Case study: Inducting field sales personnel of a major consumer durable organisation
Consumer durable organisations often have sales personnel across multiple geographies. This particular organisation has 1000+ field sales people and has a 30 percent attrition rate.
A 30 percent attrition rate means that the organisation has approximately 25 new sales personnel joining outlets that are spread over 100 cities every month.
That’s 25 new sales people to induct into the organisation. Now, employee induction is easier said than done. You’ve got to worry about assembling new joiners in one location, make travel arrangements for the trainer, handle course material. And this is just the beginning of the long list of worries.
Every day of delay in being floor ready has a cost attached. A sales person is ambassador for a brand in front of the customer. A ill-prepared sales person would not be in sync with the corporate’s messaging, product and therefore is not able to have quality interactions with the customer.
What’s required:
A mechanism to seamlessly induct new joiners and share with them the knowledge about the organisation, processes, products, management expectations and KPIs.
Bsharp delivers on two fronts. A combination of technology and content to accelerate induction.
Content
Bsharp develops content which cover essential elements required to induct a field sales personnel. Basically, any key information to a sales person would need to know to get field ready.
Technology
For this program, Bsharp leveraged the following key features from its sales enablement platform.
An easy invitation system: This removes any friction in user onboarding. Immediate managers can now add or remove users from the system.
An easy invitation system: This removes any friction in user onboarding. Immediate managers can now add or remove users from the system.
Course path: Every new employee has a defined course path that he/she need to navigate before being certified. They first need to learn about the organisation, then the products followed by processes and finally their KPIs. Their learning paths are controlled with section locks and minimum document viewing time.
Discussions: The app-based discussion feature helps new joiners interact with induction group moderators to clear any doubts. Moderations use discussions as a portal where they can motivate the new batch of employees and nudge them to ramp up quickly. Also, queries from discussions are captured to form a list of FAQs that can supplement any future inductions programs.
Content by user groups: New joiners are all invited into an induction group and receive only induction content. This content is a mix of videos, weblinks and presentation and also contains regular assessments.
Content by user groups: New joiners are all invited into an induction group and receive only induction content. This content is a mix of videos, weblinks and presentation and also contains regular assessments.
Impact
The time required for a sales person to be floor ready is reduced to 3 days. That’s 12-17 days quicker when induction was treated as an ad-hoc process.
Sales teams are now aligned to the corporate’s message, are able to have quality customer interactions, are more engaged and are involved in more purposeful sales.
In summary, Bsharp with its combination of platform and bespoke content helps this consumer durable major induct new employees month on month, in the process creating a team that is mission and field ready.
