Best Practice Digital Sales Solutions
How much of your team’s time is simply wasted?
If you’re still clinging to old-style sales techniques, I’m going to guess that your sales agents spent a lot of their valuable time waiting around.
Waiting for the company to give them the resources or marketing materials they need. Waiting for their training to get signed off. Waiting for leads. Waiting for background checks to clear. Waiting, waiting, waiting.
And as you no doubt know, waiting around and wasting time is very bad news for your team’s levels of energy and enthusiasm. In fact, it’s a massive wet blanket when it comes to motivation.
Great sales people are go-getters. For them, sales is a verb. They’re impatient. They need to act.
So let them.
If you want to harness, rather than hinder, the potential of your top performing sales people, you’re going to have to find digital sales solutions that encourage and accommodate as much productive selling time as you possibly can. And for that, you’ll need top technology that streamlines the process, speeds up lead distribution, cuts down admin and gives new starters the chance to hit the ground running.
That means ditching the cumbersome paper trails and the endless manual data entry and switching to a future-proofed digital data capture and sales fulfilment platform. One that automated those niggling little tasks that so easy swallow up your team’s time, helping them to help you make money.
Agents can access digital training resources and continuous learning options to make sure their skills and knowledge are refreshed and honed, right before they go sell. They can access digital copies of handbooks and other resources through their mobile devices or PDAs, meaning that marketing can get new messaging out to them in the blink of an eye and you can be sure they have the latest sales information for frequently changing products or updates to regulations.
Back in HQ, you can track the progress of staff out in the field or working from home, analysing what’s working and where, allocating leads or redirecting your team in a fast, responsive style that maximises their time, improves their success rate and keeps them running on gas. If there are challenges in your sales process, you can rectify the challenge in real-time and increase your chances of success.
Even better, digital sales solutions that are based in Business Process Automation actually help to improve the accuracy of data captured during a sale.
That’s because these platforms make it far easier to comply with regulations and smooth things out along the entire fulfilment chain. Straightforward, structured digital systems mean that that sales agents are discouraged (or even prevented) from cutting corners, reducing the risk of human errors and lost sales later on.
And, because the solution can enable validations, take payment details and complete the entire process on the spot, sales staff have a sense of completion. They know everything’s gone through ok – they know that the sale, and their commission is already in the bag. And they can head out to their next lead feeling fired up and hungry for the next triumph.
All of which keeps your sales staff happy and working at their best, while reinforcing your reputation as a top-drawer, highly trusted leader that everyone wants to learn from.
As well, of course, as raising your standing in the company as a whole – not just within the team you run. And that can’t hurt, now, can it?
Want more tips on capitalising on your sales teams killer instincts? Contact our team today
Effective territory management is more than basic geography
Historically sales territories have existed as a way to simplify the division of accounts between your sales team. Geographic boundaries and sales team availability is used to establish which accounts belong to which account manager. It is then down to the territory manager to service the accounts and leads in their patch.
The problem with traditional territory management is that it treats all customers (and leads) equally. Your field sales reps will typically plan their weekly/monthly/annual visits, cycling through customers site visits in the same way indefinitely. Every contact is afforded roughly the same level of facetime.
In an ideal world, this equality would be fine. But the truth is that some clients spend more than others, making them worth more to your business. It is these clients that should be receiving greater attention from your sales reps.
Redefining your territories
Taking your sales strategy forward, it may help to stop thinking of territories in terms of physical geography. Instead, you can create territories around various different factors including:
- Product range or tariff
- Account type
- Local competition
- Personas – the type of people being targeted in your field sales campaigns
Even this basic change of definition opens new sales opportunities. You are now able to reallocate leads and accounts to sales reps in new, more effective ways:
- Product experts can manage specific accounts based on the utility service they use.
- You can split the sales team between corporate and consumer accounts, allowing reps to specialise in one or the other.
- You can reallocate additional field sales reps to target regions where your competition is particularly strong or weak.
- Your sales team can tailor their strategy and pitches according to an allocated persona.
Targeting customers
From a business account perspective, you may already have divided your territory based on account value – after all, those clients who spend more warrant more of your resources and time. But the truth is that some accounts will have a secondary value which is sometimes quite significant.
In the age of social business, you may find that some of your low-value accounts are actually very good at referring their own contacts. So the value of their contract may be low, but the referral business they bring in more than compensates.
This realisation is another important motivator for changing territories and account allocation. These clients will need similar nurturing and encouragement as you would provide your highest-value accounts. Losing these high secondary value clients could have a serious effect on your sales.
