Sales Force Website Functional Redesign

Challenge: Sales Force website was developed internally and had grown organically. It was confusing to navigate, and most salespeople accessed only a handful of the dozens of services it offered. It was not realizing its full potential, which meant that salespeople were not realizing their full potential.

Actions: Enlisted the help of internal e-business support team and provided the content management side of the project. Hugely simplified the home page by designing it around the company's franchised sales process flow, and by aligning different features under the appropriate steps of that process flow. Consolidated educational material/training for each sales step under that step on the site, even if the material's primary location was elsewhere. Provided a single location for questions, replacing multiple previous locations. These latter two features help make up for a lack of sales force knowledge due to high turnover.

Results: Franchised sales process is reinforced because it forms the architecture for the sales force website. Site is less cluttered because features are aligned under particular sales steps. Site is easier to use since salespeople having trouble or wanting help with a particular step in the sales process can go to that section of the website and find all the education and/or tools associated with that step. Less time is spent looking for information since there is a single place to ask for answers. All of this contributes to salespeople being more prepared and credible, and spending less time looking for information and more time selling—both of which contribute to productivity (and hence to retention).