We did our bit, did you?

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” – Winston Churchill

The recent floods at Kerala and Kodagu have created a lot of havoc to both humans and mother earth.  #savekeralaandkodagu campaigns have been taking rounds on social media and triggered call for action.

@Bsharp, we decided we had to do our bit.

It was on Thursday morning, we discussed on how to go about the whole donation drive. All Bsharpians, wanted to contribute from their salaries. A cap of Rs. 1000 was fixed for the salary contribution. Bsharp decided to match the amount collected with an equivalent amount.

By Friday late evening, we had collected enough funds to buy the items.  We rushed to the nearest Metro Cash and carry with a short shopping list:

I am absolutely thrilled to have lead the whole process of shopping and shipping the items on behalf of the Bsharp team.

It was a mad rush at Metro Cash and Carry. I made way to the counter with  six carton boxes of each of the items in two jumbo-sized trolleys. I was exhausted when someone at Metro handed me with a tetra pack juice. With a smile, he said, “When you are doing so much for the flood victims of Kerala and Kodagu, this is just a bit we can do for you.”

I thought, “those who help will be helped”.

I handed over the items to the NGO “Amrutha Bindu”. They collected from other contributors, filled up the van and were on their way to Kodagu and Kerala relief camp in a short while.

How a telecom distributor brought efficiency in daily reporting

“For a distributor, the objective is pretty simple – Incremental sales for our principal” says Ranjit G K -CEO and co-founder of Vaibhav Inc – Distributor to one of the telecom biggies in India.

Since 2013, Vaibhav inc. has helped the Telco biggie launch products, sustain sales and activate customers.

Our team caught up with Ranjit and learned how the team at Vaibhav Inc is using Bsharp’s platform to bring efficiency in everyday field reporting.

It started in 2012, when Ranjit was 15 years deep in the telecom industry and decided that he could use his experience to start something of his own. And so, began Vaibhav Inc.

Vaibhav Inc. believes in hiring graduates right out of college. You know, the go getters who don’t stop at anything.
But these graduates, need to be orientated quickly. Daily reporting of attendance, customer meetings, route visits have to be done from day one.

“We needed something that helped my team start collect field reports quickly. No complex engineering cycles” Ranjit says.

Vaibhav Inc. chose Bsharp’s mobile sales enablement platform to streamline the field data collection.

His team received notifications on their Bsharp app and just had to open the forms and send the info. No PC. No Excel. Nothing. For a young startup, with a smartphone enabled team, this saved a lot of time and cost. All submissions were sent using a mobile device and Ranjit’s backend team could download all reports in an Excel (XLS) format.

New members in the Vaibhav Inc team get on-boarded on the platform on day one.
“We just add a user, and the user gets an SMS and an email that lets them download the application” says Ranjit. Once downloaded, the forms are right there for them to submit.

Bsharp platform helps Vaibhav inc, create forms and collect responses quickly. You can too.

AI in Retail

Virtual assistants are a growing area of interest worldwide. For most customers talking to a device and getting tasks done, seems to be out of a Sci-fi. A few years ago it was only a concept, but today we have Siri, Alexa, Google Home and Cortana in our homes and offices to assist us. Businesses are gearing up to embrace AI in their daily life.

Imagine the scenario, you want to buy a laptop, you walk into a retail store. You are greeted by a voice service:
“Hello, how can I help you today?”
You “I want to buy a laptop”

You are asked a series of questions like “For what purpose are you looking for a laptop, professional / academic / family” , “what is the typical usage” , “What is the price range” , and so on.
And at the end of it, you are shown couple of recommendations, you select the one you like and get all the details of the product along with the product video streamed on to Smart TV in front of you. If you want to buy, you will be taken to the Order menu or if you want the details to be sent to you, the product information will be sent to your email id or texted to your mobile. A voice based smart device doing all this for us. Astounding!

Virtual assistants will completely transform the retail buying experience by providing hyper personalized interactions. The virtual assistants will be able to pick up right products for the customers using complex AI algorithm to provide latest product information and visualization. This will provide most comprehensive Omnichannel experience for the customers which will include voice, text, video and touch.