This is still relevant in a domestic/retail setting where the size of accounts can still be a factor, especially considering the age of smart where increasing devices further embed your products through your customer’s homes. In the majority of accounts though you are playing for the longevity of the relationship, who is more likely to stay with you and why. Do you understand why they are signing up with you? Is it price alone or price and service, and how do you continue to add value in the long term to keep them a customer? Capturing and acting on relevant data can help give you an edge over your competitors.
Get flexible
Changing the way you define and manage territories is not a one-off task, however. Your customers’ needs and preferences will change frequently, as will market conditions. And where territories are defined by any factor other than geography, they too will need to be updated to reflect the changes.
In the data-driven sales environment, this is more complicated than changing a few lines on a map. The factors used to segment advanced territories are not so immediately obvious.
The sales operations manager needs a sales platform that allows them to manage every aspect of their sales strategy and supporting data quickly and efficiently. This flexibility allows you to change strategy whenever required to maximise conversions and sales.
The value in your database
No matter the channel, feeding the sales engine is a constant battle for sales leaders, do you have enough quality leads, how can you improve your conversion rate, are there more opportunities for improvement? With the complexity of multiple channels, customer and product types sitting alongside multiple systems and processes there is the potential to leave opportunities on the table.
It’s therefore key to have a strategy and a digital sales solution that will enable you to capture and centralise pertinent sales data including; leads from any channel, intelligence about product performance per channel and area, alongside other data that is relevant you your business e.g. do people in the southwest sign up more often when the weather is rainy.
When you have insight that can be actioned, you can utilise more value from your database, leads can be nurtured until ready and delivered to the relevant channel at the appropriate time, improvements can be made your sales processes if you understand where people get stuck, you can resource your territory appropriately based on performance, and monitor the results in real-time through your sales dashboards. Each door knock will in turn deliver more value if managed correctly.
Digital Sales Solution
PSI has been delivering tailored solutions to energy and telecommunications providers since 2004. Our robust Fusion platform can manage the full matrix of your sales engine, from how you sell, e.g.; field sales, telesales, web sales, channel partners, 3rd party sales, to what you sell and to who. We make it easy for your customers to switch, for your team to deliver, and for your business to gain intelligence and maximise sales.
If you want to see the solution in action, schedule a 30 min Demo with our specialists.
How to Build a Successful Field Sales Team
In order to cut through today’s digital noise, energy and telco sales reps are hitting the streets and knocking on doors. Known to elevate your brand, door-to-door sales adds the human touch that other sales methodologies lack. When you put your sales reps directly in front of a prospect, they’re able to build and strengthen relationships, provide a higher level of education on your products and services, lessen miscommunication, and create the type of trust and credibility that promotes customer loyalty. But getting your sales reps field ready can be a challenge.
As you know only too well, sales is a demanding and many times thankless job and it’s up to you to set your field sales reps up for success. The process starts the moment you hire a new field sales rep and the training you provide. It doesn’t, however, end there. Keeping your reps engaged over the long term, avoiding sales code of conduct breaches, burnout, and boredom, while improving your profitability can be a slippery slope. That is why you need a strategy that will take the guesswork out of the equation. Read on to learn how you can build a successful field sales team and grow your business simultaneously.
Strategies That Will Have Your Field Reps Working at Peak Performance
Many sales organisations view sales as a game of numbers. While reaching sales quotas is essential to the financial health of your business, it needs to be part of the company’s overall strategy. For example, let’s assume that your energy company’s field reps are paid strictly on a commission basis and are given virtually unattainable quarterly quota goals. While the numbers may add up and you’re achieving revenue projections, where does this leave your reps? To reach their goals, there is the potential that they may resort to cold knocking on ineligible doors, go off script to convince customers to switch providers, or even use fake phone numbers, bank account details, and phoney or duplicate addresses to create a sale. When a rep goes rogue, it not only chips away at your brand’s reputation but can result in regulatory fines.
Training needs to be an essential component of your overarching strategy. As explained by Chron, savvy business leaders understand the relationship between training and employee performance. However, to get the optimal results from your training and continuous learning initiatives, you’ll need to create measurable metrics. To start this process perform pre- and post-training evaluations, as well as set key performance indicators (KPIs) that can be used to track your field reps performance over the long term. Be sure that the KPIs you decide on align with your brand values and expectations. It’s also important that, at least at the beginning, you don’t set the bar too high. Your measurable metrics need to be attainable, yet provide room for stretch objectives.
When you expect too little from your field sales reps or provide little to no guidance, you run the risk that your reps will not only go rogue but become bored with their daily routine. On the opposite end of the spectrum, unattainable expectations can cause reps to quickly burn out. This often results in high field sales rep turnover, which ultimately means a revolving door of new hires and the ongoing costs of recruiting and training. To get your reps working at peak performance, the pressure you put on them needs to range between moderate and high.
