Challenge

I worked as a commercial consultant for a major group of cosmetic franchises

in Brazil, market leader and with more than 3700 stores in the country. My role was to  manage 6 large franchise networks for this franchisor (around 60 stores), being  responsible for sales results, marketing, inventory management, excellence program  and auditing standards established by the franchisor. The study will take place in one  of the networks composed of 17 stores that started to show a drop in sales, a drop in  the quality of sales and a high turnover of employees in 2016. It´s important to say that  in this year the country was in severe economic recession and almost all retailers were  facing drop in sales. In this example the drop of sales and productivity was being much  higher then other stores in the region. Several approaches were tried to improve the  performance of the team as: training, sales incentives, awards, but nothing was  reversing the poor results.

Selection

After several meetings and data gathering with the company's board of

directors, managers and salespeople, face-to-face monitoring and comparative studies  it was decided to try the the learning launch tool so that new actions could be quickly  tested in some of the group's stores to measure which actions would help to improve  the results. I will describe the idea that best worked from these various tests.

Application

To begin the project, we conducted an unidentified satisfaction survey with all

employees engaged in sales using the Google Forms, and the results showed us that  they were pleased with their salary, the benefits provided by the company, and the  training they received. The downside was they did not have a vision of their role in the  organization, they did not feel heard by their managers and did not have a clear vision  of the company's goals.

In the first learning launch, we selected 3 stores from the 17 of the group, one

in a shopping mall, one on the street and another inside a supermarket. And we  developed a daily sales process that consisted of a 7-minute morning meeting between  the manager and the sellers for the goals that the store should have that day (sales  target, items per ticket, average purchase value, sales per rep) and a daily motivational  message. At the end of the day a new meeting presenting the results achieved and  together,  registered  the  positive  and  negative  points  of  that  day.

This routine was maintained throughout the Project.

In the second learning launch, we collected the daily information from these 3

stores and held a quick weekly planning meeting on Saturday morning where the  expectations and results of the past week were presented and reviewed the difficulties  and positives points of the week. With this, each salesperson could suggest  improvement actions, share best practices among the sellers and manager, and seek  together  solutions  for  the  difficulties  of  the  week.

This routine was maintained throughout the Project.

In the third learning launch, the managers performed a meeting in the

company's headquarters, with the other managers and the board, presented the material

of the weekly meetings and looked for the best way to respond to the suggestions of  the sellers to facilitate the achievement of results. Eg, have more stock, having a  discounted item to encourage the customer, more products for demonstration,  experimentations at the store door, etc.

Insight

Applying the tool, we observed a significant improvement in the results of

these stores compared to the other stores in the group. And redoing the satisfaction  survey 3 months later isolating these stores from the others, the points of dissatisfaction  were all softened in relation to the others. Looking at the descriptive questions of the  survey, it was noted that the sellers now felt heard and supplied with the tools to do  their job better, had the support of their managers and the company that they needed,  and were more clearly able to identify their role within the organization. By closing  the plan with the company's board of directors, we came to the conclusion that the  team had the need to be heard and feel an important part within the company. They  also noted that actions to increase sales are more effective when they depart from the  team (which is closer to the customer) toward the board (which makes the decisions)  or Bottom-up compared to the previous top-down model. Now the team of these stores  are much more engaged, productive and happy with the work, presenting much better  results than the other stores in the group. In the months that have passed, this process  has been remodeled and applied to all stores in the group as a standard process. This  year, until I left the company, the turn over had been reduced and the results were still  good even with the economic crisis that is occurring the country. The company's  directors have adopted satisfaction research as the primary tool for working with all  its employees and several leraning launches have been applied in all sectors of the  company because of its low cost and deployment, fast payback and facility of  application.

Approach

Design thinking activities are great tools for improving results and solving

problems in companies. As an improvement, in the next projects using the learning  launch, I will seek in addition to the electronic research, to perform a face-to-face  dynamics with more involved, for example, in this process, to involve some managers  and sellers in the strategy formulation meeting to have the insight of all involved since  the beginning of the project. Another point that we observed, we had many doubts of  the employees not involved in the project about the meetings that some stores were  having and why others where not. For the next projects, I will work better the  disclosure of the actions that occur in the company to be more transparent and  effective, thus avoid generating doubts within the company employees.