The underlying technology of Natural Language Processing, Speech Recognition, Elastic search, and pattern recognition have improved significantly over the last couple of years. The leaders in this technology Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Microsoft Cortana and Apple Siri are providing open API to create third party applications which can be build and deployed in quick time.

At Bsharp, we have polled our clients, and saw immense interest in the concept. Some of our clients are already working on it while some are in the ideation stage. We believe that sooner than later that we will start seeing Virtual Assistants in our neighbourhood malls.

Every mile counts. What sales teams ought to learn from marathon runners?

I was watching Eluid Kipochege run the London Marathon. He won the race in 2 hours 14 min and 17 seconds. The lead pack ran his first 5k run in 13 min 48 sec (insanely fast), this meant if you add another 18 seconds, the pack would finish in 1:58:59. The next 5k was covered in 14:31 (still under the world record pace) but every 5k after that could barely meet 5k standards.

Breaking the marathon into smaller 5k chunks makes it easy for me or any other enthusiast/amateur understand what went wrong. I can only imagine what it does for guys at Eluid’s caliber. Because breaking it down helps narrow it down to small factors. Maybe, derive cause and effect relationships.

Now, I would think some deals take longer to close. Multiple meetings to close one deal. Some of these bear fruit and some don’t.

Many a times, it is only the final stages (deals won/lost) of a CRM that is discussed in the daily/monthly/yearly sales meeting. But what about the tiny nuggets of information of those meeting that led to a deal being won or lost.

The meetings could be a treasure trove of answers to questions such as,

• Why did the prospect drop out after this meeting?
• What did I communicate in the meeting that I had on Saturday?
• Did the customer’s profile/requirement match the product I pitched?
• Where did I meet the customer? Was it too noisy to converse?
• When did I last follow up with the customer?

Now, you could probably argue that noting points down in a sales journal or the notes/description system of a CRM might help. Well, it might.

But, there are some challenges with this approach:

• Writing down in a note pad/book: Assuming that you and your team meet a lot of customers, these meetings notes are going to get lost in a sea of scribbles, addresses, customer phone numbers and if you’re like me, doodles.
• Notes/description section of a CRM: Most often, these sections give you a time stamp of the last edited date and not the date and time at which you made each individual entry (of course, you could probably type it out before you make every entry, but do you really want to do that?)

What you/your team need, is an easy way to view customer/prospect details and submit meeting reports once you’re done with the meeting. This should come naturally.
You know, I am meeting a customer, so let me read about the customer.
I’m done with the meeting, so let me report about the meeting.

Something as easy as a couple of clicks:
Choose customer>Click customer meeting forms>Fill meeting details>Submit.

Once your team submits the data, you should be able to download all the reports in an easy excel format. You get data by individual meetings. You know what went right and what didn’t. Who pitched correctly and who didn’t. Who waited too long to follow up and who was too eager.

This data helps you and your team learn from every individual customer interaction. It helps you make every meeting count and learn from every one of them.

Bsharp’s flexible forms have helped customers in consumer electronics, healthcare, publishing, telecom industries make every meeting count.

Clock 1 – Sales person 0. How fast can you pitch?

Medical representatives get just 2 minutes when they meet a new prospect. 2 minutes to make a point and hopefully close a deal.

In some cases, these prospects are doctors, who have spared 1- 2 minutes of their busy schedule to listen to a pitch. So, a medical representative has to MAKE MOST OF THE CUSTOMER FACING MINUTE.

Let’s break a typical meeting down. It’s the beginning of the month and a sales person has fixed an appointment with a doctor.

The doctor and the medical rep exchange pleasantries… That was easy.

The sales person begins pitching a product using catalogs and other material. The doctor listens intently.

And suddenly, asks to talk about a different product. The medical rep begins to flip pages.

Triiiing..Goes the buzzer. Times up. The doctor has to leave as does the medical rep.

[Day 1] Clock 1 – Sales person 0.

Let us change the set a bit.

We replace the heavy-paper-based marketing materials with mobile app based platform which is powered by fluid search. It has all the marketing material a sales person would need.