In an ideal world, field sales reps would be naturally motivated to always work at peak performance. However, the very nature of field sales lends itself to an unpredictable work environment. If you’re like your counterparts, you’re constantly searching for ways to keep your reps motivated. A study by Harvard Business Review revealed that increased productivity and higher performance can be attained when workers are motivated by the interest, enjoyment, satisfaction, and challenge of the work itself.
As the face of your business, field sales reps should be provided with the kind of work environment that will foster their ability to do what they love and deliver the kind of value that provides prospects and customers with the level of service they expect, while boosting their earning potential. Although many businesses rely solely on extrinsic motivators such as compensation, rewards, and recognition, the blending of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators have been proven to foster more engaged, loyal and productive field sales reps.
Crush the Competition by Taking Field Sales to the Next Level
As you can see, poorly trained field sales reps or mismanaged expectations have the opposite effect of what you’re trying to achieve. Reps that take a genuine interest in their customers and achievements are your ticket to profitability. However, their success relies on you. Be sure your reps have everything they need to hit the road running, including having intimate knowledge of the products they are selling, energy or telco industry expertise, the tools to build customer rapport, the knowledge to accurately answer customer questions, and the skills to close the deal.
Your field reps are the face of your company to every prospect they meet. And as such you need them to represent the company in the most positive way possible. Whether you’re outsourcing your field sales efforts or have an internal team, you need to mitigate risks by planning ahead. And that starts with setting your field sales reps up for success!
As the leading sales technology partner for energy and telco providers, PSI has been helping more than 20,000 field reps positively represent the companies they work for. With more than 12 years of industry expertise, we have a unique understanding of the challenges individual reps, teams, and the business in general face when selling energy and telco services door-to-door. Our industry-specific platform and team of specialists are helping companies, like yours, focus on providing the tools reps need to operate at peak performance.
View our most recent case study to see how we helped SSE Airtricity set their field sales reps up for continued success.
How Gaining Insights from Your Data Can Help You Win More Deals
We’ve all heard the saying “data is the new oil”, but what may not be as well known is the concept behind it. Like crude oil, raw data isn’t valuable in itself. To unlock the actionable insights it contains, the data must first be accurately gathered, combined with other relevant data, and analysed. When properly done, it can bridge the gap between how you think your business is running and how it’s really running.
Doing this requires embedding the actionable insights acquired from your data into your business strategies for more proactive and intentional decision making. Energy and telco companies that recognise the importance of the data they capture and act upon it will be in an enviable position to improve the way business is conducted, and ultimately win more deals.
When Intelligent Data Isn’t Part of the Sales Journey
Data can provide a bounty of intelligence when it comes to understanding where you’re excelling and where improvements need to be made to increase sales closure rates. Let’s explore two sales scenarios – door-to-door field sales and online sales – looking at each through the lens of when data isn’t integrated into your processes.
Door-to-door field sales: Given closing the deal is the primary goal of your field reps, do you know if money is being left on the table? For example, we’ll assume that during the course of a day, a field rep knocked on 10 doors and made 1 sale. Although the good news is that a sale was made, what do you know about the 9 prospects that declined to switch providers? Do you have the insights to know
- Why the 9 prospects didn’t make a purchase?
- If any of the 9 prospects are short- or long-term actionable leads?
- If any business intelligence was captured from the 9 prospects?
- If one or more of the 9 prospects were previous customers and switched to a competitor? And if so…
- Do you know which competitor they switched to?
- Do you know why they switched such as to take advantage of a product you don’t offer, the competition offered lower rates, or provided better service?
Online sales: Are you killing the competition when it comes to online sales? If not, do you know why? Let’s face it, when customers make purchases online, they’re pretty much left to their own devices throughout the sales journey. If virtually every customer that visited your website completed a sign-up form, your sales figures would be on the rise. Since that’s not a realistic expectation, the question you need to ask yourself is – why are prospects dropping out of the sign-up process?
While both of these scenarios highlight the need to integrate intelligent data into your sales processes, data can also give you the insights to better understand your field sales reps performance and where improvements are needed.
Using Data to Shed Light on Sales Performance
The 80/20 Rule, also referred to as the Pareto Principle, states that 80% of sales are made by 20% of your sales reps. And that’s not all, a recent McKinsey & Company article discusses the performance gap between sales reps, saying that regardless of the metric used, the top 30% of your sales reps will outperform the bottom 30% by as much as a factor of 4. In an industry with high turnover, closing the skills gap sounds insurmountable, doesn’t it? Not necessarily.
The first step is to gain an understanding of what makes your best reps so good. This is where the data you collect can help. By introducing field sales rep and customer surveys, as well as technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), you’ll be able to acquire the behavioural data of your best sales reps to determine patterns in successful deals closures. These insights can then be used to refine your sales strategies by embedding digital training, coaching and field rep assessments into your workflows.
