Since 1989, Pella Windows & Doors of Houston has provided complete end-to-end services for homeowners. From manufacturing to installation and replacement, Pella ensures their customers have full product coverage. Providing that coverage requires knowledge, and the Pella team found a way to receive an unbiased, accurate analysis of rep activity.

The challenges

Pella Houston provides end-to-end services for all of their windows and doors, but they often found themselves doing a lot of guesswork as they moved through the process.

 “It was just uncertainty from start to finish, said Phil Wright, Sales Manager at Pella Houston. “You could have five people see the same thing and there's five different versions of that.” 

Bandwidth also became a concern. Pella insisted that managers do ridealongs, but trying to stretch 15 ridealongs per month across a team of nearly 10 people wasn’t as effective as they wanted.

“You don't have enough data to coach when you're not with people that often,” said Eric Smithey, General Manager, Sales,  Pella Houston. 

They needed more data, and they needed it fast.

Rilla consolidates information for an objective picture 

Pella adopted Rilla and rolled it out to the team by first explaining that they were only using it to identify ways to improve. Once they began integrating it into their natural, everyday habits, they quickly realized the benefits.

“As we saw improvement in our metrics trickling down from our top reps, the rest of the team realized, ‘Well, if I want to get better, if I want to reach those heights, then I better start engaging on some of this technology,” Phillip said.

They’ve also stepped up their coaching game. Eric loves analytics, and he’s been able to dive deep into the data and personalize the findings. 

“When we first started with Rilla, we realized that our best reps were having the best success when our talk time was less than 80%. As a branch we were at about 84%,” he explained. “We decided that we would focus on that and do a lot of training to lower the talk ratio.”  

They got the entire office down to a talk time of 78%, and saw a huge bump in their close ratio.

The results

In  the first five months, they saw a five-point increase in their close ratio. They’ve also seen a substantial jump in their yields and bigger tickets on jobs as reps have polished their presentation practices and honed their skills.

“We've seen the folks who've adopted Rilla completely—not just to record and look at analytics, but to review, listen to their conversations, pinpoint things they're doing well and things they've missed—those folks have seen typically double-digit improvements in close rate, which of course cascades into other metrics that we're looking at,” said Phillip.

Some sales reps were initially anxious about being recorded, but the results calmed those fears. New reps are growing the most and the fastest because they're able to get more information more quickly, review it, learn from it, and get closer to their potential a lot faster than with traditional training methods.

“In today's fast-paced sales environment, it’s important for me to use Rilla because it helps make me a better salesperson. I can go in and look at things that I'm not doing, things that I am doing right. It's the only way to get honest feedback,” said Bridgette Cummings, Replacement Sales Rep for Pella. 

Sales leaders can’t be everywhere at once, and Rilla allows them to know what customers and sellers are saying, which ultimately leads to more satisfied customers.

“Rilla gives you the ability to see the behaviors of every seller, on every appointment, almost every day. And there's just nothing else you can do in your business that's going to have that level of impact,” Eric said. 

Along with improved sales metrics, they’ve gone from a 4.5 to a 4.7 Google Review, demonstrating that they’re providing a better customer experience. And as long as they have the analytics from Rilla, they will continue to do so.