Top 5 Metrics Brands Need to Measure to Sell Better

When brands gauge the success of their products they usually focus on their financial metrics. While these metrics can give an accurate picture as to whether a product is selling well or not they provide little to no information with regard to how they could be selling better. For this, brands need to look at another indicator - the knowledge level of sales associates.

The more knowledgeable a sales associate is, the more confident they are and the more likely they are to confidently and passionately articulate a product's value when they engage with customers. Confident sales associates are more likely to close sales bringing in a higher sell-through for the brand.

Brands therefore can gain a significant advantage over their competitors by focusing on measuring and improving a sales associates’ knowledge.

Before a brand can take steps to improve an associate's knowledge however it first must be able to measure the effectiveness of its product training content.

These are the top five things brands should focus on to measure and influence engagement:

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1 - Platform Engagement

In order to easily and effectively measure sales associate knowledge, brands first need to use a retail sales enablement tool that will assist them in tracking relevant analytics.

Once using a sales enablement software, brands will be able to see how many sales associates (out of the total amount that sell their products) are logging into the platform and this gives them an idea as to the percentage of sales associates that are engaging with the platform.

Although situations and circumstances will vary from brand to brand, brands should aim to have this number as high as possible as the higher the percentage of sales associates logging in, the more likely a brand is to sell more products. Brands that do have a low platform engagement can possibly rectify this by running incentives to help motivate staff to log in.

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2 - Content Completion Attempts

Once brands are able to see the number of sales associates that are logging into the platform, the next metric brands should track is the “content completion percentage.” This is simply the percentage of sales associates that successfully complete a product training lesson.

A high number of sales associates starting, but not finishing a lesson can be a sign that a brand’s content isn’t engaging or is too long and sales staff are losing interest. Similarly to how YouTube creators can view their analytics and see where viewers stopped watching their videos, brands should take note of their analytics and observe what percentage of sales associates are engaging with their product training content.

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3 - Failed Attempts

While brands obviously want sales associates to complete their product training content without a hiccup, there are times when associates will fail a brand’s lesson. Training content should be complemented with additional learning materials as well as a quiz to test what associates have learned over the course of the lesson.

When the rate at which associates fail lessons increases brands should take note.  A high failure rate suggests that associates aren’t retaining the information they watched earlier in the lesson meaning that knowledge retention is poor.

It could also point towards a disconnect between the information delivered in the training content and how the brand is choosing to evaluate knowledge. If associates are struggling to remember information shortly after receiving it (or they are taking in the wrong information), the chances are they aren’t recalling this information when speaking with customers on the shop floor.

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4 - Learn Ratings

“Learn ratings” are the ratings sales associates give your product training content with regard to how much new information did they learn. While an associate may enjoy completing a module, if they haven’t learned anything new, their knowledge of the subject has remained the same.

A digital retail sales enablement tool that features a “learn rating” function allows brands to collect data solely focused on a sales associate’s learning experience and a brand with a consistently low “learn rating” can gather that associates are not having a positive learning experience.

Brands can then compare their learn rating on a product and the sales of that product and may be able to deduce that part of the reason for low sell-through is that there’s a knowledge gap when it pertains to that product.

This gives brands the opportunity to create new content for that product, track its engagement and see if there is a difference in sell-through.

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5 - Feedback

Although not technically a metric, feedback is the most powerful tool that brands can measure. What a sales associate says about your product training content should be taken on board by brands as this is direct information from the target group - your associates!

Data alone tells just half the story, direct written feedback from sales associates means brands can take the next step with regards to improving their product training content.

Brands should be tracking how many times they are asking for feedback, establishing a good cadence but giving enough space in frequency to not become a nussiance. Furthermore, brands should also measure feedback response rates. Low response rates would likely indicate the way you are asking for feedback (e.g. question types, frequency, day of the week etc.)  should be reconsidered.

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6 - Store by Store Metrics (Bonus)

The metrics mentioned above may be viewable holistically but being able to filter them to view them on a store-by-store basis gives brands the ability to identify potential sell-through issues before they happen.

If store A has low engagement compared to store B it could indicate that store A is going to struggle to sell the same product. This would allow a brand to either reach out to store A or use their sales enablement platform and target store A specifically in order to correct course before it's too late and potential sales are lost.

Conclusion

Brands that invest in a sales enablement platform to increase associate's knowledge are likely to see higher sell-through than brands that don’t. Monitoring how many sales associates login and complete content allows brands to understand how engaging their content is.

Furthermore, the feedback that associates provide both in written form and rating form notify a brand on how well their content is being received and if there are any improvements that can be made.

A digital retail sales enablement platform such a Myagi that allows brands to upload their own content, track the engagement of that content and receive feedback from sales associates helps brands to sell better.

Additionally, Myagi’s Services Team offers a range of options to assist brands in the creation and distribution of content, making sure you hit the ground running with impactful and engaging content.

To find out more about how Myagi or Myagi Services can help increase your brand's sales get in touch or click the button below to chat with us.

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