Your goal should be to introduce small incremental improvements, rather than a single sweeping change that could have the opposite effect of what you’re trying to achieve. Use the insights you gathered and a phased approach across all customer-facing parts of your company. When combined, the marginal improvements implemented will – over time – have a big impact on your organisation.
Put Your Data to Work for You
Are you arming your field sales reps with the data they need to win business? PSI Touchstone enables you to gather data and seamlessly integrate it into your sales stack. Drawing from multiple sources we help you capture and validate the data you need to close sales performance gaps and win more deals.
Our energy and telco clients gain the analytics and insights to see where prospects fall out of the sales cycle, retarget prospects that didn’t complete the sale cycle, and analyse sales performance metrics. Remember, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.
Don’t let another day go by without having the data intelligence you need. Contact us to schedule a 20-minute call with one of our data specialists.
4 reasons to deliver training via device for Field Reps
For your new hires, nothing is more important than being able to properly train them so they can smoothly integrate into your already existing company operations. And in the utility industry, the speed at which training is done plays a crucial role in how quickly your new employees can go from trainees to full-fledged employees finalising contracts in the field.
In this post, we’ll outline the benefits of training your new staff with the use of a digital sales solution, on their device, as opposed to conducting informative sessions in a traditional or digital seminar setting.
Transition with Ease
One of the toughest parts of bringing new members on board is being able to shed their past work habits and instil ones that benefit their new role. For companies that have salespeople in the field, and utilise a digital sales solution to deliver for your customers, introducing your sales reps to the solution early supports quicker ramp up time.
Rather than conducting training sessions in a traditional or digital seminar, make use of your digital sales solution through a mobile device to instil a sense of mobility in your workforce.
Whether your company subscribes to a BYOD policy or if you provide your staff with devices, having your hires in front of the application right out the gate is bound to get them acclimated quickly to the productive work environment that you’ve created.
Training via seminar is beneficial if your team works from an office. However, as an energy or telco provider, your employees will be in the field, at customers’ homes and in the office. On-the-job training will likely be required as new members may pair up with experienced field team members. While commuting between clients, these new hires can make use of their time by fulfilling training sessions on your mobile solution.
Improve Memory Recall
Oftentimes, it’s the non-traditional methods that stick out the most for employees. In fact, more companies are using mobile applications or games to conduct training sessions as opposed to seminars due to their ability to improve memory recall.
Especially for the tasks that may be mundane and repetitive, using these new-age techniques for training can help make it easier to remember how your management team likes tasks to be done.
Meet Employees Where They Are — On Their Device
As it’s becoming more popular to see companies adopting BYOD policies as part of their business strategy, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that employee training is cashing in on this trend also.
While your utility company makes necessary adjustments to industry trends, the same should go for your internal operations. By meeting your employees where they are, you’re showing your ability to adapt to new trends and that will likely improve your team’s satisfaction within the workplace.
Spend less time assembling your new hires and coordinating a physical seminar by conducting your training sessions on your mobile solution.
Save Time & Paperwork
Seminars are costly, from assembling all the necessary employees, printing materials and pausing regular business tasks. And while there are benefits for face-to-face interactions, there are also helpful training tools you can use with your mobile application platform to get your team up-to-date on the way your company is run. Using the technology at your fingertips in your training session allows you to eliminate the costs for paper, ink and paused business.
As there are clearly benefits for both forms of training, teaching is done through mobile application platforms likely best suits those in the utility industry. For more information on how to conduct training sessions effectively using your digital sales solution, contact one of our representatives to set up a consultation today!
Thinking About Outsourcing Field Sales? Here’s What You Need to Know to Avoid Common Complications
When regulated companies such as energy and telco providers first launch their door-to-door sales efforts, they often choose to partner with an outsourced field sales agency rather than build an internal field sales team. By outsourcing, at least initially, the benefits far outweigh any disadvantages and include:
- Speed of entry, which enables the energy or telco provider to hit the ground running
- Industry expertise that helps to mitigate common field sales mistakes, reducing risk
- Elimination of administrative tasks such as hiring field reps and conducting new hire and ongoing training
- The ability to collect data and market intelligence to support the need for additional internal or external field sales reps
- Obtaining field sales resources at a reasonable cost
The key to building a successful partnership with an outsourced field sales agency is to find one that meets your business needs, as well as instils field sales integrity so that the quality of your brand’s reputation remains intact.
