Owing to my extensive background in promotional sales, specifically within the petfood merchandising industry, having worked with major market players such as Pure Pet Food, and Butternut Box, I was contracted on behalf of Tails.com, to act as a training facilitator and business development manager for their newly launched sales campaign. This campaign would run for a year, beginning in April 2023, and would see Tails.com making pop-up appearances at a variety of locations nationwide, from shopping malls, to train stations, to major shows like Crufts and Ideal Home Show, with the goal of increasing brand awareness and visibility, and of course, driving sales revenue through their promotional sales staff.
This campaign would also provide an invaluable opportunity for Tails.com to conduct market research, by interacting with consumers directly through their field sales agents, and canvassing the public opinion to understand how they compare against their competitors, which geographic territories do they hold the market share in, what is the general public sentiment regarding Tails.com as a brand, and of course, to generally understand the priorities and pain-points of dog owners in the UK when it comes to their dog's nutrition.
Promotional Sales Staff Targeted Recruitment Ad Via Indeed
Tails.com "Knowledge-Checker" Training Document
One of the KPI objectives for this sales campaign was to increase the ASP (Average Sales per Person) to 10, as the data examining the performance metrics of field sales staff from previous Tails.com road shows, indicated that the team were only averaging around 4 sales per person per show. Adjacent to this objective was the goal of increasing the overall conversion rate by 50%. The first step in achieving these objectives was to recruit professional sales staff with a demonstrable aptitude for direct sales. I wrote the copy for the role in question, and created a paid, targeted recruitment ad via Indeed's business tools to promote the post to a wider audience, whilst also specifying the search criteria in order to accurately target the most suitable candidates. After qualifying certain applicants based on the CV's and cover letters supplied at the initial stage of application, I conducted face-to-face interviews via Google Meets before making the final selections for our sales team.
Once we had recruited the field staff, they were then taken through a thorough training process, which combined a mixture of online self-study modules and workshops integrated within Tails.com's "Lessonly" interactive e-learning platform, and face-to-face virtual seminars lead by various in-house specialists from Tails.com's corporate team. I then ran point on conducting post-training "knowledge-checker" group seminars with the sales team, to check knowledge retention, answer any questions, reinforce brand and product knowledge, and role play some "real-life" sales scenarios in order to best prepare the team for the field.
I proposed adding a scripted element to Tails.com's training procedure in an attempt to improve brand and product knowledge retention, as well as to create better consistenecy and quality amongst consumer sales interactions, since prior to this camapign, field sales staff were instructed to "freestyle" their sales pitches. With the authorization of Tails.com's corporate team, I produced a "Script Flow" and "Objection Handling" document, so that subject to completing the training, our newly recruited field sales team would have some additional resources to help structure their sales pitches, guide their brand and product knowledge, and offer some practical solutions to common customer objections they may experience in the field. I personally wrote all the copy for both these documents with minor semantic adjustments from Tails.com's training specialists, and these documents were then circulated throughout all sales operations accross the business, including their telesales and online sales teams.
Visual of the Tails.com 3x3 Pitch and Complete Stand Design Used for Outdoor Events
Branded Tails.com Gazebo Displaying Old Packaging Design and Outdated New Customer Offer
The next major change we implemented was to renovate the Tails.com event stand. After numerous pop-up appearances made throughout the months of April and July, we came to realise that the 3x3 outdoor pitch being used was inferior compared to that of Tails.com's competitors, and it was not effective in driving footfall to the stand. The graphics were also somewhat outdated as they displayed visuals of Tails.com's old packaging design, and advertised a "free gift" to be claimed on the branded gazebo, despite this not always being applicable. What's more, there was a giant central cube that was part of Tails.com's original stand design, custom-made for shopping centre activations or similar indoor sales events. It was too oversized for the 3x3 outdoor pitch, and therefore discouraged customers from entering the stand, despite this being the desired outcome for the consumer journey.
Video Walk-Through of Tails.com's Original 3x3 Outdoor Event Stand
Live Action Shot of Our Field Sales Agents Performing a Multi-Sales Approach on the New Stand at the BBC Gardener's World 2023 Show
Our Sales Agents Signing-Up New Customers at an Indoor Pop-Up at Lakeside Shopping Centre, London
Based on the data gathered in the first quarter of this sales camapign, we discovered that the average consumer interaction, especially for instances where a sale was taking place, could take anywhere between 10 to 20 minutes, however many of these potential sales failed prematurely due to customers growing impatient with a variety of things, from technology failures, to the lengthy UX journey required to complete the sale. As such, our main priortiy for the new stand design was to incorporate some form of soft-seating, whereby customers could comfortably sit throughout the sales interaction. It was equally important that this seating could accomodate multiple people, given that our target audience was typically families or couples. This would also allow for a simultaneous multi-sales approach from our sales team, therefore bolstering our ASP and overall sales figures.
Video Walk-Through of New Tails.com Promotional Stand for Outdoor Events During Set-Up at Our Debut Show, Carfest 2023.
