Turning indirect retail staff into brand advocates

Beko's biggest sales moment happens on someone else's shop floor. The staff making the recommendation don't work for Beko - they're employed by independent retailers and expected to sell several competing brands at once. In that fast-paced, split-attention environment, they need to recall Beko's specific advantages instantly, with a customer standing in front of them.

No control, no guaranteed advocacy

Beko can't dictate how an indirect sales team spends its time, or which brand it favours. Without genuine product knowledge or brand connection, staff default to what's easiest to talk about:

  • A competitor gets recommended simply because it's more familiar

  • Beko's presence on the shop floor thins out

  • Sales are lost at the exact moment a customer is ready to buy

TURNING STAFF INTO BRAND ADVOCATES

The readiness gap

Sending product manuals to retail staff changed nothing - they had access to the specifications and no reason to engage with them. The real barrier wasn't information; it was attention and motivation, especially during short breaks already dominated by social media staff:

  • Knew Beko existed, but not what set it apart

  • Had no engaging reason to spend downtime learning the product range

  • Lacked the confidence to actively push Beko's advantages over a rival's

Passive content had reached its ceiling. It was never going to build advocacy on its own. Staff chose to come back to the experience in their own break time - competing directly with the feed they'd otherwise be scrolling.

Competing with a phone for attention

Totem designed Agent Beko to win the fight for attention it actually faced: a retail worker's five minutes of break time, phone in hand.

Built as a fast, pick-up-and-play experience, it centred on three things:

Competes with social media

Highly interactive mechanics designed to compete directly with social media, not a training module.

Brand culture, not features

Active exploration of Beko's brand culture and USPs, rather than a features list.

Reflex, not recall

Rapid, contextual choices with visible outcomes, so product knowledge became a reflex, not a fact.

The performance shift

Staff who'd explored the product range this way stopped being passive order-takers. Beko's USPs became practical selling tools, not spec-sheet trivia, and that shift showed up in real conversations:

  • Genuine brand affinity instead of surface familiarity

  • Confident, specific recommendations instead of default guesswork

  • A stronger, more consistent Beko presence across an indirect sales force

Results

Voluntary engagement, on their own time

Agent Beko did what manuals and briefings couldn't: it got a disconnected, indirect workforce to choose to engage, repeatedly, during their own break time. That voluntary, repeat engagement translated directly into stronger product awareness and a more confident promotional presence on the shop floor - the moment that actually decides a sale. For a workforce Beko doesn't employ and can't mandate training for, that's the real result: advocacy built through genuine interest, not compliance. It set a foundation for continuous product confidence that a one-off manual never could.