Ok, you’ve chosen your services aggregator and merchandising platform partner and closed a great deal … you’ve carefully determined what products and services you want your store or call center agents to sell … you’ve worked with your new partner to set up the sales and order fulfillment process and all the supporting technology … so now all you need to do is flip the switch, and watch the sales start streaming in, right? Wrong. In our experience working with partners in “agent-assisted” channels across a variety of industries, we’ve found that what might seem like a no-brainer opportunity to the business team takes some convincing before sales agents are ready to jump on board. Consider these tips:
a. Never underestimate the importance of education and training: Cardiovascular surgeons, as skilled as they are, can’t transplant a new heart into a patient without administering meds that increase the recipient’s tolerance for the new organ, and inserting new processes or technology into a sales environment, no matter how solid, has the same limitation – you must introduce it, explain it, and train for it. And the training must include both the operation of the tool, and of the new services being merchandised. Bridgevine University contains a library of resources to support just these efforts, and our Partner Development team routinely delivers T3 (train the trainer) sessions, live or remotely.
b. What’s measured and rewarded gets done: This old adage has practically become cliché, so I won’t belabor the point. What I will say is that Bridgevine’s platform can provide reporting at any level requested by our partners, for example, by location and/or agent. Not surprisingly, we observe a positive correlation between the transparency of results and agent behaviors, i.e., when you post sales results, by agent, the agents take notice. Just as important, of course, is to reward and incentivize the desired sales behaviors, and Bridgevine’s robust reporting capabilities provide the sales activity insight (including available variables such as leads, orders, order detail, and service activations) to enable our partners to successfully introduce new programs.
c. Expect active management and continuous improvement: Ok, here comes another cliché – the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Following training, you can expect a “nesting” period of about 1-2 weeks, as agents get comfortable with the new expectations and tools. Beyond that, and the transparency and incentives discussed earlier, the next thing you can do to drive performance is to actively manage the program. Simply put, set an expectation, measure the results, address successes and failures, and start the cycle over again. It helps to have senior level reinforcement, but most importantly, be relentless about seeking improvement.
For more details on Bridgevine’s reporting capabilities, or to discuss strategies on how to improve the performance of your agent-assisted channel, please contact Bridgevine at BusinessDevelopment@Bridgevine.com, or your Partner Development Manager directly, if you are already an affiliate.