system, only to reach UAT and find that someone has new suggestions they haven’t voiced before, or an emotional reaction to the change that derails the launch.
On the other hand, when they can get their hands on a pre-configured solution within weeks, your team can get comfortable with the way the system works – and they can bring up any changes that need to be made well before it reaches user testing.
If you’re ready to take your sales campaigns to the next level, speak to us to find out more about how PSI can help.
Choosing sales software: 4 reasons that set PSI apart for telcos and energy providers
For telcos and energy companies, choosing a field sales platform is a big decision. The right solution can optimise a team’s operational efficiency, elevate customer satisfaction and open the way forward for penetrating new territories.
Not all sales software solutions are made equal. While many offer a generic, one-size-fits-all solution, we built the PSI system specifically for ambitious telco and energy companies – to help them meet industry and customer demands, move fast in the face of new opportunities and empower the field agents who represent their brand.
1. PSI keeps reps selling – even offline
Any sales solution worth its salt should aim to empower field reps to be their most productive, wherever their routes take them. But most sales software is missing a crucial element that every field rep needs – the ability to keep selling even when they’re offline.
That’s especially the case for telcos. Rural areas are a crucial market for expanding telcos, but the same lack of connectivity that makes those regions an opportunity also keeps field reps from closing sales. If a sales solution can’t operate offline, it brings your reps – and potentially your entire campaign in that area – to a halt.
Offline functionality is a core part of the PSI system. When a rep loses connection, our system immediately switches to an offline mode that keeps the server updated. That means sales reps can keep on logging data and signing up customers without waiting on the doorstep for the system to reconnect.
2. PSI supports enhanced customer satisfaction and field rep security
Ensuring reps can always close their deals is vital, but it’s not the limit of what sales software can do. With the right features, it can also elevate the experience of both your sales reps and your customers.
For example, our Document Reader add-on allows reps to take a picture of a customer’s current bill and automatically input their data from that image. Not only does that make reps more productive it also gives customers a smoother experience than they’d have with a competitor using another sales solution.
We’ve also recently launched Fusion Guardian, a tool for ensuring the safety of lone workers while they’re out in the field. With key features like real-time GPS location alerts, a discreet panic button and customisable response frameworks, the PSI system helps sales teams go further in their duty of care.
3. PSI is a specialised solution for telcos and energy companies
The success of your sales team is rooted in how well you understand your industry and your customers. That understanding should extend to your sales platform too, to ensure your team is following the industry’s best practices and exceeding expectations for customer experience.
A general sales platform will still do the basics you need it to – input leads and keep an eye on customer journeys. But if you’re trying to penetrate new markets, cultivate long-term customer relationships and reap the competitive benefits of effective territory management, the basics aren’t going to cut it.
The PSI system has been designed specifically with telcos and the energy industry in mind. We know how vital it is for energy companies to monitor customer engagement as part of the sales process, or for telcos to fulfil complex requirements around customer switching, and have built our platform to handle that out of the box.
For example, our Touchstone software lets you easily give customers a grace period to review their documentation and new contract before they sign up. As well as helping telcos and energy companies satisfy the regulations around consumer care, it also ensures customers feel confident about making the right decision – and boosts customer loyalty by building trusting relationships.
4. PSI provides effortless scalability
Choosing the right sales solution isn’t a short-term question. While you might be looking to maximise your field sales productivity today, that might not be what you need tomorrow.
Other sales platforms focus on automating tasks and optimising processes – in other words, making your team more efficient at what they already do. But if a solution is limited to a single sales channel, it’s going to hold your team back in the long run – either when you hit the glass ceiling, or when you have to spend time and resources migrating your customer data and sales pipelines to a new, bigger system.
With PSI, we built our system in tiers that are designed to scale. If all you need is territory management, you can get that without paying for more features than you’ll use. But if you want to expand to end-to-end or multichannel sales, it’s a simple case of upgrading to a higher tier. Your data and processes remain in the same place, and your sales team doesn’t have to learn a new system each time you scale.
