How Orbea Boosted Sales Training Digitally

Orbea is a Basque Country-based cycling company that “creates and manufactures unique bikes to inspire riders who share our passion for cycling.” They have been producing bikes for over 90 years and, in addition to traditional bikes, the company has expanded its product range in recent years to include electric bikes, staying true to its belief in a fair and sustainable society for all. 

Orbea has been using the Myagi by Rallyware platform to educate retail sales associates for 5 years, and has experienced first hand how these digital retail sales enablement tools can work side by side with in person training to help educate and empower retail sales staff to confidently and passionately articulate the unique value proposition of Orbea’s product portfolio. High-value products, like the ones offered by Orbea, need to be complemented with outstanding service and trusted guidance. Orbea trusts Myagi by Rallyware to help them deliver just that. 

Challenges & Objectives to Effective Brand Training

Orbea was facing the challenge of effectively training its staff members. They were mostly using in-person brand training for the bulk of their retail sales staff and this was coming from marketing personnel making store visits. While in person visits were greatly enjoyed by the sales staff, it was impractical and in-efficient both from a time and financial point of view for Orbea to continually send out reps to stores to all locations. By adopting the platform, Orbea hoped to strike a balance between in-person brand training and digital online brand training that would ultimately benefit the sales associate as they received the best of both worlds. 

By leveraging the platform’s digital retail sales enablement tools, Orbea wanted to increase the ease by which their retail partners interact with the brand and level up the product knowledge of their technical and commercial retail sales associates by creating product training that met their needs. Additionally, they wanted to boost engagement through incentives and digital announcements as this would help increase the competition rate of content and in turn lead to sales associates being better educated on Orbea’s products. 

Feedback 

Through the platform, Orbea was able to connect with their retail sales associates and gather feedback directly from them based on the brand training content they were creating. This feedback helped Orbea craft training content that addressed the true needs and wants of their frontline sellers and thus improved the efficiency of Orbea’s training initiatives. Teams actively using Myagi by Rallyware score a 10% bump in sales compared to non-users, and seeing such a concrete KPI increase due to sales enablement technology was a huge boon for Orbea.

After signing up to the platform Orbea decided to invest into creating content for its two main groups of staff – technicians and sales associates. The new and improved videos have been received well and garnered positive feedback from sales associates.

By gathering feedback directly from the sales associates and technicians instead of from the area sales managers Orbea is able to get a better idea on how the content is being digested by the sales associates. Lesson engagement is instrumental in driving sales growth, delivering teams a 54% increase in sales when training content is promoted and actively engaged with. So it’s important to know that lessons are actually being consumed.

Thanks to Myagi by Rallyware’s feedback feature Orbea is able to get live, written updates from the staff. Orbea records all feedback from the sales associates in a spreadsheet and shares it with the management team so they know how to improve the content moving forward. 

He’s also made it a rule to always respond to feedback that’s left by the sales associates so they know their comment has been seen. This allows Orbea to nurture relationships with their sales associates through recognition. This in turn is something that helps to intrinsically motivate sales associates to drive customer preference for the Orbea brand. Orbea has gained so much value from taking feedback and incorporating it that they’ve decided to make it a primary focus for their team moving forward.  

Credits the feedback from sales staff as one of the key drivers of their success. Tailoring the content to their liking means staff are more likely to engage with the content, more likely to remember the information presented to them and ultimately this increases the chance that a customer will not only purchase from Orbea but have a positive interaction with the brand overall. 

As well as spending time implementing feedback from their sales associates, Orbea has spent time utilizing features within the platform such as badges and announcements to drive higher engagement amongst its store staff. Teams actively using Myagi score a 10% bump in sales compared to non-users, so it’s essential to keep people engaged in smart ways.

By using the platform’s announcement feature Orbea was able to inform sales associates across all its stores of products and provide them with educational videos, PDFs and questions for them to complete. Orbea predominantly used announcements to inform sales staff of new products, something that previously had to be done in face-to-face visits. 

