Successful cosmetics, hair, and skincare brands know that data and metrics are essential when it comes to optimizing their team’s performance, improving compliance, and getting the most out of every promotion and event. Education is the other piece of the equation: in-depth, hands-on product training for store teams and salon professionals that turns them into champions for your brand. The question is, how do you ensure that your reps have the time and tools they need to do both effectively?
Here’s a look at some of the key challenges beauty brands face in specialty retail and salons, and how Repsly can help solve them.
Specialty Retail: Where every moment matters
At specialty stores like Sephora and Ulta Beauty, shoppers count on store associates to help them choose between the thousands of products available and learn how to use them: What’s the difference between makeup brand X and makeup brand Y? Which cream is right for my skin type? How do I put these false eyelashes on without blinding myself?
It's up to your field team to give store employees the education they need to sell your products effectively and set customers up for success. Providing this training can be time intensive—and yet it’s often just one small part of what reps need to do during their time in store. There’s also auditing execution, documenting out of stocks, ensuring you’re getting the shelf share and placement you’ve paid for, and more. Then, there’s compiling, organizing, and splicing all that data—work that often ends up happening after hours, when tired reps may be more likely to make mistakes and cut corners.
But if your team can easily capture multiple types of data and information at the point of sale, and then organize and analyze it all in the same interface, they not only have less “homework” to do; they can also spend more providing education and building connections with store teams while they’re on site.
With Repsly, field teams can document everything from execution compliance to the number of store associates educated, to the amount of gratis given using their mobile device. All forms, retail audits, and sales documents save as drafts along the way, so reps can add data and information whenever they have a minute, or all at once. No more copying handwritten notes, cutting and pasting from one document to another, or Excel sheet number crunching—and no emailing, either. Managers can immediately access the data and use Repsly’s built-in and custom dashboards to generate the insights they need, including promotion execution, sales results, working time, and more.
Salons and spas: Where connection is everything
Professional beauty products require an extra high-touch approach from field teams, including plenty of facetime with salon owners and staff. But like their consumer brand counterparts, these reps also have to record and manage multiple types of information during their visits to salons and spas.
For sales teams, that includes tracking out of stocks and noting which products are popular and which are struggling to sell through, as well as placing orders for replenishments or new facings. Education teams need to track which products they provide training on, to how many people, and in what period of time. Having a central place like Repsly where all that vital data can be entered, organized, and shared with other teams makes for a dramatically more efficient and transparent process.
Training is another area where the right tools can make a major difference. Educating staff on how to use professional products takes time, and may include hands-on (literally!) instruction and practice. Repsly puts product sell sheets at reps’ fingertips, so they don’t have to search for information in a separate intranet or database. If they’re using an iOS device, reps can even email sell sheets to salon staff directly from Repsly.
Sales teams, meanwhile, can use Repsly’s product features to create a suggested order list based on their conversations with staff, to remind them of what they discussed, what the products are, and what the price model would be. All of the information they need is in one place, easily accessible and easily shared.
Product demos and special events: Where every detail counts
Special events and product demos are a time for brands to shine. They’re also a valuable source of intel on what consumers want and what sales approaches are most effective. Once again, this means that reps need to be able to focus on connecting with staff and shoppers while also capturing a constant stream of information: which products are most popular, how much product is given away, how many shoppers walk into the location, how many engage with your brand, and more. Repsly makes it easy for your team members to record this kind of information on the fly, and then effortlessly generate metrics like total sales volume, sales volume by hour, sales by hours worked, and more.
But quantitative data is just one piece of the puzzle. Through Repsly’s project dashboards, reps can also record notes and feedback that managers can use to help set expectations and make plans for future events. What fixtures or supplies would have been useful to have? What kind of feedback did the store staff have? What were the lessons learned? It can all be captured in Repsly, event by event, location by location.
There’s no question that cosmetics and beauty products require a special kind of finesse from your field teams. Learn more about how Repsly empowers them to make the most of every visit.