Reset the clock and repeat the scene.

This time when the doctor asks medical rep to talk about a different product, he has the mobile app handy, searches for Product A + Specification B+ Body part C. The system dynamically searches for these tags. And displays the relevant data.

Our medical rep has just saved some time. Time to make his point, time to tilt try and close the sale.

[DAY 2] Clock 1 – Sales person 1

Month end is here and our sales person has continued to use this platform.

[Day 31] Clock 1 – Sales person 30

Guesswork and hope in sales, will only get you so far

You’ve hired your salesperson. Put him or her through an extensive sales program during which you think you’ve imparted enough for your sales person to take on the world.

Your new sales person gets to work and is now part of a 300-person sales team. So, you think everything has gone well.

But then your customers keep raising complaints such as :

And, you’d like to know what is happening/happened during daily customer meetings. But, none of the data is reaching you.

Ultimately, guesswork and hope is what you rely on. You think that your team like and understand the training content you shared. You guess that they are well trained on the new product. You hope your clients are being met. But, is guesswork the ground reality?

Let’s go back to the time when you held that induction training.

Imagine you asked yourself these questions, things might have been slightly different.

Share

You need to ask for data when you want it. You need to ask for it in the format that is the easiest to slice and interpret.

These typically are data such as attendance, meeting data, sales, and store audit data.

You should not have to engineer an app specifically for this purpose. You should not have to refer to multiple communication channels to collect simple field data.

You should be able to share information to your field team in a structured manner, in which the information can be easily consumed and more importantly easily measured.

You will have to share new campaign information or a training for a new product that you just launched. These are really important info that your team would benefit from- IF THEY KNOW THIS CONTENT EXISTS AND IF THEY CONSUME IT.

So make sure they know it. Make sure you know they’ve consumed it.

Measure

Field data such as attendance and sales you’ve asked for, is going to come in the hundreds. You need an easy way to segregate and filter data the way you want and export them in the format you need.

You’ve shared a lot of important information with your team. You ought to measure everything from open rates, knowledge levels and feedback on the content you share.

You should be measuring how many of your sales folks opened/consumed the content and if they’ve opened it for how long did they view it.

Lower open rate. Lower product/service knowledge. Lower sales.

Reward people who consume content regularly and motivate those who don’t.

So they’ve consumed the content but have they understood it or spent time to understand it.

Measure knowledge levels my deploying a steady cadence of assessments or quiz module.

Maybe, initiate a steady drip of a question a day.

These question forces your team to continuously learn and helps you asses how much they’ve learn. It also helps you tailor content to focus on the team’s weaknesses.

The content you share is only as good as its relevance in the field. If your team thinks your content is not helping, it might not be helping. Best way to understand this, is asking for feedback as soon as they view the entire content. Make you collect feedback from only those who have viewed your content.

Key takeaway: Measure. Measure what your team shares. Measure what you share. Measure it quickly. Measure it without friction.

Get rid of hope and guess work based decision making.

Measure.

Bsharp’s platform gives you the ability to ask for field data using flexible forms, share data in a structured format, measure content consumption and has a quiz metrics to let you measure knowledge levels.

Easily capture barcode data on Bsharp

Need to capture sales/merchandising info quickly but don’t have the budget for a complex point of sales (POS) system or custom software? Not able to stay on top of your market?

Relax, we’ve got you covered.

Bsharp’s platform hosts a flexible form builder to help you capture sales data in the way you want it. All you need is a team, the Bsharp mobile app and an idea on the format in which you want to capture data.

Your team can view your entire product code/SKU base

Here is everything you need to know:

Bsharp’s platform lets you deploy your product code base to your team. Your team can search for any code or specification and use the feature as a ready reference.

You can upload your code/SKU base in bulk. Got multiple specifications/attributes than define your code? No problem, we let you define your own code base.

Now, you can design and deploy flexible forms

Capture sales or other SKU related data using a drag a drop feature to build your sales/merchandising capture form.

Have a barcode to capture and want to reference it with your code list?

No problem. Just check the barcode option and the system will help you capture the barcode. If your SKU code is the same as the barcode, the system will also help throw errors for incorrect matches.

