D2DCon 2024 | Door-to-Door Sales Empowered by Gamification and AI | SalesRabbit's Amplify Approach | The D2D Podcast

In this episode of The D2D Podcast, Sean from SalesRabbit joins Clint Root to dive into the power of gamification and AI for door-to-door sales. SalesRabbit’s Amplify software offers a fresh way to drive rep engagement and productivity through data-driven competition, enabling teams to stay motivated and consistently achieve better results. Sean explains how Amplify integrates real-time data analytics, personalized competitions, and AI-driven insights to boost sales performance, reduce turnover, and optimize lead generation.

Sean also reveals how gamification can change the sales experience, transforming routine tasks into competitive, fun challenges that motivate both high and low performers alike. From tracking activity in real-time to creating smarter territories using AI, SalesRabbit empowers sales teams to increase efficiency and close more deals. Whether you're looking to retain top talent or improve overall team performance, this episode offers actionable strategies to elevate your door-to-door sales game.

You’ll find answers to questions such as:

• How does SalesRabbit’s Amplify gamification system improve sales performance?
• What role does AI play in optimizing door-to-door sales strategies?
• How can gamification help boost sales team engagement and reduce turnover?
• What are the key metrics to track for improving sales efficiency?
• How does SalesRabbit help teams win more deals through personalized competition?

Get in touch with Sean Huckstep:
LinkedIn: Sean Huckstep
Website: SalesRabbit

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Transcript

00:07
Door-to-door con 7 2024. I'm sitting here with Sean from Sales Rabbit. Catch us up. What's new with Sales Rabbit? There's a lot that's new. We're excited every year that we come to door-to-door con. We get to usually announce a brand new product initiative with a new product that we call Amplify. We launched it about eight months ago. Did a soft launch with a few customers to really make sure that we dialed it in and honed it in,

00:37
new gamification system, which as I've been walking around the show floor here, it's the buzzword I feel like. It's pretty wild here, isn't it? This is the craziest experience I've had at a door-to-door con. It's been a lot of fun. Tell us, like, why do you think this is gonna be the next thing? It's a way to make sure that we're constantly engaging every seller, every step of the way. So naturally we see a lot of people that will come out, and it's a sink or swim mentality.

01:07
for a lot of these companies and they lose so many of their sales reps within two, three, four weeks of them onboarding and hiring a new rep because they just don't make it. And what we're finding is that if we kind of shift the mentality of just a sell is the only thing that's success and we what we do is we break it down even further. So we look at all the income producing activities that a sales rep would do whether it's knock doors, follow-up, calls, conversations, sets, all of it and we want to gamify it.

01:37
We want to make it a game every day so that it's creating motivation and track all of those things. And so that way every rep feels like they can actually go out and win without maybe getting a sell, which is what we want everyone to do. But sometimes we have to motivate incentivize along the way to get them to where we want them to be, which is ultimately the sell, right? But it's changing the way that companies manage their reps.

02:06
go out and knock on the door, they're more excited, they'll spend more time on the doors as they're doing it, just because it's a game, it's no longer just a work, but you're gamifying it. In my experience, in building teams to go door to door, it's interesting because some of the best recruits I've found are athletes, a lot of times are college athletes, right? And it's interesting too that sometimes, if you do it right, these type of personalities

02:36
because of the money, right? Yeah. Right? It's that I've got to beat that person. I've got to beat that enemy in the office, that rival. Maybe not enemy, but rival in the office. And so I've seen this firsthand. Absolutely take your sales organization to the next level just because you're adding that element of competition to it. So what did you see as you're doing? I'm assuming you did a test pilot on this already. Yeah.

