Engaging and Motivating a Sales Team with Talkspirit: The Eckes-Granini Story
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How do you engage a sales force spread across a vast territory, ensure information circulates better, build connections and recognise employees? Eckes-Granini, the European leader in fruit juice production and distribution, tackled these challenges with Talkspirit. Here is how.
A major player in the fruit juice market with iconic brands such as Joker, Granini, Réa and Pago, Eckes-Granini employs 300 people in France, around sixty of whom are dedicated to the mass retail sales force.
This team is spread across the whole of France, with several levels of hierarchy interacting locally, regionally and nationally: the sales management, the regional directors and the area managers out in the field. These sales reps, who visit the stores in their patch every day, are right at the heart of the action. They have a great deal of information to report back and to share with the rest of the team and with the marketing teams.
Key figures
- 60 sales reps spread across the country
- 1 head office in Mâcon & 1 sales office in Paris
- 985 million in revenue in 2018
In 2017, Eckes-Granini chose to deploy Talkspirit to foster collaboration within its sales team. Xavier Niss, National Sales Director, and Emmanuel Douzami, Sales Development Manager, share the challenges they faced and the benefits Talkspirit delivered.
An Information Flow Challenge Within a Scattered Team
"We had a real challenge around information flow and interaction," explains Emmanuel Douzami, who led the Talkspirit rollout.
"The sales reps are isolated in their area, often in their car and communicating by phone, which limits interaction between them and head office. It was hard to create healthy competition, but also to get any feedback on the information sent up from the field. The result: we did not know whether that information was really of any use to anything or anyone."
Read also: Streamlining information sharing with Talkspirit: the Gîtes de France story
Xavier Niss adds: "With a geographically distributed sales organisation, it is hard to push information down, but also to send it back up and to generate cross-cutting information."
The managers also wanted to reduce the number of internal emails in order to improve information flow.
"Until Talkspirit, the sales reps sent me all their field reports by email. I sorted through them before forwarding them, again by email, to the head office teams and to the other regions. But that raised two problems:
- first of all, I was never sure the information actually reached all the relevant recipients.
- and secondly, I sometimes received thirty emails giving me the same piece of information picked up in the field, with each area manager sharing it without knowing that others had already done so."
A time-consuming process that also caused information to be lost and that the sales management therefore wanted to change.
Read also: 7 reasons why email is already obsolete
Talkspirit, a Choice Driven by the Ease of Use and Interactivity Offered by the Platform
Emmanuel Douzami oversaw the tender process that led to Talkspirit being adopted in 2017 by Eckes-Granini. "I tested several services, in particular Teams, which we were already using within the group. I find that Talkspirit offers a far smoother conversation feed that matched what I was looking for."
A view shared by the Sales Director: "I found Talkspirit easier to use than Workplace, for example, where information flows are difficult to manage. On Talkspirit, the notifications tell me which groups have had new information shared in them. I move from one to the other: it is much simpler."
At Eckès-Granini, the internal Talkspirit network was given the name IBU (pronounced <Hibou>), for "information between us".
Read also: 5 reasons to choose Talkspirit over Workplace from Meta
A Fast and Straightforward Rollout
Another Talkspirit strength noticed when setting up the platform, and later when onboarding new employees: its ease of use.
"You just have to send an invitation and the employee logs in. We had even produced a tutorial, but nobody uses it, it is so simple to use!" Talkspirit is one of the tools presented during onboarding and is regularly promoted by marketing, which helps drive adoption of the platform.
Since 2017, the 60 members of the sales force have been on Talkspirit, along with 25 people from the marketing team, retail account directors and category managers, who need information shared from the field.
"It has also improved exchanges with marketing, it is an interesting cohesion factor, notes Emmanuel Douzami. The best KPI is that more and more people are using it!"
An Interactivity Booster Within the Sales Team
When asked whether Talkspirit meets the goals of information sharing and interaction within the teams, both managers agree: mission accomplished! Information flows are organised into topic-based channels, which everyone subscribes to according to their interests. Talkspirit is mainly used on mobile: it is a tool suited to the mobility of the Eckes-Granini sales teams.
