To help improve sales performance and maintain a competitive edge within its industry in 2024, foundation repair and water management solutions provider Groundworks invested heavily in sales tools, resources, and technology. Last year was the company’s first year partnering with Rilla, a speech analytics software tailored for the home improvement sector, to help Sales managers coach their teams by reinforcing Groundworks’ sales process, products, and services.
Program Details
When Certified Field Inspectors (CFIs) engage with homeowners, the process is streamlined with the Rilla app:
- CFIs record conversations using Rilla on their phones or tablets.
- Rilla’s artificial intelligence (AI) automatically transcribes these conversations.
- The AI then analyzes the content.
- The AI provides feedback to CFIs to enhance their sales proposals.
Using these recordings and the Rilla dashboard analytics, Sales managers can conduct “virtual ride-alongs” and coach their team to increase their sales. Testimonials from Sales managers have been positive regarding time management and support reach for their teams. Before Rilla, ride-alongs took approximately three hours per CFI as managers were physically with the employee during their inspections and presentations. After Rilla, virtual ride-alongs now take roughly five to 10 minutes, which allows Sales managers more time to support their entire team and customers.
In real time, Grounworks leverage Rilla’s analytics to track app usage, call recordings, average CFI appointment time, and sales process adherence, which allows Sales managers to comment on CFI recordings, instantly coach struggling CFIs, and share best practices.
Leveraging those metrics, as well as the company’s Sales PowerBi reports, it can continuously track performance on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis to monitor low-performing CFIs and coach/counsel them accordingly. Monthly dashboards are sent to region, division, and senior leaders to ensure alignment on Rilla’s usage and impact.
Results
In first quarter 2024, Groundworks conducted a four-branch pilot to evaluate Rilla’s effectiveness in reinforcing the Groundworks Sales Process, aligning Sales managers, and improving CFI training. The company launched Rilla to a random population of CFIs across the four locations. It left the remaining CFIs off the platform to conduct an A/B test to gauge the performance differences.
Post-pilot outcomes include:
- Groundworks has recorded 11,000 conversations.
- Groundworks Sales managers have been on 8,402 virtual ride-alongs.
- On average, it takes a manager 6 minutes and 24 seconds to complete a virtual ride-along in Rilla.
- Managers can use the AI chat to quickly improve their coaching to enhance one-on-one meetings, team meetings, and direct coaching with the CFIs.
- More than 50 best practice clips of real situations have been created for coaching content.
For the pilot, the 100 Rilla CFIs increased their close percentage by 0.91 percentage points.
Since January, the company has seen a 10.4 percent increase in average $ per sale with the close percentage remaining steady for foundation repair. For concrete, the company recognized a 7 percent increase in close % percentage and an 18 percentage decrease in average $ per sale. Following these positive outcomes, Groundworks expanded Rilla’s use to all 3,000 CFIs in second quarter 2024.
For all lines of business, Groundworks saw a 4.3 percent increase in close percentage from January to August 2024.