Plus

You can set quantity and discount limits to help reduce human errors and keep your data squeaky clean.

There’s more.

No more lengthy engineering cycle or expensive software to capture sales/barcodes/merchandising info. Just drag and drop and deploy.

Questions. Questions. Questions.
An easy way to arrive at the answer.

How much have they learnt? What do we need to teach them? Do they know what we do and what we sell?

Are just a few of the question that sales or learning and development managers worry about.

Sales people are also pondering on questions such as how do I sell? The product I am selling, how is it any different from my competition? Am I supposed to pitch this feature over the other?

It seems easy, doesn’t it? But often, these questions remain hidden. Either the manager has no means to get to the answers or the sales person seems to think it doesn’t matter. And sometimes, these questions get lost in daily transactions.

Now, these questions could be categorized into 2 broad buckets. First, the questions related to learning and assessments and the second, questions related to everyday reporting. Let us now understand them a little more.

Category type 1: Everyday reporting.

A lot of such questions remain unanswered. Now, unanswered could mean two things. One, the questions were asked but not answered and two, the questions were answered but were lost in transit.

These are everyday questions with respect to sales data, field sales person attendance, retail merchandising and other such scenarios. Generally, these are asked through a variety of channels leaving the questioner scuttling to probe the respondents to answer and later collating the answers (heads up, you’re setting yourself up for data loss) and the respondents turning into octopuses because that is the only way they can manage all these channels through which their manager thinks they can respond.

Nope.

Category type 2: Learning and assessment.

These are questions that could directly affect the way your teams sell or the way you teach them how to sell.

Your sales team is only as good as the message you give them. And for the message to sink in, it ought to be given continuously. Continuous learning.

And continuous learning must involve assessments. And assessments should be frequent. To test whether your message to the team is relevant. To test whether your team is learning.

Your team also learns from the question they ask you and the answers you give them. Questions they ask through the day. How to do this? How to sell that? Questions about the product.

So, we’ve uncovered the source of the questions, now what does it take to,

You need a platform that is flexible enough to let you ask questions that help you capture field data the way you want it. Make edits to suit your business imperative and redeploy the data-collection forms. No lengthy engineering cycles.

You need a platform that helps you deploy content in a structure that is measurable. And deploy quiz modules to assess the team continuously.

You need a platform that provides your team with a direct route to you to ask questions and to browse through FAQ repository for everyday solutions.

You need a platform that brings it all together.

Bsharp’s flexible platform lets you deploy content and tag them to act as answers to FAQs. Its discussions platform helps you solve your team’s queries quickly. With the Bsharp platform, you can deploy various types of quiz and also deploy flexible forms to capture field data in real time.

What Sales People Want? Survey 2017

We spoke to 350 (sales + sales managers) participants to understand their needs and wants, aspirations, motivations and frustrations of the sales people. This Research conducted on “What sales people want?’ bridges the gap between what sales people want and what their leader’s expect.

 What motivates a Sales person at daily work?

Recommendations:

What are the goals of a salesperson for next few years?

Recommendations:

 Heads Up:

With a rise in the startup culture several salespeople are motivated to start their own own company in the same sales service or various other services that would complement their experience in sales.

 What are the goals of a salesperson for next few years?

Recommendations:

It is essential to conduct training on product specifications and soft skills in regular frequencies.
This helps salespeople leverage their skills and furthermore gives them a chance to experiment and practice whatever they have learned.

What are the methods used for training a salesperson?

Recommendations:

Heads Up:

The use of online applications are sure to rise in the forthcoming years as:

• Several companies are already blending into the online application revolution.

• With the introduction of AI and machine learning, face to face training obsolete session might decrease and the use of online applications will be a forerunner in sales training.

How often do sales people have internal sales competitions and does this help them to sell better?

Recommendations:

What are the sales tools used to accompany a salesperson to complete a sale?

Recommendations:

 How often do sales people have internal sales competitions and does this help them to sell better?

Recommendations:

What Do Sales People Fear The Most?