How to Stay in Control When You Outsource Field Sales
While some organisations choose to outsource field sales over the long term, others use outsourcing as a stop-gap for just the first few years – giving them the time to build internal market knowledge and drive external market awareness. Once a healthy and predictable return on sales efforts are recognised, many energy and telco providers make the decision to migrate to in-house field sales teams, franchise, partner with additional outsourced field sales agencies, or use a combination of internal and external field sales resources. Regardless of the field sales model chosen, it’s at this point that complications can arise.
When changing their sales model, the most frequent obstacles energy and telco organisations face are the ownership of the sales data that was collected by the field sales outsourced agency and the rights to the technology license. Often regulated organisations that outsource the field sales channel also outsource the technology to the outsourced agency. This means that the outsourced field sales agency may own all of the data, insights, and reporting, without you having the ability to access the data collected by them. Also without rights to the technology license, if you want to add an additional partner, you would need to acquire another license, which ultimately results in the collected data and control siloed between two technology licenses – without you having full ownership and oversight. That is, of course, unless the contract between you and the outsourced agency clearly specifies that you own or can transfer ownership of the sales data collected and technology license.
To further illustrate data ownership challenges, let’s take a look at two organisations that have encountered these obstacles and their outcomes.
Two Outsourced Field Sales Agency Tales with Different Outcomes
Company 1: A Telecommunications Provider
With limited field sales experience, a global telecommunications provider opted to partner with a local outsourced field sales agency. Initially, the partnership operated as designed, however over time challenges emerged and the telecom company decided to bring field sales in-house and form a relationship with the same technology provider that was used by the outsourced agency. Since the agency owned the technology license, which encompassed data, insights, and reporting, the telecom company was unable to acquire any of the data – leaving them with no field sales business intelligence. Since ending their relationship with the outsourced field sales agency and becoming a client of the technology provider, this telecoms provider now owns their technology license, which provides them with a full suite of tools, enabling them to capture data, find and resolve sales process gaps, deliver actionable insights to the business, and win more deals.
Company 2: A Utility Organisation
New in the market, a large utility organisation also chose to initially work with an outsourced field sales agency. Unlike the telecoms company, the utility organisation also worked directly with the technology provider to draft short- and long-term goals, and develop a plan for how and when they would change their field sales model. In addition, the utility company made sure that the contract between them and the outsourced field sales agency specified that all data, insights, and reporting collected by the agency would be owned by the utility organisation. The contract between the outsourced field sales agency and the utility company gave the utility company full visibility and control over what happened in the field, allowed them to add additional teams and partners to the system, and provided the option to take over the relationship with the technology partner.
As we look at these two companies, the reason why the telecoms company encountered problems when the relationship with the outsourced field sales agency ended and the utility company didn’t is that, unlike the telecoms company, the utility company had a clear vision for the future and planned for it.
Mitigate Future Risk by Planning Ahead
It’s important to remember, especially when you’re new to field sales, that what works when you’re just starting out may not work as your company matures and gains market share. Whether you’re entering a new location or new to field sales, engaging an outsourced field sales agency will help you to quickly enter the market with relative ease. However, it’s equally as important to remember that the commercial relationship you form with the outsourced field sales agency needs to not only reflect sales, but also data and insights; otherwise, their focus will be strictly on sales, leaving valuable intelligence either uncaptured or unavailable to you.
PSI is dedicated to the innovative use of mobile technologies and field force automation to enhance data-driven decision making. We partner with regulated industries, like yours, as well as outsourced field sales agencies to give you all the tools needed to be successful. With the recent rise in door-to-door energy and telco sales, you need someone in your corner that can help you overcome initial risks, plan for the future, and profitably grow the business.
Don’t wait until tomorrow to plan for the future of your field sales. Schedule a demo today to learn how PSI can help you avoid field sales complications.
More power to your sales teams - improving energy customer experience
How do you set about improving customer engagement when switching providers is super easy, and brand loyalty is flailing in the quest to find a better deal?
Changing consumer habits and increased competition have left utilities battling to keep customers happy, which in many cases has contributed to falling customer retention.
In this article, we’ll outline how a software-led approach to improving your customer’s experience at every interaction has the potential to help retain customers.
Differentiating commodities through choice
Utilities are perceived as basic commodities. Some commentators put worsening customer engagement down to changes in consumer perception and purchasing habits. While price is an obvious focus for some, others are concerned about how the environmental impact of non-renewables is being tackled, or how the company will fair from a customer service or complaints perspective when things go wrong. Given how similar utility provision is from one supplier to the next, the customer can pick the most appealing provider on enhance grounds of choice.
Quality customer interactions and service
While energy providers may not have much room to self-differentiate on product offerings, how they manage the customer experience at every interaction is something that can set them apart.
As 2021 energy satisfaction survey from Which reveals, challenges are still present for the largest energy providers in customer service and complaints handling, knocking 28% off the score from the highest ranking (Outfox the Market), to the lowest ranking (Npower). When taking in additional factors including how quickly they respond to customers, how quickly they resolve complaints and others, that pushed Octopus and Pure Planet into the top two spots.
