Having a strong go-to-market (GTM) strategy is vital for brands. They need to have a plan to engage with customers, gain a competitive advantage and ultimately sell their products.
ENDVR is a digital platform made for driving retail sales in the physical world. It has now become an integral part of many brands’ GTM strategy. For proactively integrating sales contests in their initiatives, teaching sales associates about the technical details of their products and managing visual merchandising checks, all this in a digital and scalable way – this is why brands integrate ENDVR in their GTM strategy.
Mountain Hardwear has been using ENDVR for 3 years now. Here is how and why they have included ENDVR in their yearly GTM strategy.
Before ENDVR
We had a discussion with Kelly Caccamo, former Marketing Manager at Mountain Hardwear Canada. Her and her team’s objective was to find strategies to boost in-store sales.
Before using ENDVR, Mountain Hardwear would print out cards with discount codes and give them to their reps with SWAG. Reps would then go door to door each season to engage with sales associates and teach them about their products. But Mountain Hardwear felt one of the biggest pains most brands feel. “With the number of doors versus the amount of reps, it was really just impossible to get in front of every sales associate,” Kelly said.
Few of their retailers would organize clinics twice a year but they had to select the very few brands that would present during those clinics. This means that Mountain Hardwear sometimes wouldn’t make the cut.
Regarding sales contests, Kelly said:
“Prior to using ENDVR, a rep would reach out to me if they wanted to organize a sales contest, and I would almost dread it, because it was never as simple as you wanted it to be. After figuring out the details & the prize, you’d create a poster to promote the contest and just hope that the rep does a good job explaining it to the store and then that the store actually keeps track of printing the receipts. It was always kind of a mess. When the contest ended, you never really had any idea if it went well or not, or if it helped to increase sales.”
In summary, Mountain Hardwear’s biggest pain points were:
– Hard to teach sales associates about their products and technologies.
– Very complicated to organize and manage sales contests.
– No visibility or measurability on sales contests results.
– Hard to reach, engage and build relationships with sales associates in general.
The Impact of ENDVR at Mountain Hardwear
Kelly and her team started using ENDVR for its learning modules. Pretty quickly after that, they started launching sales contests through ENDVR. Let’s explore the impact that each of these initiatives on ENDVR had on Mountain Hardwear.
Learning Modules
Mountain Hardwear moved away from the “old school” cards with discount codes and SWAG. All this was replaced by bitesize frequent learning campaigns on ENDVR, rewarding sales associates upon completion. Reps still go door to door to build relationships with managers and sales staff, but their visits and ENDVR’s campaigns are very complementary.
“I remember being quite shocked at the engagement right off the bat. I thought it would start slow and it really didn’t. We were very pleased with that.”, Kelly says.
Sales Contests
Sales contests of the past were really troublesome. They were offline, slow and super complicated to organize, execute and manage. This led Mountain Hardwear to only do sporadic and reactionary sales contests for when a product wasn’t selling well for example.
With ENDVR, it is so much simpler and quicker, it changed their approach.
“In prior years, sales contests & training would never be part of our planning discussions, but after we signed on with ENDVR, they became a major part of our marketing strategy to support sell-through for the season. We began to present our sales contest calendar and what key products these contests would support. They became a big part of my thought process for GTM preparation.”
Being able to know the exact ROI of each campaign through their custom dashboard on ENDVR was also a game changer for them.
ENDVR solved many pain points that Mountain Hardwear and many brands in the retail industry have. It’s a win-win-win situation for brands, retailers and sales associates. Kelly said “There’s just no easier way to engage retail staff with your brand and then give them sweet rewards for doing it.”.
Lastly, we asked her “If you could say something to someone in the same position as you in another company that’s not using ENDVR, what would you say?”. Kelly said “If you are in wholesale marketing and you don’t use ENDVR, you’re missing out huge. It will help in so many ways. It will make your job so much easier.”.
To learn more about ENDVR, visit their website