If you’re ready to take your sales campaigns to the next level, speak to us to find out more about how PSI can help.
Leads +, Sales + or Enterprise: a buyer’s guide to PSI
Leads +, Sales + or Enterprise: a buyer’s guide to PSI
Finding the right platform to support your sales process isn’t always about looking at the price. It’s also about finding sales software that can deliver what you need today, and empower you to get where you’re going next.
Do you need to dig deep into the performance of your field sales teams? See the bigger picture of end-to-end sales journeys? Or do you need to tie multiple sales channels together in one clear place?
PSI's sales software comes in three configurations: Leads +, Sales + and Enterprise. We’ve put together this guide to all three to help you find the package you need.
Leads +
You can think of Leads + as our essential field sales tools – a foundational sales territory management platform for overseeing campaigns and rep performance.
At its core, this package is about giving more power to both your field reps and your sales managers. Leads + lets your field sales team work on an unlimited number of addresses and leads, and think more tactically about how you engage with them. With the Opti Route algorithm you can optimise routes for each sales rep, to ensure that each area is maximised without being overworked.
While your agents are out in the field, GPS tracking and real-time rep management tools give an eagle-eyed overview of their performance at all times. And as they report the results from every door, you can follow and collect powerful data insights to hone future campaigns.
The features in Leads + underpin the rest of our packages because we know that field sales is essential for telcos and energy companies. Whether you’re planning to grow to multichannel sales or you’re an incumbent who’s already there, you will always need the ability to manage your sales territory and your field reps.
Sales +
Sales + takes the foundation of our territory management toolkit and builds on it with an end-to-end sales package.
The entire sale - from first recording potential customers to closing the deal - is wrapped up in one place. As well as digital contracts and bank validations to complete the sale, that includes document templates, a customer document portal, and email and SMS communications. Engaging with customers at any stage of the process is seamless for both them and your sales team, and all of the communications can be customised with your own branding.
That means there is less manual intervention required to move the process along and no data lags that risk breaking a sale. Your entire team can access all the information they need in one place and as close to real-time as possible – they’ll be able to know the exact status of each sale as soon as the rep leaves the customer’s door.
If you’re trying to grow quickly, Sales + gives you everything you need to tighten up your sales and provisioning process, while letting your internal tech team focus on adding value to the business.
Enterprise
If you’re operating on the level of multichannel sales, Enterprise is the package that helps you integrate each channel into one cohesive process.
Enterprise brings all sales journeys together under one roof, no matter where they start or finish. If a customer journey begins with a field sales rep visiting their door but finishes online, that sale is treated as one end-to-end process within the system. There’s no lag as they move between channels, and no risk of customer details being lost or duplicated along the way.
Enterprise also comes with even greater flexibility. With the power to set up custom journeys, workflows and data reporting, you can map out the PSI platform to fit your existing sales workflow and optimise it fully.
If you’re ready to take your sales campaigns to the next level, speak to us to find out more about PSI can help.
How to build a business case for new multichannel sales software
If you’re a sales manager or director, and you see the strain your current system is placing on keeping your teams and customers happy, how do you convince those with a tight hold on the purse strings to loosen their grip slightly – and invest in realising the true potential of your sales success?
Here we lay out the business case for new multichannel sales software and three key points to include in your pitch: consumer centricity, ease of control, and automated compliance. All of which combine to improve sales beyond business-as-usual.
Keep customers on side at every touchpoint
Firstly, multichannel sales tech stops customers falling through the cracks. Some will never talk to a salesperson on the door or phone, others will never make a purchase decision online, and many won’t stick to a single channel.
According to McKinsey, over 50% of customers seek three to five off and online sales channels on their way to making a purchase. If you want the loyalty of that 50%, you need to break down the silos and create a seamless customer experience across all sales channels – and to do that you need the right tech.
