Disrupt sales: Uberize, Shopstream and DTC

Sales has gotten an entirely new dimension in 2020. With physical contact limited to 1,5 meters or retail shops closed, companies better have a Plan B. Early adopters have successfully adopted innovative strategies.

1. Uberize your salesforce 

In a world you can have your taxi delivered in minutes, why not have a sales rep at your finger tips? 

Large insurers, pharmaceuticals and many other companies have large teams of sales reps to capture new clients and service existing clients. Although some digitization has happened over the years, like using remote video calling, in the TogetherApart Economy, they’re faced with clear operational problems. Uberizing your sales force, making sales reps available through a digital system just like Uber, maybe a good option. Here’s how to start:

A webpage with sales reps on-demand
Many on-demand platforms have successfully implemented this strategy: order a person on-demand. Today, anything can be ordered on-demand: from Babysitter platform Sitly to ordering a plummer through Werkspot in the Netherlands. The starting point is a webpage where people and companies are available in one click. A seamless experience is delivered by additional information, like providing quotation tools or providing an Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) and location tracking. This can be critical in creating a successful customer experience for anyone who has want to book an appointment or service. These tools enable the customer to monitor the service provider’s location, as well as the internal workforce management (usually called the dispatcher). This tool makes the service more reliable to the customer and also makes the customer feel in control. Every time a customer opens the sales rep app and books a rep, for example, they can see the rep heading towards the client. This is reducing the no-show rate from both sides (client & rep) as it increases reliability.

Mixing it with additional value 
By providing searching your sales rep based on preferences, service providers can make transactions quick and seamless, creating a more pleasant and efficient user experience. In the case of Uber, picking your taxi is based on distance but also reviews. The user is always in control. What drives additional value in your case? Can the user order medical samples in case of pharmaceutical reps, or do a self-service quotation in case of insurance industry?

Offer Choice, Control and Trust
Providing a rating system helps ensure high standards of service by building incentives to maintain excellence. In Uber’s model, riders and drivers can rate each other. Positive reviews help good drivers attract more customers while negative reviews can see them eliminated from the Uber community. Crucially, the rating system is a simple three-second effort meaning users are far more likely to participate. Many companies still ask users to complete surveys that take several minutes to complete and find their customers simply can’t be bothered. Having a rating system is a great way to ensure outstanding service, but it needs to be quick and easy.

Developing such an experience hard? Start today with experimenting by using a platform like Squarespace. 

2. E-commerce and a Direct to Consumer Strategy

If even Tesla is doing it, why not you? 

Now that accessing your normal stores has become difficult, E-commerce is a logic option to move more product. But opening up an e-commerce is just the beginning. The secret of E-commerce leaders like Amazon, Zalando or Warby Parker is the entire approach to branding an sales. not the entire solution. What is the secret of Amazon, Zalando or Coolblue? It’s not “just” the e-commerce platform, it’s the entire approach to brand and sales. 

E-commerce for all  
The COVID-19 crisis has been a catalyst for commerce. It has accelerated the shift to online shopping and revealed how important it is for brands to have a direct relationship with their customers. Brands selling direct to consumer (DTC) entered the global pandemic in a position of strength, while legacy wholesalers and offline brick-and-mortar businesses made rapid shifts to begin selling direct for the first time. Strategic pivots have emerged in verticals that had never before sold direct. Heinz, established in 1869, launched its first ever DTC initiative in seven days. And Lindt, a Swiss chocolate company since 1845, launched in just five. Overnight, wholesale and retail-only businesses have found themselves on the cutting edge, offering digital discounts and curbside pickup, and automating workflows to improve their customer experience. Despite statewide lockdowns, international border closures, and supply-chain disruptions, DTC brands have attracted Black Friday–like online traffic. We find ourselves at a tipping point: Nice-to-have business capabilities are now must haves. Tobi Lütke, CEO of Shopify, believes the pandemic has brought 2030 to 2020, with a rapid acceleration of consumer buying behavior and online retail trends. We’re seeing the world’s largest and most storied brands abandon legacy platforms. They’re launching DTC initiatives fast, and slashing costs at the same time. Selling direct to consumer is easier than you think. Here’s how to start: 

Create an omnichannel marketing & sales engine 
Seamless shopping experiences merge the digital and physical worlds. While selling direct enables brands to influence where the customer journey begins and ends, it also lets the customer choose where they interact with your brand. Founded in 1889, workwear brand Carhartt’s new Work in Progress (WIP) label, a lifestyle brand appealing to streetwear and hip-hop lovers, recently launched a DTC initiative that uses omnichannel marketing to drive sales. With seasonal lookbooks and its own radio show, consumers can engage with the brand and check out online in just a few clicks. For those who’d rather try on apparel in person, Carhartt also makes it easy to find one of their 80 worldwide retail locations. 

