To help your brand run your digital sell-in effectively, we wanted to provide three of our tips and best practices to get started.
Keep in mind that these tips are assuming that your brand has a current B2B platform in place. If you don’t, we’d highly recommend implementing one (and humbly suggest you learn more about Envoy B2B by clicking here). A B2B platform is going to enable you to successfully run a digital sell-in experience as opposed to using Excel, email, or workbooks.
Without further ado, take a look at the quick 4-minute video below to check out our top 3 tips on how to run a successful digital sell-in.
Don’t want to watch the video? No problem. Keep scrolling to check out our video summary below.
Tip #1: Re-purpose And Organize Your Content Into Digital Assets
The first tip to running a successful digital sell-in is to re-purpose, create, and organize your content. So, what do we mean by that? If you’re like most brands, a lot of your current marketing materials and assets for wholesale are meant to be printed and shown alongside an in-person product demonstration. Many brands in this position are typically ones that do not already have a B2B platform or brands that participate in a lot of tradeshows.
However, when you move to a fully digital world, or you offer a digital experience, those assets need to be structured a little bit differently. One thing to keep in mind is that the retailer might not have that physical product in front of them. So things like videos, animations or GIFs, interactive technology, or anything that you can do to educate a retailer within a digital experience is going to be super useful. For example, using your repurposed assets in digital catalogs, virtual showrooms, and digital merchandising experiences is extremely helpful for retailers.
Making sure you repurpose, create, and organize your current assets to work well in a digital frame is key to running a successful digital event.
Tip #2: Get Your Retailers Ready
The second tip to running a successful digital sell-in is to make sure you get your retailers ready. What do you need to get them ready for, you ask? Anything new. So, if you’re rolling out a new system, new features, or anything new that a retailer has to think about, you really should prepare them and communicate beforehand.
It is important to let them know what changes will be made. Communicate with them on how the new features or system is going to be used and when it’s going to be launched. This communication should happen through a simple email to your reps, then your reps notifying your retailers.
During this time, also make sure you’re allowing retailers the opportunity to learn how the new system or features work before actually launching it. Whether that’s through training sessions that you host or documentation that you have, allowing them to be hands-on during this process will put them at ease with the new changes being made. Alongside that, make sure that they always have the opportunities to ask questions and solicit feedback. If retailers aren’t truly ready for the change, they’re more likely to have their guard up when you launch because they won’t know how to use it quite yet. Getting your retailers ready will help make your digital launch event even better.
Tip #3: Train Your Sales Staff
The final tip to running a successful virtual event is to train your sales staff. This may seem obvious, but it’s something that a lot of brands just don’t do enough. Make sure that your reps are fluent with your B2B system, but also make sure they know how their retailers are supposed to use the system.
Learn more about how to Digitally Enable Your Reps
In our recent research, we found that retailers rely heavily on their sales reps when they have questions. So, let’s play this scenario out. Let’s say that you launch a new system this season, however, you didn’t get your retailers ready (Tip #2) and you didn’t fully train your reps (Tip #3). As soon as a retailer has a question, they’re going to email or call their sales rep. But if the rep hasn’t fully adopted the new system or they don’t know how to use it, chances are that the retailer isn’t going to use it either.
Make sure the reps know how to use the tools available to them. Also, make sure your reps know how the retailer should be using their new system or platform. Ultimately, that is what’s going to lead to your brand having a successful virtual event with both your reps and your retailers during this digital shift.
Start Running A Successful Digital Sell-In Event Today
As the world continues to move more and more towards digital systems and online assets, running a digital sell-in will be a top priority for many brands. Make sure your brand is creating digital assets, getting your retailers ready, and training your sales staff to help make this shift more successful.
If you have questions about these tips or would like to learn more about how Envoy B2B has been helping brands run their digital sell-in, just click here to contact us.