Keeping tabs on all channels is vital if they’re going to work effectively in harmony. This can be a difficult task, though, particularly if to generate the data you need you’re relying on your sales teams’ manual reporting – which equates to less time spent closing sales.
The right sales software will be intelligent and efficient. It’ll keep your sales teams focused on their primary task and, at the same time, make them better informed with data captured across all sales channels. This helps them to close sales that would otherwise slip away – and this creates a significant ROI over time.
Automated multichannel compliance
Compliance with sales and data regulations is a major selling point when it comes to building a business case for investing in a multichannel sales solution. While the initial outlay for buying into a new system may seem like a large investment, it would pale in comparison to the cost of a fine for mis-selling a product or service, or mis-handling personal data.
Automation is key to a successful multichannel sales solution; removing some of the manual admin processes in closing a sale can save time between sales, yes, but more than that, it means your compliance is on autopilot, ensuring that nothing is being mis-sold. The right multichannel sales solution can also do the heavy lifting for you as regulations change around selling in your industry and being able to react quickly means your teams can keep selling.
The extra level of control is important for compliance, but also for customer retention; customers who are mis-sold products and don't come away with a positive experience are likely to look elsewhere.
Ease of control
The right multichannel sales system will give you control of sales and onboarding processes, territory management, and lead capture.
Sales managers can get a real time overview of sales data across all channels via a dashboard. This means they can identify inefficiencies easily, allowing them to make adjustments and see the impact of those adjustments in real time. This is an invaluable asset when trying to hit targets and KPIs, rather than having to wait for a reporting team to collate data and react based upon historical information.
For effective territory management, routes can be sent automatically to different representatives, ensuring no crossover or miscommunication. This also cuts down on the resources needed for assigning territories to sales representatives. Data collected and centralised within one system, means campaigns can be driven by business intel to improve overall conversions and results.
A watertight multichannel sales system will enable you to focus efforts in a strategic way. Without it, your sales teams can be knocking on all doors and calling all numbers, only to discover people who don’t want to buy or aren’t in a position to buy yet. Likewise you can miss potential customers who are ready to purchase.
The right multichannel solution will enable your teams to capture missed sales opportunities. They can then schedule a follow up at the right time from the right channel, whether that’s email, a phone call or showing up at their front door – ensuring no opportunities are ever missed.
Ultimately, that’s what multichannel sales software is unless you invest in it: a missed opportunity. It’s an investment, of course, but the return on that investment can be felt from all angles as you close more deals, waste less time, capture missed sales, ensure 100% compliance, and gain the ability to track that ROI in real time.
To learn more about how PSI’s multichannel sales software might help your business grow, take a look at the case studies of how we helped SSE Airtricity and Ogi. Alternatively, get in touch and see how our team can help you to build a business case for investing in multichannel sales tech.
Should you build or buy multichannel sales software?
This is the era of the frictionless customer onboarding experience, and companies can no longer opt out. All organisations are going after more personalised, more consistent and bottleneck-free experiences across multichannel sales and onboarding. Those who don’t get ahead will inevitably fall behind and get their customers stuck in the sales pipeline.
When your goal is to keep shuffling people through your sales funnel, the question is not if you should adopt better technology for customer acquisition and onboarding, but how? If the software already exists as an off-the-shelf solution, you can buy it - but should you? If you have the resources in house to build it, you can do so - but what are the implications?
We’re specialists in sales software for customer acquisition and customer onboarding, and we have first-hand insight into what it’s like to build, buy and customise software for this purpose. So here’s a brief overview of what we’ve learned.
Build: control your buyer experience
Building your own sales software has several distinct advantages:
- You don’t need to pay up front for new software
- Your organisation is in complete control of what you build
- You can build the software around very specific requirements
The build approach leaves your organisation with all its cards in hand. Your in-house developers can build the software to an exact design based on your sales goals, and your organisation only needs to pay for the upkeep.
