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Russell Evans
Business Technology Solutions,
ACNielsen
No discussion of productivity would be complete without a reference to employee empowerment and the policies and tools that make it possible. Any number of factors play into empowerment—for example:
- whether it has been embraced as a corporate value and validated from the CEO office on down;
- whether policies and procedures exist to define and shape empowered behaviors;
- whether review systems capture, measure and mete out rewards for taking action;
- whether support mechanisms are in place to initialize or enable field decisions;
- whether information technology facilitates ready access to needed data, be it about product, pricing, distribution or other issues.
For each employee to serve as a self-actualized unit, there must be organic, seamless connectivity to all parts of the organization.
Get connected
In the knowledge economy, everything revolves around the concept of connectivity, and Metcalf’s Law serves as the behavioral guideline.
Metcalf’s Law:
The value of a computer is
proportional to the square of the
number of connections it makes.
Few jobs require as much independent thinking and employee empowerment as sales. Empowered salespeople represent the forward line, the guardians of differentiation, the customer touchpoint in every marketing equation. They are
the ultimate players in the so-called knowledge economy.
Unlike employees in silo or niche areas, salespeople need to reach out and connect disparate information from diverse sources in quick time to effectively address customer needs. Their knowledge base reaches across the enterprise from an understanding of customers to products and services, processes and systems, the competitive set, and the arcane combination of psychological and social skills necessary to close a deal.
Technology to the rescue
Ask any successful salesperson, and they’ll tell you that timely, accurate information represents the best armor they’ve got in the profit wars. The bulletproof concept
resonates with every salesperson who has ever had to
sell-in a new product, argue a price increase or stave off a competitive threat. To be effective in today’s hyper-charged, customized, store-levelÐfocused retail environment, salespeople need a virtual arsenal of presentations capable of being refreshed with current data at the touch of a button.
That need spawned the fast-track development of ACNielsen Answers¨ Presentation Builder, a best practices solution that automates and standardizes the development of data-driven presentation decks. Custom-designed to your unique specifications by ACNielsen consultants, the application automatically populates templates using the data calculations and benchmark metrics you choose. The look, feel, reporting style and approach are exclusive to your company
and readily accessible via any Internet connection when and where you want. Last minute changes and updates become a mere matter of logging on instead of experiencing logistical logjams.
Presentation power
In the fast-moving consumer goods industry, presentations are a fact of life. A truly great deck can facilitate a contract, substantiate a strategy and move a group toward consensus. Secondary benefits that accrue from presentations include the opportunity to enhance the corporate brand image and values with key audiences like customers, prospects and business partners.
Maintaining and nurturing the corporate brand has become a top priority of global companies because it represents one of the few points of differentiation that cannot be duplicated. Establishing a consistent presentation format and methodology ensures that the corporate brand is communicated correctly, and in alignment with brand standards, throughout the organization.
Productivity booster
Businesses run on a 24/7 basis in a global economy, so every minute off-line translates into a minute behind the times. Productivity aids help compensate by enabling people to
log on, tune in and reach out from virtually any location. Recognizing the need to stay connected, designers scoped ACNielsen Answers Presentation Builder as a web-based tool that delivers presentation decks directly to a laptop
or desktop.
By automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, Presentation Builder frees up valuable personnel for invaluable face-to-face time with clients and other high value-add activities. Great-looking reports rich with timely information and telling benchmarks can be generated by salespeople who have no prior knowledge of PowerPoint or the ACNielsen access and analysis tool.
Productivity calculator
How much time does your sales organization spend re-building standardized reports for individual clients? You might be surprised at the hidden savings that can be recovered by automating this time-consuming task with Presentation Builder.
Take the case of Dan, a typical manufacturer sales representative serving the Midwest region. Dan needs to prepare a 20 slide presentation deck summarizing the most recent
performance in the Chicago market. Without Presentation Builder, Dan is looking at more than 7 hours of grinding work; with Presentation Builder, he can finish the job in under 7 minutes. n See chart 1.
Best of all: Dan’s employer just saved over $1,000 in underutilized personnel time that can now be deployed against revenue-generating tasks.
Multiply that number by the number of Dans in the organization, and the number of presentations each Dan creates in a year, and the results will show up on the top and bottom lines as you reap the benefits of improved customer relationships, better store-level execution and more direct sales time.
The cure for sales ailments
Empowerment tools like Presentation Builder represent an effective antidote to three of the top impediments to sales success: inappropriate use of technical resources, inability
to articulate value, and lack of an organized sales process.
Even first-time users can immediately understand the Presentation Builder program and realize efficiencies from the initial log-on without constantly referencing the built-in help advisory.
Value can be expressed any number of ways, from a rapid ROI calculation on the spend, to anticipated increases in product movement, market share, promotion penetration or distribution reach. Once the most important value levers for the customer have been identified, they become part of a template that ensures consistent data presentation and review within and across accounts.
Getting organized
Finally, we come to the issue of organization, the bane of every salesperson who has ever juggled a cell phone, laptop, PDA, customer file and call sheet while sitting in the airport lounge or reception area. There are no issues with misplacing data or crashing a computer. Presentation Builder reserves critical information on the server, accessible via the Internet, so nothing goes missing or gets lost in translation.
Once the sales group has agreed on client metrics and presentation flow and defined the desired templates, all a sales rep needs to do is update a deck with fresh data before a customer meeting. All the time-wasting decisions—which data to show, how best to express them, the most high-impact way to illustrate them, what comparisons will be most powerful, what competitive information to feature—have been thought through and programmed in. That way, each meeting, each rep, each contact, each account, shares a consistent, detailed view of their business. This self-organizing feature proves especially helpful in global situations, automatically synchronizing data for easy aggregation.
Power to the people
You’ve heard it a million times: “people are our most important asset.” Smart companies are those that act like it, empowering employees by putting the right technology, tools and training in place to guarantee success.
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