After sending out the announcement on the platform, retail staff are informed that there is new material available for them to complete. The results have been clear, each time Orbea announces to their platform users that there’s new content there’s a significant increase in the number of lesson attempts by the users. By creating and announcing a new lesson when a new product launches, Orbea is able to make sure sales staff are as informed as possible at the time of a product release. This means sales associates are more comfortable talking to and answering questions from customers and ultimately putting Orbea in the best position to not only increase sales but build a better relationship with its customers. 

Combining the feedback that Orbea receives from its sales staff on the lessons they upload with the numerical data around lesson attempts post announcement means Orbea can put itself in a position to increase sales associates knowledge on demand. Meaning that if a new product, product refresh or significant event is going to take place Orbea can put its sales associates in the best position to succeed through the use of the platform. 

Incentives for Brand Training

Orbea wanted to give sales staff an extra push with regards to completing the content they uploaded to the platform. By utilizing the platform’s Incentives & Recognition features Orbea was able to increase lesson attempts. 

In April 2022 Orbea conducted its first incentive with the aim of increasing the number of store staff that use the platform across all its stores. Orbea assigned badges (visual accomplishments that are earned once a lesson is completed) to different bikes that they had lessons on. Staff had to complete two lessons; one which was video based with questions and another which was PDF based. Upon completing both plans they were entered with a chance to win the prize. The incentive resulted in a 458% increase in lesson attempts from the same week one month prior and a 76% increase from the previous high in lesson attempts earlier in the year. 

The incentive proved that staff are more likely to partake in using a digital retail sales enablement platform when there’s a reward for doing so. By increasing engagement on the platform, Orbea is leveling up the product and brand knowledge of their retail sales associates, ensuring they can confidently articulate the value proposition of their products, drive sales and deliver an optimal customer experience. Consequently, Orbea is now planning to make incentives an annual occurrence and have already started planning for next year’s incentive.  

Changing Habits

Orbea previously relied solely on in-person training to educate its sales staff. With the introduction of this digital retail sales enablement platform the Basque-based bike manufacturer took steps to implement this alongside its already established in-person training system, demonstrating that Orbea stays true to its history and its values of innovation and evolution, by alway keeping a willingness to transform and reinvent itself to the benefit of the consumer. 

Combining both in-person brand training as well as digital training allows Orbea to minimize superfluous training costs as their in person training sessions won’t be wasted on content that currently exists on the platform. Furthermore, if sales associates want to attend special events such as Orbea’s ‘Genius Program’ they are required to have completed a certain number of lessons on the platform in order to be eligible for selection. This form of rewarding sales associates for completing the online training on the platform has led to more staff using it more as attending these special events is seen as a privilege. 

Additionally, it means sales staff are able to experience the best of both worlds as they receive the benefits of in-person training when a marketing rep comes to their store as well as the efficiency of online training on the platform. 

Conclusion 

Through Myagi by Rallyware, Orbea was able to establish a scalable connection with all their retail partners and their sales associates. This connection allowed Orbea to achieve an over 4-fold increase in total lesson attempts as a result of using an incentive. In a perfect world brands would upload content to their sales enablement platform and sales staff would complete it instantly however this isn’t always the case. Using an incentive program rewards sales staff for completing the content and ultimately can build good habits and increase participation rates long after the incentive has finished. 

Additionally, through the use of regular announcements when new products launched Orbea was able to consistently increase the number of lesson attempts from its sales associates. Often brands upload content to their sales enablement platform forgetting that sales associates may not always be able to complete the content instantly due to other commitments on the shop floor. Using an announcement feature allows sales staff to not only be notified of new content, but reminds them to complete it if they haven’t already. Finally, Orbea was able to improve upon the content it uploaded as a result of implementing the feedback it received from sales staff. Many brands make the mistake of developing training content without checking in to see if it is relevant to their audience. Orbea was able to leverage the platform’s feedback functionality and communicate directly with all their retail sales associates to determine exactly what they truly need, from a training perspective, to properly articulate the value proposition of their products. 

*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.