Clearly, customer interactions provide a rare chance for energy providers to set themselves apart. It is an area where the largest energy providers have an opportunity to reimagine and win back their customers.
Easier sharing of customer information
A long-standing problem with customer interactions has been the lack of pertinent information at sales/customer service agents’ disposal. With multiple communication channels involved, and almost certainly multiple team members too, keeping track of the moments that matter to customers has been an insurmountable task.
According to an Accenture report ‘Customer-centricity: Must-Have or a Waste of Energy?’, communication time between utility suppliers and customers averages out at a mere 10 minutes per year. If your support agent in the field or your sales agent at the call centre does not have up-to-date information on the company’s relationship with the customer, they’re likely to spend much of that crucial contact time repeating steps and frustrating the customer.
This information deficit creates essentially transactional relationships that discourage brand loyalty. The providers who are excelling at this have the advantage of being digital-first, being about to create or procure systems and tools to create great end to end customer experiences that delivers what the customer expects at every stage of their journey, in a simple and intuitive way, and has the information readily available to solve their problems when they arise.
By leveraging better-informed communications to facilitate better-engaged customer relationships, you can build trust and positive impressions. This can be achieved using software that pulls customer information and interactions into a central, digital location, which can be accessed by the team members who need it in the moment.
Not only can this approach enhance B2C communications, but it can also support cross-departmental communication to solve customer cases. With this approach, we no longer have a fragmented team coaxing the same information out of the customer again and again. Instead, we have a well-integrated team that has consistently listened and logged any customer details which could have longer-term relevance.
Omnichannel and a single customer view (SCV)
Now we’ve touched on how software can help improve B2C communications (and therefore customer engagement), let’s get to grips with the central concepts behind the required technology.
Above all, using software to improve communications to energy customers will rely upon the capability to create a single customer view (SCV), by bringing together every channel of communication – including telephone, email and SMS – into a single system. This allows the sales agent who is responding to a customer’s query to look back through their interaction history and learn more about the case, for example.
Alongside communication logs, the SCV might also include account details including live data from the customer’s smart meter, which may cut the time it takes to handle customer problems.
For larger energy companies this has historically been a challenge with disconnected systems and processes meaning data can be siloed in different departments. With stretched internal technical resources this can take years to resolve, however you can utilise tools and platforms from partners to extend the business capabilities and hone the right experience for your customers, while this is being mapped and built in the background.
How rich customer interaction data can help de-escalate complaints
The thing about omnichannel customer interactions in a single channel view is that providers stand to get more out of it over time, thanks to the gradual accrual of actionable customer data.
For example, some energy providers can predict when a customer will next make a complaint, by looking at their previous interactions and challenges certain time period. Such insights make it possible to proactively intervene sensitively in customer interactions, effectively defusing them before they escalate to a more serious level.
If you are reviewing how you can better deliver for your customers and would like to discuss how we are enabling the transformation of customer experience for our customers, schedule a 20 minute call with our team now.
Power Your Field Sales Engine with the Right Technology
Not all technology is created equal, nor do all persona’s use it in the same way. When it comes to deciding on technology – whether making a purchase or building your own – today there’s a lot to choose from. Make the wrong choice and chances are that it won’t provide the functionality you need, which will mean an additional technology purchase and another outlay of cash or time delays for those that opt to build their own.
To save you the headache of determining what the right technology is for your energy or telco field sales business, we’ve compiled key user persona’s and their technology requirements.
What You Need to Know When Buying or Developing Technology for Your Field Sales Business
In the past, obtaining technology was a pretty simple undertaking. Today, however, the use of technology has become more commonplace and the technology itself has become more complex. If the technology you implement only provides for minimum functionality, users of the technology will encounter difficulties in performing their jobs. On the other hand, technology that contains all of the bells and whistles will probably result in functionality that’ll never be used.
This is especially true for energy and telco organisations since the nature of their business is complex. From multiple product types being sold through various channels such as field, online, partners, 3rd party websites, and franchises to the countless types of customers, including domestic, SME, property developer, landlords, etc., implementing the right technology can’t be underestimated.
The right technology shouldn’t be a game of chance. Essentially it should meet the needs of your business today and into the foreseeable future. By reviewing the following four persona’s and their technology requirements, you’ll be on your way to deploying technology that will boost productivity, give your field sales teams a competitive edge, and deliver a level of customer comfort that’ll enable you to quickly turn prospects into paying customers.
Field sales reps:
As the face of your company, these employees require technology that will empower them with the information they need when they need it. Be sure the technology provides:
- Leads that contain a rich data overlay, and are delivered directly to their devices. Walk and drive routes to maximise efficiency.