So, if your organisation can spare the time and resources, can avoid the costs of purchase and get a platform that meets the needs of your entire team and customer base perfectly, why wouldn't you?
Well, the catch is that this perfect scenario can be difficult to attain.
First, it is a rare thing for an IT project to stay in scope, on time and on budget without a few unexpected hidden costs. In a Harvard Business Review study of 1,481 IT change initiatives, the average cost overrun was 27% and one in six projects had a cost overrun of 200% and a schedule overrun of nearly 70%.
You can’t blame it all on project management though. It’s often just a hazard of the field. Software focused on customer experience is constantly evolving – and the goalposts are too.
At PSI we’ve come across many companies that spent two and sometimes up to four years building the same type of software. By the time it is deployed, there's a whole new market of modern buyers and the company has moved on, along with competitive standards, often making the technology no longer fit for purpose.
Buy: Get sales software up and running fast
Purchasing software has its own advantages:
- Get it in the hands of your sales teams quickly
- Reserve your in-house resources for your core work
- Make the most of time-sensitive opportunities
When you choose to buy off-the-shelf sales software, you inevitably sacrifice some control and customisation. The software might not be ideally suited for your industry, and it may not perfectly suit your ideal customer journey for every channel.
What you lose in perfect fit, you gain in speed. When the need is time-sensitive, it’s often best to choose a quick off-the-shelf buying process so you don’t miss your window of opportunity.
You’re also purchasing peace of mind when it comes to compliance and watertight security. When you need to navigate GDPR or CCPA, or other data privacy regulations, it’s often worth buying software simply to avoid the risk of non-compliance with its associated fines and PR damage.
If existing software out there meets 60% or more of your requirements, it’s likely worth buying, even if it’s not a perfect fit. You may not have complete influence over the product roadmap but many vendors will collaborate extensively with potential customers to build or improve their products. If the software is designed to be customisable, you’re also far more likely to find a good fit for your organisation.
Typically building software from the ground up is best reserved for when the technology is at the core of your offering. For us at PSI, the beating heart of what we do is multichannel sales software, so it makes sense for us to devote as many in-house resources as possible to the task. But it also makes sense for us to purchase software that lies outside our core business.
While it can seem like a cost-saving to have your in-house developers reimagine how you approach customer acquisition and customer onboarding - you sacrifice much in opportunity. Every moment your developers spend on looking for potential solutions to your sales software is a moment they are not working on developing your core business, whether that means creating digital products for 5G or key infrastructure for analysing your company data.
Configure: Tailor existing software to your multichannel sales strategy
A third option, which isn’t always considered, is to buy highly customisable software. This is effectively a middle ground between building and buying:
- Get a sophisticated system fit for multichannel sales in your industry
- Configure the software to your unique requirements, and apply branding
- Do more projects in less time, with the same resources
Developers are used to finding a wide range of ways to stop reinventing the wheel. They’ll use open-source tools to build complex architecture or they’ll use “headless solutions” that provide backend functionality, so they can focus their expertise where it matters most. In other words, they source generic software from specialist vendors, and then use APIs to connect it with the unique elements of what they’re building in real-time.
Similarly, with customer acquisition and onboarding you can find highly customisable software that can be configured to your organisation’s unique vision and set up. This means you don’t need to compromise on off-the-shelf software that’s not designed with your industry or organisation in mind. And you can also get set up in weeks not years - which is how long you’d need to wait if you tried to build the same software in-house - so you can fast track the entire customer journey to accelerate business growth.
This customisation and speed is exactly what our Touchstone and Fusion products offer. “We’ve built features to enable us to build and change customer journeys without reinventing the wheel each time,” says David Costello, CEO of PSI Mobile. “This is the low code/no code scenario, and these products provide our customers with powerful tools to be able to do more complex projects in less time, with the same resources.”
If you're a business owner and want to learn more about how you can configure sales software to meet your sales goals, see our article on multichannel sales tech and how it fits together to give you a competitive advantage.