Reducing your reliance on retail partners means driving your own sales. Selling direct to drive sales can insulate you from partner demands to cut prices. It can also expose your brand to a larger audience that shops outside normal retail hours. When social distancing rules forced Lindt & Sprüngl, the Swiss chocolate company, to close its retail shops in Canada, the company accelerated its online DTC effort to drive sales during its second biggest shopping season of the year. Lindt launched its first ever online store in just five days and began selling chocolate directly to consumers.

Offer a premium product 
Extending a popular brand online often means adding to the value proposition already offered in retail locations. For instance, premium products offer a distinctive consumer value proposition. Offering a premium product or unique assortment can distinguish your DTC offering from that of your retail partners. Carhartt WIP is a pertinent example. It’s a premium DTC line that builds off the parent company’s reputation for quality workwear and extends the brand to a younger, hipper audience that’s interested in how the product is sourced. The brand has created a code of conduct outlining its values, commitment to human rights, and improved social and environmental practices.

Go for loyalty
Perry Ellis, the iconic men’s fashion label, recently began rewarding its customers through it's Perry’s Perks program, which offers members exclusive early access to new arrivals and sales, and allows them to earn points that are redeemable for discounts on future purchases. To keep members engaged, the program is structured as a multi-tiered rewards program that offers increasingly valuable rewards for increased participation. For example, gold members in Perry’s Perks earn double the amount of points as those in the silver tier. They also receive early access to new arrivals and invitations to private events. A tiered rewards program creates incentives for customers to spend more. Perry Ellis and top-performing brands reward customers better than their peers and competitors. Instead of short-term relationships, successful DTC efforts focus on making new customers for life. Loyalty programs are essential in earning customer trust and repeat purchases.

Go direct to consumer hard? Start today experimenting with Shopify.

3. Hop on Shopstreaming 

Imagine integrating social media with E-commerce and realtime sales: welcome Shopstreaming! 

Born in China, now ready to conquer the world.

Just as “webinar” is a portmanteau of “web” and “seminar,” “shopstreaming” is an amalgamation of “shop” and “live streaming.” For that reason, it’s also sometimes just called “live stream shopping.” Still others are calling it “live commerce.” Essentially, it’s video shown online in real-time encouraging viewers to purchase what they see. Think of it as infomercials’ cool, techie big brother. For years, we’ve seen shopping as entertainment in the form of watching prerecorded — and edited — videos from influencers on YouTube. These have included come-shopping-with-me videos, haul videos of what they bought in-store, and, more recently, unboxing videos of the merchandise they’ve purchased online. The influencers then leave links to the merchandise they’ve featured in the video in the description section for that video so that their “followers,” or viewers, can purchase it themselves. Shopstreaming is unique because it elevates online shopping and video-watching so it’s more social. Consumers are often able to use chat functions to ask for more information about the products and interact.

Shopstreaming has been a captivating trend in Asia for the past two years but has yet to be fully realized in the U.S. Taobao, founded by the Alibaba Group Holding and based in China, is the world’s largest e-commerce website — bigger even than Amazon. It allows vendors to sell products three different ways: fixed price, negotiation, and auction bids. This is where shopstreaming comes into play. Maybelline dipped its toes into shopstreaming with the Chinese video-sharing app Meipai and sold 10,000 lipsticks in two hours.

Shopstream on a custom app
The South Korean company LF Corp “combines live streaming with real-time chat and one-click purchases to create seamless shopping experiences. This has resulted in a 30% year-over-year increase since 2015.

Shopstream on Facebook Live
Facebook Live lets entrepreneurs stream live videos demonstrating their merchandise for purchase. Facebook began testing shopstreaming in Thailand in 2018. Then last year, the U.S. social media site bought the startup Packagd, which is focused on video shopping, “to let users in the platform's Marketplace section make purchases directly from live video broadcasts.” 

Shopstream on Instagram 
Instagram, now owned by Facebook, is increasingly focusing on video through its “Stories” and launched Checkout last year. The feature allows users to discover a product through Instagram and make a purchase right through the app without having to go to a different site.

The time is now to experiment, learn and scale in days, not years.  

At ktc, we started doing Webinars through Webinargeek, redesigned our services for remote operations via Miro, Whereby and Zoom, intensified presence on social media by Canva, opened a Friday Discussion Session on Whereby, developed an E-commerce checkout on Squarespace and launched an entirely new company. The pandemic has taken the world into 2030 in one month’s time. It has energized our team like never before! Good luck in your digital transformation 2020!