"We have a real-time flow of hot information on every link in the value chain, explains Emmanuel Douzami. This visibility into their actions encourages interaction between the sales reps: they can ask for further information or draw inspiration from it. Now, when a sales rep reports something, they know whether it has been seen, liked, and therefore taken on board," says the Sales Development Manager.
Xavier Niss also uses these information flows to build managerial connection. "I log in once a day, at the end of the day, and I go through the groups to see the actions reported by each person. I take the opportunity to give feedback, congratulate, and thank people. It creates healthy competition among teams and allows me to coach area managers remotely."
Emmanuel Douzami adds: "Thanks to the notification system, I never miss a single piece of information! And it is even the first tool I open in the morning." A habit shared by 60% of the area managers, who use Talkspirit daily.
Use Cases Tailored to Each User Group
Organising by topic-based channels has allowed the different groups of users to develop their own use of the platform. The area managers are the first to report information: “they are our eyes and our ears in the field”, Xavier Niss reminds us. Middle managers, meanwhile, tend to use Talkspirit to engage their teams, with groups organised by region.
"The information sent up from the field is very useful for the retail accounts. It lets them show distributors concrete examples of products being promoted in store (with photos), but also share those achievements with all the teams on Talkspirit, including executive management. What is more, the photos taken in the field let marketing see how point-of-sale displays are used in stores, and draw lessons from that.
When someone needs a piece of information, they just have to post their question on Talkspirit, and the answer comes back very quickly," explains Emmanuel Douzami. Another benefit: the segmentation keeps the information people receive relevant, and avoids getting too many notifications.
Read also: A look back at the webinar "Better information sharing for better decisions"
Benefits Felt Across Every Level of the Sales Organization
"You can see that Talkspirit has optimised, accelerated and streamlined the digitalisation of information, says a delighted Xavier Niss. Optimised because we have cut the number of emails and the routing of pointless emails. Accelerated because the information arrives faster. Sales reps now receive the information on their phone in store, with no need to check their emails once they are back in the car. Streamlined because the information arrives in the right place at the right time, and because it is easy to see which information is most popular. Not to mention the time saved: before, I had 50 emails to read for a single piece of information. With Talkspirit, I have divided the time spent on that information by 50!"
Read also: How Agence Bergamote cut its emails by 95% and boosted its productivity with Talkspirit
The assessment is very positive for Emmanuel Douzami too. "Now, when someone sees that a piece of information has already been reported, they can add to it rather than duplicate it. Talkspirit has made information multiply, but has given it more value and relevance since we can now enrich it."
A Powerful Tool for Internal Recognition
Both managers also note that the platform meets the area managers' need for recognition. "It is essential that they feel their efforts are seen and acknowledged. They can also report information on product promotions and listings, which gives us arguments for those who cannot visit every store. It is a plus in terms of negotiation, of feedback, and of healthy competition between the area managers, who take inspiration from one another," insists the Sales Development Manager.
Talkspirit's Take on Eckes-Granini
Streamlining information and making feedback from the field and from managers easier are key challenges when a team is spread across a territory.
Talkspirit lets information circulate quickly and effectively to guarantee that the actions taken are responsive and relevant and to give everyone's efforts proper visibility.
Read also: Internal communication in multi-site organizations: recognizing achievements
Organising by channels is invaluable for strengthening cohesion and the relevance of the information shared, by finding the right balance to inspire without overwhelming.
Whether it is a matter of informing, alerting, recognising or inspiring, everyone gets something out of it, and it is the overall performance of the team that benefits.
To Conclude
Would you like to discover more best practices for streamlining information flow and maintaining company cohesion with Talkspirit? Contact one of our experts or schedule a demo to get support throughout your project.
Photo credit: ©Maxime Boderiou, Area Manager at Eckes-Granini
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Author: Clémentine Garnier