Bigger Isn’t Necessarily Better: What to Look for When Choosing a Salesforce Automation Software Provider
Not a new saying by any stretch of the imagination – ‘nobody ever got fired for buying IBM’ – IBM, or any large market leader such as Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, SalesForce, etc. became the safe choice when purchasing pricey software. After all, by going with one of the established brands the thought was (and for many still is) that they were too big to fail, which of course, isn’t always true. With a lifespan lasting nearly 50 years, this overused mantra is finally dying out – and with good reason.
While not true of all big brand software solutions, some of them share the following disadvantages – slow to implement new technology, require long deployment periods, don’t always deliver what is needed, use ambiguous pricing schemes, and many times embed the software so deep that switching vendors is difficult at best. Companies are now realising that legacy software products aren’t risk-free and are actively looking for alternatives.
Why Smaller Salesforce Automation Software Vendors Can Make a Big Difference
Regulated markets such as energy and telco are fiercely competitive and to leapfrog the competition you need to differentiate yourself. Technology is changing faster than ever, and as mentioned above some of the big brands may be slow to implement innovative technologies that can give you a competitive edge. In addition, their sheer size may make it difficult to get the service you need when you need it, not to mention potential execution time delays and prohibitive costs. When you stick with the supposed software solution leaders, you become a ‘me too’ energy or telco provider that has limited ability to use technology as a differentiator.
On the flipside are smaller, more nimble vendors that not only know you and your needs, but embrace today’s technology to deliver the software solutions that can have a significant impact on what you offer, how you run and control your field sales operations, and give you a competitive advantage. As you think over making the switch to a smaller salesforce automation software vendor, some questions that typically come to mind include:
- Does the software provider have technical expertise?
- Do they understand regulatory standards?
- Can they provide data security?
- Are they able to scale to meet our growing requirements?
- Will they still be in business 5 or 10 years from now?
- And, of course – if something goes wrong, will my reputation be at stake?
While they are valid concerns, the one thing to keep in mind is that smaller doesn’t necessarily mean new to the industry. In fact, going with a smaller salesforce automation software vendor can deliver benefits that their larger counterparts aren’t able to provide, such as:
- Best-in-class technology that leverages today’s innovation.
- Ability to mitigate risks by exceeding regulatory requirements to ensure compliance.
- Agility and adaptability to quickly respond to your changing needs.
- Delivering solutions on time and on budget.
- Supplying a devoted team to build one-to-one relationships.
- Providing a high level of service for successful project outcomes.
- Having intimate knowledge about your business.
- Being committed to your long-term success.
Energy and telco field sales can be a lucrative business when done right, which is why you need a software vendor that not only puts your interests first but is a specialist with extensive industry expertise – regardless of their size.
Give Your Energy or Telco Field Sales Reps a Competitive Advantage
Energy or telco field sales can be a minefield of obstacles, which is why the right salesforce automation software provider is essential to your success. Because of the numerous field sales challenges, it’s important to find a software vendor that understands your world. One that has deep knowledge of this highly regulated industry and can help you navigate inherent complexities.
With 15 years of industry experience, PSI has been helping energy and telco providers overcome obstacles to succeed in this highly regulated and competitive environment. Our dedicated team of experts will work side-by-side with you to identify gaps in your processes and provide the solutions you need to take advantage of innovative and profitable opportunities.
As industry experts, we’ve invested millions into creating solutions to streamline field sales initiatives through superior processes and flawless workflows. Our customers, including global leading brands such as SSE Airtricity, Vodafone, Electric Ireland, Fibrous Broadband, Spectrum Broadband, and many others are reaping the benefits of working with a smaller, yet highly focused and nimble salesforce automation software provider. In fact, SSE Airtricity describes us as “...the real deal...enabling them to become best in class”
Thriving in this highly regulated and competitive market takes an established salesforce automation software solution partner that has a proven reputation for success. Contact us today to learn how this small, yet innovative software company can help you exceed your goals.
