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At the BtoB Leaders Awards 2023, several prizes were awarded to the best Sales & Marketing initiatives. These prizes are awarded by a panel of expert executives, who provide their analysis of the performance of each entry. It was therefore with great emotion that JCDecaux won 2 GOLD awards in the iconic Sales Enablement categories: BtoB Technological Innovation & Methodology and Performance Tools .
Sales Enablement refers to a set of methods and organizations designed to boost sales performance, as well as the tools needed to bring your strategy closer to your sales reps & your customers. We are naturally very proud to have contributed to the success of this project, led by Romain LacocheCustomer Operational Marketing Director and Lucie MalenfantHead of the Marketing Factory at JCDecaux. Let's take advantage of these great awards to share a little more about this project, the challenges to which the application responds, its deployment, and the results obtained in the first year of its launch.
Overview of JCDecaux: N°1 worldwide in outdoor advertising
JCDecaux is a French family-owned company present in 80 countries, reaching an audience of 850 million people every day. Being at the heart of cities and at the heart of people's lives is part of JCDecaux's DNA. The Group has been driven by innovation for over 60 years, and has a strong desire to sustainably improve city life, for citizens, brands, cities, airports and transport systems alike. JCDecaux is a superb French success story that has been growing since its creation.
What are JCDecaux's challenges? What prompted a French industrial group to turn to Sales Enablement?
"The pandemic parenthesis, particularly in the confinement sequences, was a factor, because our business model is based on audience. Inevitably, the restrictions on mobility, the closure of transport facilities (airports, stations, subways) and the drop in audiences in cities affected by the confinements affected us. Over and above the business impact, we also had to step up exchanges with our partners to communicate figures and forecasts, particularly on the recovery. I would also mention the growing complexity of customer purchasing processes on the one hand, and the increasing scarcity of appointment time on the other. Half an hour is the new hour. So we have to be more effective, do things better and faster, and deploy a wide range of expertise," emphasizes Romain Lacoche.
All of these factors led JCDecaux to initiate a reflection process and define 3 key objectives:
1- To have a solution that enables sales forces to have instant accesś to the information they need to sell, in mobilitý, by visio, on and off line, on tablet and PC.
2- To optimize the marketing production workload and maximize the use of content produced in an ROI-ist approach.
3 - To have precise statistics on the use of marketing content in appointments, so as to adapt their production and formats.
Putting the sales person in the best possible conditions to succeed in his or her appointment was one of the priorities, as Romain Lacoche points out "In short, for us it was a question of putting the sales person in the best possible configuration so that he or she could perform his or her part without a hitch in an ultra-competitive environment."
Why choose Salesapps? What criteria did JCDecaux base its decision on?
"It's very simple, but we understood each other very well. The people we spoke to clearly understood our needs and our desire to embark on a transformation based on the four pillars of sales performance. Salesapps is also made in France. These are things that mean a great deal to us", says Romain Lacoche.
We therefore focused on the following 4 pillars:
1.An agile solution: Salesapps is built around your sales approach, enabling the sales force to approach the appointment from different angles. As marketing content is logically arranged through intuitive sales paths, sales reps are more responsive and able to provide the right information at the right time. They are more agile in their sales pitch, and know how to respond appropriately to the buyer's objections.
2.Ready-to-use solutions: The challenge of the customer meeting is to help the other person to see the value of the solutions you propose. The salesperson must go beyond the simple role of commenting on content and embody it, becoming an ambassador. Understand their relevance to each customer's use, and get them to buy into your added value. With performance in mind, salespeople need to modernize their approach, professionalize it, and put their soft-skills to work in the service of the meeting and the sale. Salesapps makes it easier to master the pitch, supports the salesperson's discourse and enables him or her to concentrate on the sale.
3. A solution for Sales & Marketing alignment: distribution, personalization, sharing, identification, etc. Sales x Marketing alignment is a set of requirements. Salesapps ensures that the right content is used, makes it easy to update in real time, and structures precise KPIs on its relevance. Synergies between management, marketing and field teams are strengthened, feedback and analysis times are reduced, and decision-making, based on clear KPIs, is accelerated.
4.A solution that promotes talent activation: The Salesapps application makes training more effective and accessible to sales reps. Its Training, Quizzes and Surveys module makes it easier for teams to develop their skills. By providing the appropriate information to the entire sales force, salespeople become operational more quickly, better master their offers/services, and improve their sales pitch. In this way, Salesapps contributes to boosting salespeople's confidence, sharing best practices and significantly improving their meeting performance.
What ROIs can be observed as soon as the solution is deployed?
The ScenOOH app was deployed in September 2020, with immediate adoption by the sales force. The fact that the application meets an obvious need: "to have all sales pitches on the move, available offline, so as to share the right content with the customer during appointments" and to have set up a project group with the sales & marketing teams largely helped the application take up, testifies Romain Lacoche. " Within 15 days, 100% of local sales teams were onboard.
By using the Salesapps application, JCDecaux has been able to help its sales reps to free up precious time. Teams no longer waste time researching or creating content, as all the information they need for their appointments is distributed by the marketing team via a powerful back-office. The information is now useful for the salesperson, relevant to their approach and accessible 100% Offline. The increased use of Salesapps by sales teams at JCDecaux has led to a significant rise in the number of appointments made using the platform, from 1,200 per month at start-up to around 7,500 today.
Lucie Malenfant also adds that " the marketing team hardly ever assembles slides any more, whereas this task used to consume 70% of their time ", and that this time allows marketing "to generate business, monitor the sector and generate leads". With Salesapps, marketing also saves a lot of time, and can concentrate on what's strategic for appointments.
Enfin, la valeur que JCDecaux a réussi à créer repose aussi en grande partie sur la parfaite adhésion des équipes à cette transformation. Les faire participer dès la construction de l’application de Sales Enablement est essentiel pour la réussite du projet. La complémentarité des expertises sales & marketing est clé pour cette conception. Vous pourrez créer des parcours de vente pertinents et en cohérence avec les besoins de votre approche commerciale. Chez JCDecaux, ce sont 100% des contenus marketing & parcours de vente qui sont utiles et utilisés par les commerciaux, et ce depuis le lancement de l’application à aujourd’hui ce qui illustre le mieux le retour sur investissement d’une telle conception.
Pour découvrir l’interview complète de JCDecaux, c’est par ici