03:06
several test pilots with law companies, and we're seeing an interesting trend that's happening. So, generally speaking, as we're looking at these companies that are running the test, 80% of your revenue is coming from 20% of your Salesforce. Like, most people knew the 80-20 rule, but what's happening is that a lot of the 80% of the Salesforce will look at the 20% that's actually producing all the revenue, and they say, well,

03:36
me even trying in this competition because I know I'm not going to win. I'm not going to beat that guy. And so we see that as we're gamifying different metrics and different components that lead to self, we're seeing a lift on the high performers by about 10%. But then on the low performers, we're seeing over 100% lift and what their activity is, they get them to more results and more sells. And so the ability that we have to track how effective a competition is,

04:06
and why it's effective, and whether it's creating a lift for the high, medium, or low performers, is it's just fascinating to look at and see, because most people, they run a competition, and they're like, oh great, we ran it, we do this every year, but it's like, what drives that competition, what's the results of it, how does that actually benefit the company from creating more sales? And most people don't know what that data is, and how much lift it gives them, and so we're providing that insight that people have never had before.

04:36
so that they can know, well, if I do competition A, that gives me a 17% lift, but if I do competition B, I get a 42% lift, so I'm gonna keep rerunning the competitions that actually provide the lift and the results that we're driving with the competition. And how to allocate those prize funds, right? You budget it and you say, hey look, we can do this, that historically has given us a little bit of a lift, or we could spend the same amount of money and get almost 50% more just by being able to analyze it.

05:06
It's so fascinating, Clint, because the most random prizes will create some of the biggest lifts. Like, we'll see it's manager takes you out to lunch, or everyone does 50 push-ups in the office. Like, there's just so many small things that people don't necessarily think about. And we're trying to help create this playbook for competitions for people to help give them ideas, because there's a different variety of skill level and knowledge that companies have in that.

05:36
arena, what to reward or how much to reward based on the competition. And so we're trying to help educate people alongside of just providing the platform that gives them the insight. Oh, that's cool. So you got a little bit of handholding too. That's cool. Yeah, absolutely. That's really important too, especially if you're new to it, if you've never done it before. Yeah. If you're new to that, I could see a lot of benefit to that. I'm going to tell you my experience as far as prizes go, if you don't mind. Yeah. Okay. So my experience, the best prize is if you're looking for like a pro tip and you don't know what prizes to buy.

06:06
The best prizes are prizes that people want, but they wouldn't necessarily spend their own money. Yeah. Those go the longest way. This could be watches, could be Apple watches, something to that effect. Also, if you want to take it another step, the best prizes as you do this, roll out this game of fire, these competitions within your office are also items that are cool, but also help your organizations to make more sales. iPads, laptop computers and whatnot.

06:36
that those, if you could mix the gamify, get the boost there and reward your people with stuff that actually will tools to the profession, it's a beautiful thing. Yeah. I think people should think that way and not everyone does. But even just outside of helping people do their job better, but creating a better brand, whether it's up leveling your swag, your shirts, your jackets, your hats, giving people custom shoes, we see a lot of. Yeah.

07:06
important that you can create a better culture environment by running those initiatives those prizes for the reps to be able to give them something that they like you said wouldn't otherwise have gotten. That's awesome. They didn't win. What else do we have on the on the docket for Sales Rabbit? What are we seeing in our future here? Oh there's a lot there's a lot on the road map some of it we talked about some of it we obviously don't. We're spending more and

07:36
and how to bring that into the reps interface. The idea is that we want to get to a point where we can really tell people where to go, why to go there, and when they should be in that territory and area, so that people don't have to spend as much time looking for the right territory. If you're spanning from one city to the next because you need to go and start a new office somewhere else, we want to be able to give analytics and data behind why you should go there.

08:06
and then be much more intentional and prescriptive about where people send their reps and why am I knocking on this door versus that door and what's the probability of me closing this customer based on other people that I've closed because we know all of the demographic attributes and data and information about all these homeowners and so now we're creating algorithms and AI to help determine and create the right area for the right rep that's going to create more success for them,

08:35
just compounds up to the business. You know, you're talking about like gamifying and something I just want to bring up, you know, going back to our prior conversation. All, you know, if you don't know who Sales Rabbit is, you don't know Gores, right? Anybody who's not Gores has used Sales Rabbit. And you know, you're talking about like, let's go back to this initiative. You're talking about AI, you're talking about gamifying. And you said, as far as gamifying goes, you see a 10 per, only, only a 10% increase from your top producers.

