Brand iQ speeds sales in fast moving world of pop-up retail

QIC

“Our challenge is to provide a differentiated service from a traditional leasing team. It’s an ever-evolving role that requires us to be flexible, nimble and efficient – and Salesforce helps us achieve this.”

Rebecca Aichholzer, Head of Business Systems Success

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Brand iQ speeds sales in fast moving world of pop-up retail

Brand iQ is a specialist division within QIC’s real estate division – QICGRE. With responsibilities throughout the Australian portfolio of shopping and lifestyle destinations such as Canberra Centre in the ACT and Robina Town Centre in Queensland, the Brand iQ team provides a platform for brands to engage with their audiences beyond the confines of a traditional shop. This includes leasing spaces for pop-up retail and brand activations.

Rebecca Aichholzer, Head of Business Systems Success at QIC, said the short-term leases create a diverse range of opportunities for brands throughout the shopping centre environment.

“Our challenge is to provide a differentiated service from a traditional leasing team, and facilitate bespoke experiences in the shopping centre environment. It’s an ever-evolving role that requires us to be flexible, nimble and efficient – and Salesforce helps us achieve this,” said Aichholzer.

Meeting the challenges of a dynamic industry

With business moving faster than ever, it’s not uncommon for Brand iQ to get a call from a brand or retailer who wants to occupy a space the next day. Salesforce helps make that possible, where in the past it had been a struggle. Brand iQ’s previous booking system was basic, and involved the team entering booking details into the system and then separately creating a contract. All contracts would be reviewed by Aichholzer before being sent to the customer.

“I had a team of 22 people creating new contracts daily and I had to check every single one to make sure it was correct and legally binding. Most of the time things were fine, but the process was manual and there was always a chance that something could be mistyped or deleted. I was desperate for a better solution,” said Aichholzer.

Turning to Salesforce, the brand found a way to speed up the booking process, minimise risk of error and ultimately transform the way it sells. Reps no longer need to create contracts manually. They make the booking right in Sales Cloud, using a pick list to select any special conditions. They then generate the contract automatically using Conga Composer and send it out for signature using DocuSign.

Aichholzer said she only needs to review contracts with special conditions that deviate from the pre-defined list – usually one or two each week compared to around 45 contracts per week before the project. “By using Salesforce, we can create a booking and send out a contract in minutes and most are fully executed within 24 hours. This means retailers can start trading in just one day as opposed to seven.”

Increasing intelligence and efficiencies

Using Salesforce, Brand iQ now also has a single source of truth with data about its leads, customers and retail sites all in one place. Sales reps and managers can analyse where leads are coming from and what helps drive conversion. They can also easily view and update site details, and create site information packs for customers at the click of a button.

“The sales team has the information they need for each stage of the sales cycle and processes and dashboards that help them work more efficiently. It’s helped us increase the occupancy rates of our sites by around 3% per year, while halving the number of people that touch each booking,” said Aichholzer.

Additional time savings have been achieved by using Salesforce to streamline invoicing, reporting, and third-party contract management and billing. Some of the most substantial savings include around 1,000 hours saved per year by replacing an arrears management report produced daily with an automated dashboard. A further 800 hours have been saved per year by reducing the time involved in creating, approving and issuing invoices.

Creating a culture of learning and success

Brand iQ has now set a standard in the industry for how short term leases can be managed. It’s removed hours of administration internally so brands can launch new campaigns and pop-ups faster. It also tracks key performance metrics and trends, providing insight into which retail categories and sites are generating the most value. All of this helps keep sites filled and creates more revenue and improved valuations for each property.

Aichholzer is continuing to drive improvements using insights and best practice gained from the Salesforce community and Premier Support. She has also introduced myTrailhead to the Brand iQ team to increase the effectiveness of training and add a bit of fun through gamification. myTrailhead is just like Trailhead, but with QIC's own learning content. It lets employees learn at their own pace and has features like interactive quizzes which help boost the retention of knowledge.

Leveraging content from Trailhead and internal training materials, Aichholzer has built out bite-sized training modules to replace some elements of face-to-face training for onboarding, legal and compliance. So rather than attending two separate training sessions spanning a total of six hours, sales reps can use myTrailhead to complete the initial training at their own pace and then attend one three-hour course.

For Aichholzer alone, the benefits are immense as she’ll be able to save around 12 hours per month on delivering training and related guidance. Also, she’ll no longer need to maintain a detailed process manual for sales reps as they can find all of the information they need in the myTrailhead modules.

“Our training information is now much more accessible and engaging, and we can build out new modules and trails to help people learn more about the business and develop their skills. And with Trailmixes now available to help with developing content and making it fun, anyone can do this,” said Aichholzer. “It really is that easy.”