Start With Etiquette

Start off slow by going over basic etiquette rules with the team of brand ambassadors that are going to be working at your event. Every good brand ambassador will know they shouldn’t roll their eyes at guests, slouch, or cross their arms so they seem unapproachable. But, there are other etiquette rules that need to be discussed, especially when it comes to social media.

Do you want your brand ambassadors to post about the event on their social media accounts? If so, make sure you establish guidelines on what can and cannot be posted. For example, posting a selfie at the event with the brand’s hashtag is harmless. In fact, it’s free promotion. But, brand ambassadors shouldn’t post photos of themselves drinking alcohol at the event or tweet about how bored they are. You can’t control what they do or say while they’re not representing your brand, but there should be rules put in place over what they are allowed to post while they are on the clock.

Introduction to the Brand

A brand ambassador will not be able to represent your brand if they don’t know who you are, what you stand for, and what you are selling. Therefore, an important part of the training process is introducing brand ambassadors to your brand. Help them understand who you are selling to, what you are selling, and why your target audience will want to become customers. A brand ambassador doesn’t need to be able to rattle off all of the ingredients in every single one of your products. But, they should be informed enough to answer guests’ questions and speak confidently about the products or services that you are offering.

You should also make sure the brand ambassadors know what kind of personality your brand has so they know how they should communicate with guests at the event. Should they be bubbly and outgoing when approaching customers? Or would you rather them be serious and professional? These are the questions that need to be answered during training so brand ambassadors know how to conduct themselves during the event.

Media Relations

Another topic that may need to be covered as you prepare brand ambassadors for the event is media relations. If you are planning a small and intimate event, there may not be a need for media relations training. But, if you are inviting influencers and journalists to cover the event in order to increases brand awareness; this is an important part of the training process.

Go over some of the key points that you want brand ambassadors to mention when talking to members of the press. For instance, let’s say you are launching a new food product that is organic, gluten-free, and non-GMO certified. In this case, the three main points that should be mentioned in every media interview are:

• The product is organic.
• The product is gluten-free.
• The product is non-GMO certified.

Don’t give brand ambassadors scripts to memorize. Even the best brand ambassadors will sound rehearsed when they have to read from a script when speaking to the media. Instead, focus on making sure they understand the key points that you want to get across. Ask them to answer the questions as naturally as possible while still incorporating these key points.

Responsibilities During the Event

Every brand ambassador should show up to the event knowing exactly what they are going to be doing that day. Make this happen by going over everyone’s responsibilities before the event. For example, assign a few brand ambassadors to the entrance of the event so they can greet customers and help them find what they’re looking for when they arrive. These brand ambassadors should be very familiar with the layout of the event and the different activities that are going on. They should also know about parking, restrooms, and other general information that people tend to ask whoever is standing by the entrance. The responsibilities of this type of brand ambassador are different than those of a brand ambassador who is stationed around the product demo area. That’s why it’s so important to go over roles and responsibilities ahead of time.

Role Playing

A strong brand ambassador knows how to communicate with guests at the event and keep them engaged in conversation. At the end of the training program, test your brand ambassadors’ skills by doing role playing exercises where you pretend to be a guest or member of the media at the event. Doing this exercise will allow you to see how much of the information the brand ambassadors absorbed during their training. Do they remember the key talking points for the media? Are they asking guests to fill out a contact form so you can capture leads at the event? Take mental notes during the exercise—or have someone else stand back and watch—so you can help your team improve before the event.

Work with Factory 360 on your next experiential marketing event so you don’t have to take on the task of recruiting, hiring, and training brand ambassadors. We work with a highly trained and professional team of brand ambassadors that are eager to represent your brand and connect with guests at events. To learn more about our services, contact us today to schedule a free consultation.

Door-to-door marketing is a canvassing technique that is generally used for sales, marketing, advertising, or campaigning, in which the person or persons walk from the door of one house to the door of another, trying to sell or advertise a product or service to the general public or gather information. People who use this sales approach are often called traveling salesmen, or the archaic name drummer, to “drum up” business. This technique is also sometimes called direct sales. A variant of this involves cold calling first, when another sales representative attempts to gain agreement that a salesperson should visit.

With the realization of telephone “Do Not Call” lists it is becoming increasingly more difficult to connect with consumers and business people. An emerging trend is the deployment of very professional, highly skilled door-to-door canvassers to drive product sales and brand awareness.

Coordinating, training and motivating these teams to produce results are at the very core of Fulcrum’s proven capabilities. Fulcrum has the knowledge and experience required to implement these programs, such as best days and times to canvass, who will sell the most product; male, female, young or mature and what geographics and demographics respond best to door-to-door marketing. Put Fulcrum’s experience to work for you and avoid the costly mistakes of trying to manage these programs in-house.

Hire and Train Door-to-Door Marketing Team

If you’re in charge of hiring people, that typically means that you’ve found success in Door To Door Marketing yourself. You know what it takes to be great, but now you’re stuck with an entirely new problem. How do you find others who will be just as good (if not better) and will stick around and grow into important influencers invested in the long term growth of the company? A great D2D sales company is a great recruiting company. So what does that greatness look like?

First off, you need to realize that you’re not going to hire a superstar every time. If you think you have found one, be careful. It’s not hard for someone to seem golden during one interview and you don’t want to be fooled.

Even if you think the candidate does have a lot of great experience working in the field for other companies, you have to realize that success doesn’t always translate. What worked for them at previous companies probably won’t work as well for you. In fact, their success will probably make them stubborn; after all, what reason do they have to follow your approach when they’ve figured out their own?

It’s also possible that the rep’s previous company might have had much better-developed training and selling systems than you do, and that system was the key reason they killed it. If you’re not developing a competitive system, what does that communicate about your company? The more dialed-in you are about a rep’s success, the more likely you are to attract and keep strong performers.