09:05
accounts. Yeah right. Talking about a hundred accounts from your bottom. Great we'll take that too. Yeah. I'm actually really more interested in that 10% yeah right because that's a lot of accounts from your top producers so that's that's really cool. What are the do's and don'ts of using SalesRabbit? How are you seeing people not utilizing it correctly? How are you seeing people utilizing it? Great question. What we often see is that people don't invest into an operations

09:35
their tech stack. And so a lot of times people will purchase software whether it's Sales Rabbit or anything else and it's like oh we just got this fancy new tool we're so excited about implementing it, giving it to our teams and so they spend a week going through light customizations and then they hand it off to the team and then they're like I don't need to touch that. I can step back and it's going to do its thing. But operationally software always is changing, it's updating, there's new features coming out.

10:05
And if you're not having or hiring someone that's focused on operations to help really evangelize those new features within your organization internally, then generally speaking, you're not releasing or getting the full value of that software. And so we just see that people under invest in really building out their tech stack and constantly improving it and creating a much better rep efficiency because so many people are just focused on the customer experience.

10:35
the best experience. When we sell them, we want to fulfill on whatever we sold them and make it as polished and perfect as we can for the customer, but yet we so often forget about what precedes the customer experience. It's the rep experience. And if we don't spend a good fair amount of time creating a great experience for the reps to do their job, it's not going to filter down to the customer. So I just think that people under invest and

11:05
think about that operations role as much as they need to with with a team of sellers. Okay that's interesting I think that's probably the biggest thing that I've noticed in my I've been using sales rabbit since it started. When did it what year was that? 2013 for sure. So it's been a while. Over ten years yeah and it's fun to see how far it's come and yeah it's even more fun to think about where it's gonna be in the next thing. Yeah absolutely. It's here to stay for sure. So you know last

11:35
for you, I'm interested in trends. What are the trends you're seeing right now in the door-to-door world? From your perspective, being on the software side, what are some of the trends? What can we expect here in 2024? I think that, in my opinion, as we look out at the landscape of the market, we're seeing a difference in how people actually purchase their products. Oh, interesting. And what I mean by that is when we go and sell someone face-to-face,

12:05
and we engage with them. A lot of times, so much research is happening before we go and knock on the door. Meaning that if someone is generally gonna buy solar, they've usually been thinking about it for some time and they've done research, whether they researched that person that arrived at the door or not. But more research is happening and transactions are happening at the door, they happen after that. And for...

12:35
for some time, I think COVID accelerated this, where this ability to be able to actually follow up, this ability to connect with people just outside of just being directly face to face. It's incredible to generate a lead face to face, but we don't always have to close the deal face to face. And if we don't have the ability or the confidence or system to be able to sign people up, unless we're physically in person,

13:05
out on opportunities by not having a system that they're following up with deals. Because for so long, I mean, you've been in the industry for so long, a lot of times you go and knock on a door and it's do or die, it's like, I'm either gonna sell this person right now, or they're gonna hate me, or I'm never coming back, whatever the outcome is, but that's been some of the mentality. Right, and so the trend. Yeah, the mentality's changed, better, better. Right, and so I think that that ability to be a little bit more disciplined

13:35
we sell and have the process and the know-how to be able to follow up and work deals for a longer period of time is becoming a little bit more crucial. Yeah. That's a really interesting thought. I appreciate you coming over. We always love having sales rabbit come by. You've been with us since the beginning, right? Door-to-door conch, 7-2024, Sean from Sales Rabbit. Yeah, thank you. Good to be here.