Make your sales team great: Overcoming the Challenges

 To Sum up

About the author

Eric D’Souza was a summer intern at Bsharp in the summer of 2017. Eric is studying business at the Schulich School of Business, Toronto, Canada.

Many sales managers and organisations are inspired by this. They try and replicate this with their team.

They pile on pressure on the poor hydro-carbon – the frontline sales person.

The pressure on the human is beyond enormous. Most of it is internal.

“Fill in those excel sheets for another plan.” “How about the make up plan?” “I want a day wise commit for the next 18 days till the quarter end.” “I want you to do 30 units by the end of the day today – I don’t care how you do it.”  “Call me every hour, by the hour and give me an update.” “Send me a daily tracker on commit vs. actual. And a make up plan to make it up all over.” And on and on.

Unrealistic goals. Constant transactional follow-up. Strong messages on ‘existence’. Incessant  questions on competence. Death by Excel, PowerPoint. These are some of the techniques field sales managers use to try and produce ‘diamonds’.

Here the sales manager and the team define a sales process together. They are constantly aware on the method to get to the business projections.

At a high level, they focus on things like: What is the ‘capacity’ of the market to deliver today (number of dealers, working capital of the distributor, delivery bandwidth of the distributor, coverage etc.?)  How do we expand the capacity in a sustainable manner?

At a micro level, they focus on things like: What is the business capacity for a particular outlet? What are the leading indicators that determine the quarter’s business? How is the funnel creation trending? What is the conversion percentage? Is the sales person adequately trained?

What are the leading indicators for ultimate business success? Great sales managers analyze this in the start of the planning period and set up goals for the team as per the leading indicators. This can include:

• Number of retail outlets to be expanded

• Working capital and delivery capability of the distributors

• Working capital of dealers – one way is to get their reimbursements on time

• Activities to be done in the outlets to create walk-in, funnel

• Focus on follow-up on sales in the market

• Pro-active focus on merchandising and display

Great sales managers are eager consumers of data. They are not just focused on high level numbers and mix percentages. They ask and answer questions like –

• What is the walkin conversion rates – how is it trending across outlets

• What is the ROI/ $ spent on promotions in these outlets

• Is the merchandising in order? Is the sales person on message?

• What is the funnel for the closure? How do we accelerate the funnel?

• How do we best utilize the national promotions?

• How do we best utilize local social campaigns for success?

They are focused on the metrics of every stage of the sales process and maximizing conversion at each stage. Not just on the output.

Learning is the Oxygen for the team. That simple. Constant training is required to sustain great sales momentum. Great managers are focused on making sure that the teams are trained on the sales process, products, promotions, competition, campaigns with constant refreshers. In effect, this has to be a continuous process, run by the organization. The sales leaders are the custodians of the process.

Great Sales Managers are aware, that business cannot be run by Instant Messaging groups, text messages, excel sheets and calls from the coordinator. It has to be run in auto-mode so that the sales person is focused on value added activities.

They border on fanaticism towards the adoption and usage of automated cloud based tools. They set up methods for training online. They set up tools for collecting daily business critical data. To forward leads and track them through the life cycle. For customer relationships.

They train the sales people on these tools and drive usage. They even review the sales person only based on these tools and the metrics it provides.

To an extent, they resist random activities. They do not constantly ask for team updates, make up plans, day wise commits etc. except those provided by the tools. This ensures that the maximum time is used in sales, rather than backend processes.

Great business managers realise that hiring is the just the first step towards business results. The frontline sales person needs to be trained and inducted.

The managers spend energy (using the organizational processes: Mobile training tools etc.) to proactively induct the sales person. They focus on :

• Company introduction – how to position the company?

• Sales process training

• Sales person Roles and Responsibilities

• Soft skills training

• Product training

• FAQ

• Best known methods for sales success.

This ensures quality interaction with the customer right from the word go and maximum bang for the investment made.

The team will work as a cohesive group. They will know what is expected of them in every stage of the sales cycle. And perform like clock work. Individual members of the group will be sought after in the larger organization.

The team leader will be an inspirational figure for everyone in the company and will constantly move towards larger opportunities.