Motivation Is Key To Kick Starting Your Wireless Revenue

As wireless carriers evolve to stay competitive, customers are now hyper-aware of the greatest deals and options available. For example, customers are now choosing carriers that can provide options like Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) over those with more traditional offerings.

This makes it more important than ever – especially as we enter the home stretch of the holiday selling season – to identify innovative strategies that bring in new customers, retain the ones you have, and increase revenue in the process.

Offering value-added services is one tactic to consider. It’s a simple way to express how much you value your customers and their business, as well as a tactic for improving average revenue per user, or ARPU. And although it may seem a bit basic compared to more drastic initiatives, this strategy can quickly improve your bottom line.

Unfortunately, customers aren’t going to buy those value-adds if your team isn’t great at selling them. To help get your salespeople there, we’ve gathered the most effective tips to motivate your sales team to sell, and a few innovative options to motivate your customers to buy – giving you the tools you need to increase your ARPU in a flash.

Motivating Your Sales Force

Need to motivate your sales team? To get started, create a solid compensation model. When you set a hard goal, your people will be motivated to reach it, and it provides a benchmark to go beyond.

Select a model: A push-pull sales compensation model is generally the most effective in motivating employees on both ends of the spectrum. By using a three-tiered commission structure, you can reward your top performers while encouraging your lesser performers to improve.

Start small: When setting goals, make sure to narrow your focus to 3-5 key performance indicators (KPIs) that are specifically results driven. Introduce too many and your sales team will have too much to keep track of, which can lead to lower quality sales performance.

Set realistic goals: Use historical sales performance and previous customer retention data to help establish base compensation for the sale of certain products. If you notice a large number of team members plateauing at your middle tier, revisit your team goals and bump them accordingly.

Make changes: While some companies set a three-tiered sales compensation model, others prefer a five-tiered approach. It’s OK to make adjustments as needed. In fact, you’ll likely see the need to adapt as company-wide performance improves. The important part is to have a tiered structure in place as a foundation.

Get creative: Don’t be afraid to use incentives to keep your team engaged. Utilize your salespeople, partners and vendors to explore creative ideas to boost sales and increase customer loyalty, such as sales-related games and contests. Challenging your team’s performance through unique ideas will lead to increased success overall.

Motivating Your Customers

Once you’ve got your sales team ready, it’s time to address your value-adds. You can improve customer relationships by keeping an eye peeled for innovative value-adds to offer.

Increased protection: Drive revenue by offering customers a quality warranty protection plan. When it comes to their daily lifeline – their mobile devices – customers want peace of mind. So, partner with a third-party warranty provider that caters to your customers’ protection needs so you can help them safeguard their purchases, boost loyalty and increase your bottom line.

The newest in IoT: With Gartner’s identification of 8.4 billion connected “things” used in 2017, it’s easy to see that the Internet of Things trend isn’t going away anytime soon. Stay updated on the newest IoT-connected devices to offer customers more options, and optimize deals to support IoT connectivity.

OTT TV: An increasingly popular consumer trend that many carriers haven’t taken full advantage of yet is over-the-top television. OTT TV allows access to cable or satellite video content and services via the Internet. OTT TV revenues are projected to reach more than $1 billion in 14 countries by 2022, which is why you should consider partnering with a third-party OTT TV provider, or even developing your own service.

The combination of a strong, motivated sales team supplying customers with the most innovative value-added offerings is a winning gameplan. With the right products and services in place and the right sales compensation model to inspire your team to sell more, you can reach and even surpass your ARPU goals.

Jon Mikow is wireless VP at Fortegra Financial Corp. (a Tiptree company). Fortegra and its subsidiaries comprise a single-source insurance services provider that offers a range of consumer protection options including warranty solutions, credit insurance and specialty underwriting programs.