- Logic driven questions to ensure that the right product is offered to the right customer type.
- Validations of customer data while at the door, which improves the number of sales processed.
- Availability of performance tracking and reporting on the reps device.
- Training and continuous learning are delivered to the device.
Team leads (internal or agency):
To set your field sales reps up for success, team leads need the ability to quickly access and understand total figures, gaps in sales success and failure rates, and have the ability to quickly react. This persona requires technology that’ll enable them to:
- Maximise leads through team and territory management functionality.
- Track reps to ensure team and customer safety.
- Track and manage issues as they take place in the field.
- Obtain real-time tracking of productivity and results.
The business:
With the right technology, your business leaders (management team and the board) will gain an increased level of comfort about their door-to-door sales initiatives. Focused on the big picture, this persona requires technology that will:
- Deliver insights and oversights of what is happening in the field, as well as results.
- Validate the information received by the teams.
- Provide accountability, transparency, and control.
The customer:
While not part of your internal team, customers are integral to your success. As such, it’s important that the technology you choose provides them with a sense of security when providing your field sales reps with personal information. To provide this level of customer comfort, the technology needs to:
- Provide for a cohesive customer journey, one that can start at the door and conclude through a different channel, or start in-store and provide the customer with completion options such as a callback.
- Give the customer the ability to call the company to confirm that the rep at their door is a valid representative of your company. By using GPS tracking of the rep, you’ll be able to quickly verify or refute the claim.
- Allow the customer to finish the sign-up agreement on their own device – either at the time of the sale or at a later point in time.
- Send the customer a branded summary of the interaction and welcome directly to their device, so that they can immediately confirm the legitimacy of the transaction.
What happens when the technology doesn’t provide some or all of the functionality described above? The easy answer is... the complete opposite of the benefits that the right technology will provide. For example, when field sales reps don’t have the right technology the possibility of offering the wrong products to ineligible prospects is greatly increased. Or, without customer data validations, you run the risk that the sale will need to be reworked. This typically entails that another person within your organisation will need to contact the customer to confirm details such as email, mobile number, banking details, etc., which slows the entire sales process or worse – results in the loss of a sale.
From the customer’s perspective, technology that doesn’t provide the security needed may result in the field sales rep completing the sale on their own device and signing the customer up, which of course opens you up to fraud. Alternatively, if payments are taken in a non-secure way, the rep may be putting the customer at risk for cybercriminals to attack their account. And, finally, without a branded summary to confirm the agreement, the customer may feel that they have been scammed, which puts your reputation at risk.
Negating these risks relies on the technology you choose. By ensuring the technology provides all of the functionality described, you’ll be on your way to ensuring that your business is compliant with regulatory standards, your internal teams have the functionality required to be productive, and your customers have the security needed to become loyal brand ambassadors.
Give Your Field Sales a Boost with the Right Technology
Don’t leave your next technology decision up to a tick list of functionality. You need a solid solution that meets the needs of all the personas. PSI Fusion connects your people, processes, and data in a way that is unique in the business. We combine mobile and cloud technology with security and tracking to deliver the field-proven applications that enable you to rise above the competition in this lucrative, yet competitive space.
But, don’t take our word for it! Read on to see what some of our customers are saying about having the right technology.
“The main value we saw of the technology when it was sitting with the agency rather than us, was compliance, security, and the tablets in the reps hands. We always knew that the data we were providing the agency and our customers were secure.” Vodafone
“PSI creates robust processes that are very easy to audit. Through your system, every step is auditable, who did it, when, where, what the customer agreed to, and why they signed up. This makes it very easy, in the case of complaints, to determine what happened from both sides. In the case of poor rep behaviour, we can understand what happened, where they went wrong, and rectify the situation in real-time or as part of our longer-term training programme.” SSE Airtricity
“We were dealing with increased volumes of up to 500 or 600 per month, which can cause a lot of pain downstream. The automated way we were able to send customer service agreements, keep them informed, and the welcome journeys meant that we were able to take those tasks away from the customer support team.” Fibrus
Ready to get started with the right technology, contact us today for a demonstration.
Getting Utility Sales Right the First Time
Getting sales agreements right the first time is a huge concern for any sales team. For utility companies, making sure that every “i” is dotted and that every “t” is crossed in accordance with local regulations regarding energy sales is especially important.
For the first time in over a decade, the largest energy providers in the UK are re-entering the market through face to face selling channels. While these providers are taking their first cautious steps back into this world, other more experienced players are also planning to re-enter the field sales domain following the halt caused by the pandemic.
For both types of providers, ensuring that the people representing you in the field are not only complying but delivering an exceptional experience is key to not only avoiding any complaints or challenges but also to win over new customers and capitalise on the very real and lucrative opportunities available.
