Since 1989, Lifestyle Home Products has provided Ontario homeowners with energy-efficient home improvement solutions, from sunrooms to window replacements. As the company expanded its services across the province, they needed a smart, scalable way to grow the sales team and get the most value from sales leadership.

The challenges

Lifestyle Home Products had begun to expand their footprint across Canada. They needed more boots on the ground, but covering large regions takes a lot of time.

“Ontario is about 10 hours of drive time,” said Bryn Catton, Sales Manager. “For me to go and ride with one rep takes a whole day. Two ridealong days a week means I’m two days down, and I can’t catch up.”

Marcus Carroll, VP of Sales, agreed that being a sales manager required a lot of driving, a lot of gas, and a lot of down time. 

“It’s a lot of unproductive driving time, going from city to city into different areas and working with our sales reps on an in-person basis,” he said.

Rilla allows sales managers to perform unlimited ridealongs

The team explored various options, including logging platforms, but Rilla was the clear solution to making ridealongs feasible in such an expansive area. It allows t Lifestyle Home Products program to be much more efficient.

“We believe in ridealongs,” said Chris Stewart, Director of Sales. “Rilla allows us to get in a car with an unlimited number of reps and train a dozen reps in one day instead of two.”

Rilla also made it possible for sales reps to take the initiative to improve their performance. “The top end of our sales staff really bought into the program,” Carroll said. “They actually go in and coach themselves at nighttime. We’re seeing their close rates change quite drastically, and we can then use these results to help coach newer sales reps.”

The Results

“Across our whole program and company, there’s been a 7% increase in our close rate,” Catton said. 

“It’s also allowed us to increase our net sales per lead issued (NSLI) by over $700,” Carroll added. “It’s allowing us to scale as we add on people, so we can start spending our money more smartly and better respect our leads.”

Rilla allows Steward to go on virtual ridealongs and see which part of the sales process isn’t working for them. “It’s that idea of being 1% better. I can break down their process, look at specific aspects of their sales program, and train to a need as opposed to training to a general idea.”

And when evaluating a particular aspect of the sales process, they can zero in on that moment and make tweaks quickly.

“We can improve their performance tomorrow or even later that same day,” Stewart said. “Without Rilla, you would never be able to get that quick of a coaching session and fix a sales rep’s performance.”

Leaders may spend less time on the road, but they've increased productivity.

“Rilla has allowed our sales managers to take a step back from the car but be more effective because they can now run four or five times the amount of ridealongs virtually than what they were able to do on a one-on-one basis," Carrol said. "It’s allowed us to grow our sales force with fewer managers.”