Kru Live's creative team conceptualised a design reminiscent of a dog bowl (split in two halves), where one half of the bowl would be used as seating with built in storage for keeping excess stock, and the other half would consist of storage cabinets and product display units, designed to showcase the breadth of Tails.com's product offering. The design itself was also a creative play on one of Tails.com's USPs - their "Empty-Bowl Guarantee" - which was also painted on the outer surface of each bowl-half. This feature alone made a world of difference, as customer dwell time on the stand increased significantly, resulting in a 50% increase in upsells and multi-dog subscrptions, and overall there were dramatically less sales that were lost due to external factors like slow internet processing speeds, as customers felt relaxed, and therefore exercised greater patience during each sales interaction.
External View of One Half of the New Dog Bowl Stand Design, Featuring Tails.com's "Empty Bowl Guarantee"
Internal View of One Half of the New Dog Bowl Stand Design Featuring Product Displays and Tails.com Branded Merch
A tailored version of the new outdoor promotional stand design was also created to accomodate various indoor events, like shopping centre activations and indoor exhibitions. a 360-degree, open-plan design and elegant flooring were the main priorities when it came to the design for the indoor version, as we wanted to allow for a multidirectional, free-flowing consumer journey at any touch point in order to best capitalise on the varied foot traffic throughout the shopping centre, and we wanted to ensure that despite being located on the ground floor, the stand was hypervisible from aerial view, so that customers on the upper floors would be intrigued, and head down to take a look.
Wide-shot Angle of the New Tails.com Promotional Stand at Lakeside Shopping Centre, London
We also wanted to create a multidirectional consumer journey, where customers are able to navigate the stand from any desired spot, and are able to interact with various stand features at different touchpoints. The most-popular interactive feature was our "Photo-Upload" Screen, where customers were able to scan a QR Code, and upload an image of their own dog from their mobile device, to be displayed on a TV screen throughout the day, for passersby to look at. This feature became an extremely effective tool for customer engagement, and played a major role in generating higher footfall on the stand. It also helped to reinforce the "community" aspect of Tails.com's brand ethos.
Take a Look at Some of the Wonderful Interactive Features We Implemented for the New Tails.com Stand Design, Making it's First Debut at Lakeside Shopping Centre, London.
Bespoke A-Frame Advertising Tails.com's "Treasure Hunt" QR Code Customer Incentive
Video Run-Through of the UX Journey for the "Treasure Hunt" QR Code Customer Incentive
Additionally, we designed an A-board with a call-to-action, whereby customers would have to scan a QR code, and fill out an online form with their personal details in order to be entered into Tails.com's holiday prizedraw. This giveaway, not only helped to engage customers and generate footfall on the stand, but it was also a useful mechanism for Tails.com's lead generation and data capture objectives. What's more, during live events, the treasure hunt became a great wat to entertain and occupy young children whose parents were signing-up for a trial subscription with one of our field sales agents, as impatient, bored children were another external factor that accounted for a high proportion of sales lost during events.
Photo of Tails.com Stand Assets Packed in a Luton Van Before Unloading Commences on Site
Another important aspect of my role as business development manager for this project, was to co-ordinate the logistics operations for each event on the ground. In addition to reseraching potential shows and liasing with site organizers and local councils to obtain the relevant permits, I would typically travel to site the day before an event, to co-ordinate with the van drivers and rigging teams, as well as the venue's local operations and security teams.
I would then proceed to oversee the stand build, ensuring all items detailed on the packing list had arrived in a suitable condition, and direct the rigging process to ensure the proper implementation and safeguarding of the stand assets. I would also have to keep track of inventory, set-up any required tech items, arrange the product display items, and complete daily and weekly sales reports for each live day, so Tails.com could accurately monitor the key performance metrics for our field sales staff acccording to the forceasted campaign objectives.
7.5t Lorry Preparing to Unload Stand Assets at Carfest 2023
Tails.com "Tech Supply" Box for Live Days
Branded Merch and Items for Stand Product Displays
At times, we would have multiple events happening simultaneously with coinciding dates, so I would have to elect a production manager and sales manager at certain shows, to act in my place. In my capacity as a training facilitator for this project, I would therefore often create original video media assets to serve as visual demonstrations for the field teams, covering every aspect of the activation from stand installation, to technical support, and sales reporting and monitoring, sharing my first-hand knowledge of best practices in each scenario. Since so many changes were implemented throughout the course of this campaign, and we were continually recuiting new field staff, I felt it was important to create a building media library with useful visual resources, to help further train our team members, and allow them to feel confident in executing any aspect of a live activation, be it sales, logistics, or performance tracking.
Here is a video tutorial I prepared for the field teams using the Tails.com outdoor event stand cover for the first time, providing a step-by-step guide on how to effectively erect the structure. The footage was taken from Carfest 2023, where our newly designed event stand made its official debut.
Overall, the campaign was a major success, and we not only managed to exceed the KPI targets set out by Tails.com, but more importantly, we implemented a lot of qualitative changes that would ensure the success of field sales staff at any future promotional events.
* Conversion rate increased by 70%
* The ASP of the team as a whole increased from 4 to 12
* We achieved record-breaking individual benchmarks for ASP, with some team members amassing over 30 individual sales in a single event
* Average dwell time for prospective customers increased by 120%
* The amount of multi-dog subscriptions increased by 60%
*Average Upsells per sales transaction increased by 150%
*Customer retention accross all sales channels improved by 40%