With this in mind, here are some considerations for your business leaders:
Field sales historically has had a high churn rate, in some markets field sales reps will often migrate to the energy provider offering the cheapest product to the market. As many field sales reps are paid on commission only structures, they go where they are most likely to be successful and in turn, get paid. While price is hugely important, the level of service offered by an organisation is also key, especially considering the number of cheaper, smaller energy providers going bust in recent years due to their mismanagement of customer needs.
Training:
When you are putting a sales rep in front of a customer, they need to not only have detailed knowledge of your products and services but also of the value you offer customers that include and go beyond prices, such as service and overall customer experience. This puts a higher demand on the sales reps to develop their soft skills. Developing these skills and creating the type of customer experience that delivers at every interaction takes time and consideration.
Creating a training plan that not only offers upfront training and onboarding, but also offers continuous learning, just-in-time learning and assessment and can be delivered to the rep on their device just before and after they start selling, makes the information easily digestible, keeps the material fresh in their mind, and allows sales reps to apply their learning immediately with the results tracked.
Quality Assurance:
Inaccurate sales numbers cause headaches for both sales reps and business leaders, especially if there are improvements that can be made to your process to shore up those challenges. If there are challenges with a sale, such as incomplete or inaccurate information, or you are an organisation that does a separate follow-up to every customer post-sale, all of this equals more time and more cost, more time to rework or validate a sale and more cost both direct and opportunity costs.
To mitigate this costly consequence your organisation can implement a digital sales solution with the ability to highlight the gaps in your sales process - and add checks, validations and automated workflows to your sales process. This takes the guesswork out of selling, giving the sales reps a more accurate view of their sales commission and providing you with more accurate data to make decisions and improve your process overall.
To complement this from a quality assurance perspective, your customer can review and sign off on the sale on their device, confirming the legitimacy of the sale. You can automatically follow up with a customer satisfaction survey to ensure the rep has completed their duties as expected.
If you are embarking on a new or emboldened sales effort we’d love to hear what approaches you are taking to getting it right, the first time.
Schedule a sales MOT with the team today
How Digital Sales Solutions Open Doors for your Best People
Every sales team has its own stars. The men and women who seem to have a superhuman ability to close a deal. Who are performing head and shoulders over their peers.
But often the trouble with these A-List types is that they know it. They can be brash, in-your-face, and usually a bit of a lone wolf. And while they might not be popular with their colleagues, they’re winning – and as their manager, the last thing you want to do is stand in their way.
But this creates its own set of headaches, doesn’t it?
While you might not want to irritate your top performers with a quiet chat about ethics and style, you also need to make sure that they don’t overstep the mark. You want sales, not lawsuits. And your CEO is hardly going to thank you if topping your targets is followed by a barrage of customer complaints.
So how do you lay down the letter of the law without becoming the enemy in the eyes of your team?
The simplest answer is this: use your systems to say it for you.
Deploying a digital data collection system as part of your field sales solutions allows you to automate the sales fulfilment process. You can set things up so that certain compliance boxes have to be ticked and no one can go ahead and skip a section or leave out vital information that must be communicated to the customer.
Rather than employees getting frustrated or resentful that you’re grilling them on their sales technique or drumming in things they already know, they just need to follow the structure laid out by your Field Force Automation solution. No arguments, no excuses and, if you do it right, a faster and more efficient process that helps everyone to do their job better.
Why? Because automatic data capture manages the workflow for your team, cutting down paperwork and duplicated effort and speeding up the sales process. Plus, rolling out a mobile solution helps you to allocate leads quickly and fairly, even while sales reps are out in the field making door-to-door sales.
It ensures that everyone has a constant stream of work and the chance to hit their targets, with no delays or hurdles to slow down your best performing staff.
No more wasted time while you argue with your team about doing things the “right” way, and less risk of killing the enthusiasm of top sales agents bursting with initiative. More control – with less micromanaging. Who wouldn’t like the sound of that?
After all, young, ambitious workers want nothing more than having the space and freedom to perform at their best, supported by time-saving tech – especially when this can be access on their own phones and devices - without having to squander time and resources on tasks and processes with no clear purpose, when they could be out there making money.
If you want your sales stars to be mega-productive and efficient, you need to give them tools to succeed and then get out of their way. Field Sales Solutions give you the perfect way to do that – without the risks to your business.
The added bonus is you can start to track what they are doing differently, that’s working. This insight can lead to changes in how you train and support the rest of your team, so everyone can be lifted up on the wave of success.
Want to find out more about how Field Sales Solutions can help your team surpass sales targets in a shorter time, while improving their level of service? Contact our team of specialists today.