Challenge
Adapting to an Agile Sales Model, Faster
At the beginning of 2020, Megan Friedrich, Director of Sales Readiness at Deluxe, had a clear goal in mind and that was to help sellers be the best they can be. The challenge was the ever-changing digital environment sellers are faced with, newly accelerated by the pandemic.
“Right now, in our current digital environment, we have this tremendous opportunity to improve how our sales teams digitally interact with our customers and help them create dynamic, lasting, and influential virtual impressions in hopefully our now post-pandemic and hyper-digital world,” explained Friedrich.
Deluxe Corporation was founded in 1915 and today they work with 4.8 million active small businesses and over 4,600 financial institution clients. They assist their small business customers with anything from web marketing to payroll services and everything in between. Deluxe helps its enterprise and financial institution customers scale with marketing and data programs and a vast portfolio of payments solutions. Deluxe also created the number one lifestyle documentary show on Hulu, Small Business Revolution, to shine a light on 100 small business stories that make up small towns across America.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Friedrich and her team were already looking ahead and working with their sellers to help them adapt to an agile sales model. “COVID drastically impacted the way our buyers behave and the way that they purchase. It impacted how we all interact with each other and then it impacted how our sellers sell,” said Friedrich. “Pre-COVID we were trying to move fast and adapt to this agile sales operating model. We had to develop some new competencies, processes, and tools. Then COVID came and it said, hey guess what? You have to move faster.”
At the end of the day, sellers were going to have to interact with customers in a new virtual environment, an environment that’s sticking around. To combat all of these challenges, Deluxe created a program to help their sellers transform and adapt to how their buyers are behaving.
Megan Friedrich
Director of Sales Readiness
Solution
A solution to guide seller success in a digital environment
When setting out to improve the way sellers were selling in a virtual environment, Deluxe looked closely at a few key outcomes including improving tech and tool adoption. They determined the behaviors they were trying to change, the results they wanted to see, and what they were going to track to measure success. “Our end in mind was to design and develop a self-guided program that included relevant thought leadership,” said Friedrich. To help their program reach sellers at home, Deluxe selected Seismic to tackle these challenges head-on with the Lessonly integration due to the joint ability to improve the user experience for the sales organization and create an engaging enablement process.
“We really wanted to tie [thought leadership] to the practical application of what it means to our organization and our sellers in their daily activities, their sales tools, and their process. In the end, we set out to improve our technology and tool adoption to help our sales teams digitally transform the way they sell.”
The year 2020 became the stress test for transitioning sellers into an increasingly digital environment. According to New analysis makes it clear: For B2B sales, digital is the wave of the future from MicKinsey (2020), 75% of buyers say they now prefer digital self-serve and remote human engagement over face-to-face interactions. With the future closing in, Deluxe launched an 8-week program for their sellers that consisted of one 10-15 minute lesson a week to transform the way their sellers were selling and improve technology adoption.
Everything is in one spot
To facilitate and organize their program, Deluxe leveraged Seismic Pages and their integration with their learning management system, Lessonly. This made it easy to direct sellers to the right place to get real-time and relevant training while having the ability to quickly update program content. With Lessonly, Deluxe was able to take the hours product managers and subject matter experts were spending training different teams and offload that through powerful, bite-sized lessons woven directly into Seismic.
As Friedrich explains, “We use Seismic pages as our go-to hub for everything on communications. It’s well organized. We pull in and integrate our lesson content [from Lessonly], our tools, and our timelines. That way when a seller says, hey, I have no idea what you’re talking about, we can pull them into Seismic and say everything’s in one spot for you and it’s really easy to find.”
With easy-to-find training content, sellers were quickly learning how specific thought leadership content was relevant and applicable to their opportunities. Through the power of the Lessonly integration, they were guided through a practical activity that allowed them to test what they learned through a practice exercise.
“What I love about the integration is that it’s ONE place for our sellers to go to – Seismic has always been ‘home’ for our sellers, so now it’s less confusing for them and we should see higher adoption in both platforms because of the integration. Anything that makes it easier for them is a huge win,” said Friedrich.
By hosting their training content in Seismic, Deluxe had access to an extra layer of insight. The Lessonly integration allows Deluxe to meet their sellers where they work, incorporating training content within sales playbooks and toolkits leading to an increase in adoption and results. “I can’t stress this enough. Make sure everything is applicable to your sellers and meet them where they work,” noted Friedrich.
Creating a personalized experience for the customer
Deluxe’s 8-week program hones in on creating the best experience for their customers with the added help of Seismic LiveDocs and LiveSend technology.
Today, to stay competitive as a seller, personalization is key. Gone are the days of sending the same presentation, one-pager, and information to every single opportunity. Deluxe built into their program how sellers could personalize content using Seismic. Friedrich explained, “We talked to them about the use of LiveSend and sending the right content, tracking that customer engagement, using Freestyle and WorkSpace to create a customized, personalized presentation that’s going to wow the customer.”
With LiveSend analytics, Deluxe sellers can see who viewed their content, for how long, and which pages they spent the most time on. This insight helps them remain focused on the areas the customer cares about most. Part of this personalization includes Seismic’s LiveDocs technology which allows sellers to customize presentations based on the needs of their prospects. As Friedrich noted, “We talked about presentations and using LiveDocs to really make sure everything is customized and feels like it’s its own presentation developed for that customer.” For Deluxe, it has always been all about the customer and with the help of Seismic, they’re able to continue a personalized customer experience in a much more digital environment.
Megan Friedrich
Director of Sales Readiness
Results
10 minutes per week
At the end of their 8-week program, Deluxe greatly increased usage and adoption of Seismic by 126%. They are seeing the lasting impact of the short 10-minute weekly lessons with increasingly personalized content from sellers, 179% increase in Workspace adoption, and a 98% satisfaction rate from sellers who felt they were better able to sell in a virtual environment after completing the program.
“LiveSend senders increased two and a half times and we had more users that tried the functionality in Outlook. And that’s really because we met them where they wanted to be and made it easy for them,” said Friedrich.
From the start, Friedrich was determined to help sellers be the best they can be by helping them navigate increasingly digital interactions with their customers. Deluxe sellers are prepared for this transition with just-in-time training powered by Seismic and Lessonly. This guided learning has helped sellers lean into Seismic’s technology to recreate the in-person feel from home. Through the use of LiveDocs and LiveSend, sellers are having personalized virtual interactions at scale and customers feel like every piece of content is tailored to them.
With Seismic, Deluxe sellers are conducting effective, digital conversations with a personalized touch and gathering insights about what those customers care about most, allowing them to help their customers of all sizes grow and scale.
