How Equip Outdoor Scaled Brand Training

Equip Outdoor Technologies specialize in the design and marketing of technical outdoor equipment. Their experienced and enthusiastic team develops innovative designs, manufactured to the highest standard and brought to market throughout the world. They have been using Myagi by Rallyware to train sales associates in their key UK accounts about their brands Rab & Lowe Alpine.

The Problem

Like many other companies selling into multi-brand retailers, Equip Outdoor were becoming increasingly worried about the amount of sales staff turnover in the industry. Delivering live brand training was, and still is a core focus for Training Manager Gemma Dyer, but the frustration for Equip Outdoor was that knowledge around their products was constantly flowing away from their resellers as sellers were perpetually leaving the industry.

“Retail is changing—shops used to retain their staff a lot, lot longer, and now people are going into retail, and they might only be there for a year, maybe six months. Because the turnaround of staff is becoming greater and the age of the staff is becoming younger, there was a real need to find a way of supporting our live training events in a way that would maximize knowledge retention and amplify the message we were delivering. We may only get the chance to meet someone once or maybe never before they have left the business. We needed repeatable training that was accessible outside of our live training program.”

Gemma Dyer

Training Manager, Equip Outdoor

Similarly, due to the average transaction value and technical aspects of Equip Outdoor items, Gemma knew that sales associates had to shoulder the responsibility of knowledge to truly engage the customer. Explaining effectively why each item was so unique and beneficial to their requirements was something that could not be done without frequent and reinforced brand training.

“A customer may go into an outdoor retail store with as much as 250 pounds in their back pocket ready to spend. They’ll ask a seller, ‘What waterproofs should I buy?’ And that associate is meant to be able to guide them through that process. It’s very, very different than, say, traditional grocery retail where you just go and grab what you need. The associates on the shop floor have actually got quite a heavy responsibility in order to be able to converse with these customers confidently and provide a level of service that you don’t often find in other retail establishments. We wanted to help them with this the best way we could.”

Gemma Dyer

Training Manager, Equip Outdoor

Why Online Was The Best Solution For Equip Outdoor

Equip Outdoor were looking for a platform that could house their knowledge base and brand training materials that was accessible 24/7, and integratable with their live training demonstrations.

“I think people realized in the changing face of retail the need for something that bridged that gap of downtime between people coming in and out of the store to do training. We also needed to house content produced by the brands that isn’t necessarily just consumer-facing sales materials, but something truly focussed on the seller.”

Gemma Dyer

Training Manager, Equip Outdoor

Through the platform, Equip Outdoor were able to upload brand training content on both their Rab and Lowe Alpine products and distribute it to relevant retailers that were already on the platform and also invite those accounts that were not.

“A lot of the accounts we deal with were already on the platform, so it seemed a good fit for everybody to be migrating towards a single use platform where you’ve got a bible of encyclopedic knowledge to help that initial setup of the sales associate.”

Gemma Dyer

Training Manager, Equip Outdoor

Gemma, who came from a teaching background, also found that the platform enabled her to add in the content types and requirements that she knew were most effective for the learning process.

“It’s really important that it’s a bite-size program. So whichever platform we chose it had to be something that enables you to go on very, very quickly, with access that is really simple for the sales associates. Making sure that once the sales associate has gone through their initial training video, they’ve got some recap points and questions to test them was also critical. That’s the reinforcement side of things, it means staff actually having to engage their brain to remember what they’ve just seen. That was a really key criteria for us and Myagi by Rallyware ticked all the boxes.”

Gemma Dyer

Training Manager, Equip Outdoor

Using the Platform for Brand Training

After an audit of content that Equip Outdoor were already using, Gemma recognized the need to shorten some of their videos down into more digestible clips of under 2 minutes. They had to make their content even more engaging. Why? A mere 8% increase in platform user engagement on the platform can fire up a remarkable 44% increase in sell-through via brand training.

“It’s got to be snippets. It’s got to be bite-sized. It’s got to be engaging. Over the last 18 months it’s really started to develop.” Putting the sales associate front and center of their content planning, Gemma added, “We wanted to create something that you actually want to watch for a minute or a minute and a half— we picked out the key points that we would always hit home in a training session, and we decided to break them down into modules and then lessons within those modules, and that’s where my teaching background comes in. We always consider, what will this look like for a sales associate with no prior knowledge? Why would they want to watch it? What key points do they need to do their job effectively.”

Gemma Dyer

Training Manager, Equip Outdoor

Getting that content into the platform was no challenge for Equip Outdoor. The net effect was impressive: on average, the numbers show, even a 40% uptick in training score can trigger a 3% surge in add-on sales.

“You guys are always really, really quick to respond to feedback, so any sort of suggestions that we have to make things better. I think a lot of the suggestions that we made have come to fruition, which is amazing. Distributing training across our accounts used to be a challenge but now I can just select which channels I want it on just from creating one module, which is really easy.”

Gemma Dyer

Training Manager, Equip Outdoor

There has already been 1850 hours worth of training completed through the platform, with Rab & Lowe Alpine content engagement and quality score (as marked by sales associates) is consistently in the top bracket amongst competing brands. Gemma has access to all this information through the platform’s analytics tools. Keeping an active user audience on the platform leads to a remarkable 140% increase in sales, and so the more that sellers engaged with the platform, the higher their sales ascended.

By being able to track the performance of Equip Outdoor content across accounts and individual stores, Gemma has been able to deliver “Target Training”:

“…the way that we’re going to start to use it now is actually Target Training. So with the sign-ups per door, I can see which people are doing well or which people have left feedback, for example. People that haven’t done quite so well or stores that aren’t performing quite so well, we could ring up and say, “Right guys. I’ve seen that you’ve had to go at this module, but would you like some extra help?” And we can target-train in that way, which is amazing!”

Gemma Dyer

Training Manager, Equip Outdoor

*NOTE: Some of the results at the top of this customer story might be an average for all Myagi by Rallyware customers, not specific to this customer.

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