Holiday Season Sales Trends; Driving Sales Performance in 2024

As 2024 begins, expert analysts are taking stock of the holiday season, reading it for signs of what lies in wait for the year ahead.

Consumer shopping rallied for the holiday season, early signs indicate – better results than many economists had predicted. With sales from early November through the end of December increasing 3.1% over 2022, 2023’s holiday season saw that consumers “have built up real purchasing power,” to quote Michelle Meyer, Mastercard’s Chief Economist. With targeted discounts due to reduced inventory levels, many sellers soared.

Yet the question remains, how to ensure that your organization benefits from that purchasing power? Throughout 2024 sales organizations have a real chance to secure their share of consumer purchasing power, but only if they respond proactively to trends and transformations with smart digital strategy.

We’re bringing you key insights from sales and operations leaders in companies with large sales forces, and how they are approaching this opportunity and challenge:?

• The deprecation of LMS and LXP and the emergence of PEP
• Review of sales force engagement tools that have positive ROI?
• Focus topic: Targeted communications with sellers at scale?
• Best practices in task management during the holiday seasons
• + more

2024 will require adaptive, quick thinking and the embrace of new methods for seller enablement. Are you ready? From paradigm shifts in seller technology to new pathways in automation, it’s time to think both about large-scale shifts and micro-transformations in sales force operations and learn from the top performing companies.

Request a demo today to see how PEPs drive positive ROI, as opposed to the old paradigms of LMS and LXP.

Navigating LMS, LXP, and PEP to Best Enablement the Modern Seller (eLearning Industry)

• Continuously evolving seller enablement strategies are crucial to keeping the sales force engaged.
• Does “learning” provide enough of what AI-enabled tech is capable of delivering? How can technological platforms combine training tools with other pathways to productivity, aiming to alter behavior and create the right selling reflexes?
• Faced with a toxic combination of consumer hesitancy, economic uncertainty, and corporate austerity, sales forces must confront a wholly different market from the one in which LMSs and LXPs came of age, from 2012-2021, a time when inflation and interest rates were low, investment dollars cheap, and consumer behaviors predictable.
• Performance Enablement Platforms (PEPs) are the next evolution of seller enablement software, focusing not on learning and lessons – which after all, might not be implemented correctly by the seller when it is time to make the sale – but instead on sales performance and Customer Experience.?
• The true paradigm shift is away from learning altogether and toward performance.

How Retailers Can Unwrap Success Next Holiday Season with Retail Task Management Software

• How can we address customer hesitation? Create unforgettable customer experiences.
• With Performance Enablement (PEP) technology, sellers have an all-in-one software to forge customer relationships, right in the palm of their hands.?
• The right retail task management software can connect frontline and managerial employees across stores and departments, to drive organizational coordination and planning at scale.
• PEP equips managers with valuable insights into their team’s performance, shaping the smart notifications, personalized tasks, and activities that each of them receives.?
• To learn more about PEP for retail, make sure to register for Rallyware’s webinar with Heather Fencik, Education Manager of Fleet Feet, ‘Beyond Product Training: How Relevant, Engaging, and Timely Brand Content Drives Retail Sell-Through’! Register here!

Rallyware’s End of 2023 Roundup: A Year of Expansion & Innovation

• In the fast-paced landscape of sales performance enablement platforms and sales enablement tech, 2023 proved to be a momentous year for Rallyware. It marked a period of growth, innovation, and strategic expansion.?
• In such a moment Rallyware flourished, providing tools built and designed to help organizations outdo their peers, sell more, and retain more customers – with personalized software delivered directly to the sales force and used by sales and operations to drive results.?
• In 2023, Rallyware exceeded 200 customers for the first time, reflecting the organization’s continued sustainable growth, our commitment to our customers, and the sheer power of our technologies to drive business results.
• One of the hallmark achievements that underscored Rallyware’s success was the remarkable milestone of securing partnerships with over 40% of the Top 100 direct selling companies, including Nu Skin, Beautycounter, Avon, and many others.?
• In 2023, Rallyware’s NPS was +75, a major achievement that reflects world-class excellence.?

Field Outreach: Making Communication as Easy as Possible with Digital Technology

• Too many direct selling organizations use email, a profoundly unreliable technology, for crucial communications.?
• What if your organization’s email address gets blocked, or marked as spam or promotion? What if the distributor never checks her email or checks the wrong folder??
• If direct selling organizations use PEPs to transmit communications, these are much likelier to be opened than if they end up in an email account that the distributor barely checks.?
• In 2022 (the latest year with data available), nearly 50% of PEP push notifications led to actions. Distributors are more engaged with their PEPs – overall, they are very active users, and only becoming more so, with 2022 seeing +15% more login sessions per distributor over 2021.

Sales Force Engagement Report - Key Insights for Sales Leader in 2024

• A key component of a successful and thriving organization, engagement is crucial in terms of productivity, team collaboration and customer satisfaction.
• As engagement is also on our radar, we at Rallyware are pleased to introduce our all-new 2022-23 Sales Force Engagement Report: Trends in Seller Behavior and Skills Enablement.
• Encouragingly, we saw a rise in engagement with training and learning content, with a 9% increase in salespersons actively engaged with this content in 2022 compared to 2021.
• Additionally, nearly seven million learning and development tasks were completed among the sales force utilizing performance enablement technology. Read the full report to learn more about engagement trends heading into 2024!

Retail leaders and influencers shouldn’t hesitate to register for Rallyware’s live digital event with Fleet Feet’s Heather Fencik on Tuesday, February 13th at 11am PT! Click here to register – we’ll be talking about how to optimize sales training content to ensure sell-through. Until next month!