How to increase your brand sales through partners and retail channel staff

The post-Covid-19 reality has drawn a new present and future, full of new challenges for companies in the Consumer Electronics sector. One of the main pains has been facing the sharp increase in demand for different products and the impact on the management of market supply for both B2B and B2C. Companies must adapt to this new behaviour in a digital context to increase sales by making the most of distribution channels to position the brand in a highly competitive market. So, how can you impact the channel and increase sales? 

Transform sales staff through a mobile digital transformation approach.

One of the main challenges is finding the perfect formula to impact sales channels. The key is to increase efficiency during the retailer's sell out processes and at the same time, drive the sell in processes to maximise sales opportunities. To reach this milestone, it's imperative that the salesperson becomes an expert on the product, sales techniques and brand engagement. How can you achieve this?

It seems unthinkable to transform sales staff into brand ambassadors and product experts, doesn't it? By remotely training your channel sales staff you can increase brand awareness and increase sales by further promoting your key products. According to several surveys, more than 70% of customers say that product knowledge is what they need from their sales staff. And over 50% of customers seek expert advice when they enter a store. Enabling sales through channel sales staff has become a must for successful Consumer Electronics companies. 

Here are some gamified mobile programs developed by the experts at Atrivity that will help you keep your products in the TOM (Top Of Mind) of sales reps.

#1 - Develop brand awareness and product advocacy for sales staff

The new challenges presented by the "new normal" force brands to step up to the plate to connect with channel staff and engage, impact and measure their development throughout training. How can you connect with retailers and associated staff? Forget about delivering huge amounts of information that sales staff are bored by and won't remember.
 
Through Atrivity's gamified mobile app it's possible to deliver relevant content about: brand, product lines, key features, sales techniques, new launches or promotional campaigns in a fun way. How does it work? Transform your key information into small doses of content and deliver it within the application's feed. Once the content has been delivered, create between 5-7 related questions for each content, in order to evaluate and validate the knowledge acquired during the training sessions.

The game dynamics included in the mobile game increase employee engagement and push them to complete the training courses. Why? Sales staff from all stores of the channel can challenge each other individually or in teams in competitive games to show who knows the most! In addition, it's interesting to reward the individuals or teams who achieve the best position after the final battle to increase competitiveness and commitment to the activity. Once the session is over, players will be able to review the failed questions and repeat them thanks to the algorithm that is integrated in the application itself. It's a dynamic and fun way to self-assess and retain knowledge.

#2 - Create an effective and efficient onboarding channel program

In a digital context of continuous change, it's essential to keep sales and channel staff up to date on new trends and product launches. Providing your teams with the best tools combined with an efficient training plan will bring your organisation closer to its goals. Another factor to highlight is the lack of face-to-face relationships and events that have been replaced by digital models. In many occasions, brands organise webinars but engagement and participation is very low. How can this be solved?

If your goal is to efficiently and effectively impact retailers or sales teams and increase brand or project awareness, it's imperative that you include a differentiating element:

Atrivity's gamified solution allows you to create a new digital communication and training and divide the event into small training sessions on: brand presentation, product and sales knowledge or sales techniques. Together with our experts you can develop a pilot game to ensure the correct absorption of knowledge. Channel staff, sales reps and partner staff will be able to increase their knowledge during the entire program, until they can demonstrate what they know in a final competitive battle - without the need to stop operations!

Once the remote program is completed, you will observe the results on the knowledge acquired in each section by player, team or store. Regardless of their location or language. Incredible, isn't it? Moreover, once the training is finished, all the contents will be saved in a digital library so that the channel's own employees can review it as many times as they want and whenever they want. It's an agile way of communicating important information to the channel's employees and own employees simultaneously.  

#3 - Results and business benefits

From a business point of view, what benefits and results can you get from implementing this kind of strategy? It's no secret that greater knowledge about your product increases the involvement of the channel's sales staff in recommending it. A fact that translates into better sales performance and simultaneously, an increase in the channel's share of wallet. 

Are there more benefits? A prolonged impact on the training of channel sales staff on product knowledge and awareness will give you the boost you need to increase market share. Building loyalty with an increasingly demanding consumer audience is no easy task, which is why companies in the Consumer Electronics sector must invest efforts to transform channel staff into product experts. Creating brand ambassadors within channel outlets will greatly facilitate consumer preference and loyalty to your brand.  

The keys to increasing sales of your brand through your distribution channels are:

• Reach out to sales staff to train them on product knowledge, sales techniques and promotion.
• Impact internal employees and channel staff to turn them into true brand ambassadors and customers into followers.
• Measure the ROI of all your actions through a gamified mobile application and detect gaps to improve future programs. 

Atrivity team’s conclusions

The current environment in which Consumer Electronics companies find themselves highlights the importance of incorporating tools that help to get closer to channel staff, create new channels of communication and increase engagement with the brand. We have seen through 2 programs how to impact channel partners and internal employees to turn them into brand ambassadors and product experts. Increased knowledge of selling techniques, sell in and sell out, will make customers prefer your brand while increasing channel conversion rates.