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How can we best connect various field sales agents & agencies to HQ?
Challenge Type: business
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$1,600
top 7
52
submissions
DONE
86 months ago

We sell insurance and financial services and products through sales professionals that operate independently in the field. There are thousands of employees and individuals working directly for our organization and contracted through agencies. Depending on how long they’ve worked with us, what sales targets they’ve met, and other factors, different employees receive different levels of support from contacts at our company

To decide who gets what level of support contacts, we currently maintain large and cumbersome spreadsheets that we update manually on a monthly basis. Even more time-consuming is that we must manually send custom contact lists (as .PDF or email text) to the individuals we're tracking in excel. Our goal is to automate or semi-automate the process of getting the right contact info to the right sales individuals. How can we achieve this goal?

Update 12/19: We've added an FAQ question with more detail on our processes below.

Deliverables

Alternative solution to connect field sales agents and agencies with the appropriate HQ support contacts:

1. What’s the distribution or communication method?

2. Sales field agents are frequently recruited and HO contacts also change. Please account for ease in updating and keeping the both groups evergreen.

3. Why is your method the most effective possible and better than our current system of monthly spreadsheet revisions and mass emails?

Bonus: Structure your response as a presentation and or include samples/mock ups of how your system would work.

How we’re judging submissions:

- Must be innovative and efficient to help us transcend the current spreadsheet/email processes.

- Should appeal to our sales professionals, which are spread across the country and their ages range from Millennials to baby boomers so they all need to use the solution.

- The solution should require as little manual effort as possible.

- Updating the field distribution and HO contacts should be simple.

Things to consider:

- Ever changing contacts... Sales field agents are frequently recruited and HO contacts also change. Please account for how easily it will be to update and keep the lists evergreen.

- Big picture/small picture - We're mostly looking for broad ideas that provide an entire system for us to work with but are open to more detailed smaller scale thoughts. The best submissions will have both!

FAQ:

1. May I be walked through the process of costumer acquisition/ UX?

Field agents are selling insurance, doing door to door, attending industry trade show events, setting up a meeting at an office, cold calls, to sell them an insurance package. Relatively straight forward.

2. What is this "right contact info" that the "right sales individuals" receive exactly comprised of?

We have a call center for agents at HQ. A lot of the agents call the call center to ask for advice or planning strategies and sometimes end up on hold. Agents that have sold more, receive contact info or direct dials for more advanced advisors.

We have “elite” agents that would not call the call center. They have a specific team of individuals they have received contact info on to ask specific questions.

The “right contact info” is a specific phone number or set of phone numbers, to reach higher up advisors with the advanced information for specific scenarios. We want better sales agents to get better access to advanced advisors.

At HQ we want each agent to have customized access to contacts based on their success in sales.

3. Currently, how often do sales agents & agencies report to HQ? How is that done?

Agents call daily through phone calls. Advanced agents have more contacts with specific functions to reach out to. More general agents call into a more generic call center that gives information as HQ advisors become available.

4. What criteria is used for the "custom contact lists"?

Agents sell all different types of insurance, they receive contacts at HQ depending on the types of insurance they sell and ways they are selling. For example, an agent selling life insurance to companies would be connected with an HQ advisor with that expertise.

5. What does the process of recruiting new sales field agents consist of?

Don’t worry about how new agents brought on, consider existing agents already working for us.

6. Do you have any additional information regarding how you choose which contacts to send to which sales employees? A little more insight into the curation process could definitely aid us in coming up with a more comprehensive solution.

Same answer as above: Agents call daily through phone calls. Advanced agents have more contacts with specific functions to reach out to. More general agents call into a more generic call center that gives information as HQ advisors become available.

7. Also, any information on the factors that you consider while making the revisions to each contact list would also be much appreciated.

Different contacts are distributed to different agents depending on the type of insurance they sell and the method they use to sell it.

    Submissions will be graded on the following criteria:
  • Meets Deliverables
  • Creativity
  • Clarity
Reward Tiers
2 Winners
will receive $500 each
5 Honorable Mentions
will receive $120 each
Leaderboard
$500.00 Pat Clark Oregon State University
$500.00 Hayward Chan University of Toronto
$120.00 Keenan Novis University of Chicago
$120.00 Conor McFarland University of New Hampshire
$120.00 Dione Sun Boston University
$120.00 Tarun Jha University of Florida
$120.00 John Marshall Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Submission questions


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