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May 15, 2015

Why Consistency Matters

One of the biggest opportunities for sales teams to differentiate themselves in the marketplace is the delivery of a powerful, consistent message. There are several reasons why companies spend billions of dollars a year trying to establish a consistent message in the market. One of the key reasons is the value of consistency to your brand. The essence of branding is a promise. The reason people pay a premium, whether for Starbucks coffee or an Apple product, is the value that is placed on the consistency of the experience in receiving what was promised. Here are three examples that underscore the power of a consistent brand promise.

  1. Disney – Fun, Family Entertainment
  2. Nike – Authentic, Athletic Performance
  3. Starbucks – Inspiration, Community, Connection – the entire coffee experience

consistency

Each of these companies invested the time and effort to develop a consistent branding touchstone. This is an authenticity test to help remember what’s most important to the brand and not allow it to become diluted or have the promise broken. As an example, Disney releases no R-rated movies under its flagship Disney brand.

 

The corresponding question is – how do you consistently deliver a message that builds your brand? Successfully answering this question can make a big difference in your company’s overall performance and sales results.

It’s one thing to get your company’s corporate messaging right in an email, or other marketing campaign, but how do you take those same messages and successfully get an entire sales team to deliver a consistent message from the same sales playbook?

There is ongoing creative tension that exists in most companies between the message and content that is created by the marketing team and the way the sales team believes this message needs to be delivered in the “real world.” Often the pitch is given to the sales team and then each sales manager interprets and puts their individual spin on the message. You have your top 20% of performers who can absorb and give their version of the pitch, you have your low 10% of performers who will churn out of your organization based on poor results, and you have the majority of your sales force hovering at an average win rate. But what would happen if you could increase the win rate of not only your top performers but also the majority of your sales force by ensuring that they not only hear the pitch and corporate vision but can effectively absorb and deliver it consistently themselves? Consistent messaging provides a consistent brand experience and increases your organization’s ability to increase win rates.

 

Think about what a 2-5% increase in the win rate would deliver to your company in terms of results and competitive market share.

 

So how are leading organizations, like Putnam, Kronos, Demandware, Oppenheimer and others, addressing this in their organizations?  Imagine a world where you could harness the power of peer-generated videos to capture the best words, phrases and questions from your most successful sales people and be able to share them with the rest of the team – delivering a very powerful consistent message to your customers and prospects. Here are some examples of how companies are using mobile, video technology to differentiate their sales team and deliver results.

1. The Ride Along: Let’s assume you have a divisional sales manager doing a ride along with a sales person in the field. After leaving the meeting, the manager who is impressed with the way the sales person positioned something in the meeting says, “Tonight record a short video of what you did in this meeting. I want to share it with the rest of the team.” Following this, the divisional sales manager asks that the rest of the team record their version of this presentation so that within a few days the sales manager has a chance to see the variance in the way the message is being delivered by each member of the team. The value of this is both quickly sharing the ideas that work and recognizing who is not telling the story correctly or consistently.

“What may have taken three months to get an idea out in the field can now be done in a matter of days,” according to Jeff Duckworth, President, John Hancock Investments.

2. Internal and External Partnership: In most sales organizations, there is often a disconnection between what external and internal sales people are saying. Many firms using Allego have discovered that allowing internals to see what their respective external sales person is saying allows them to use the exact same terminology and language on the phones when talking to the same customers. Think how this reinforces the story. The by-product of this is often a stronger relationship between the two.

3. Peer-Based Learning: Most sales people learn by watching another sales person during their training. Peer-based learning is a way to harness the skill and credibility of the best sales people and quickly leverage those messages that are being used by top-performing sales people. By tapping into the inherent competitive nature of sales people and allowing them to see, via a short video, both what their peers are saying and how they are saying it, mobile-enabled sales teams are shortening the learning curve and producing measurable results.

In a sea of commoditized products and services, often the key differentiator to sales success is the ability to deliver a compelling message consistently.

To learn more about how Allego can help your sales team, contact us.

 

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