Objective: Improve speed to contact and ease of getting new leads for the sales team at Shine Solar (LuminaryApps users).

Step 1 - Identify Business Owners
​Through a series of meetings with the executive team I established a list of individuals within the company that have the experience and insight necessary to be a resource for the design process. They are the stakeholders or business owners for the sales strategy and management.

Step 2 - Identify Users
After identifying the business owners I met with them to understand who all of our users are and which of the users at the company could best represent the entire sales team.

Step 3 - Observe and Understand
Once I knew who our business owners were and the users I went to work learning in depth what the sales strategy was and how it aligned with the goals of the company as a whole. I also began the process of meeting with users to discuss and observe what their day to day looks like to understand the pitfalls and inefficiencies of the tool they were using at the time. A simple user flow was created that represents the day to day work flow of our sales reps. The essence of this step is to become an expert on the company goals, sales strategy and the user’s struggles with their current tools.

Step 4 - Brainstorm, ideate, list requirements etc.
This is the step where the ideas and brainstorming begin to happen and where the knowledge and understanding of the users is compared against the goals of the company and the sales strategy. With the understanding I had and the business owners together we evaluated what we wanted to accomplish with the sale rep experience in Luminary. The following are what we defined as requirements:

I went to work to map out solutions that perfectly align with company goals and strategy but also provides a clean and incredibly intuitive experience for our users. I also evaluated the overall architecture of the Luminary App Suite and design how it will fit in the bigger picture. This is where all ideas, both good and bad, are presented and evaluated. After churning through a series of ideas and getting feedback from business owners and users along the way, we landed on a direction that not only checked all the requirements boxes but removed unnecessary steps and complexity from the process our sales people were currently experiencing.

​Step 5 - User Interface Design
​At this point I understood the direction, I knew what we were setting out to accomplish and I knew what success looked like. I designed the interface with the goals and direction in mind. The experience I designed gives our sales reps a single location with a list of their leads that they own (leads become owned when voice to voice contact has occurred.) which is easily sortable with row headers and has all the columns necessary to meet requirements. Two view options were designed to serve them the data in a way they would like to see it. The two views are “list view” and “board view” the user can toggle between the views in the page header. “Board view” gives them the added functionality allowing the rep to create custom columns where they can drag and drop the lead cards into a status column to help them keep their list of leads more organized in a series of columns that they establish for themselves giving them the customizability to meet their specific needs.
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The design also included a search bar in the top right corner that instantly winnows down their list. A quick call action button is fixed on the right of each row to call the lead directly from the pipe view. There is also a total lead indicator in the header next to the "My Pipe" page title as well as a lead number indicator pill in the navigation bar on the left allowing the reps to know exactly how many leads are in their pipe at all times.

Another piece to the design is the process of getting new leads added to your pipe. I came up with the idea to give reps a quick access button to request a new lead from any screen in the app right from the side navigation bar. This saves them time and removes complexity from the user experience and rather than requiring a sales rep to navigate somewhere else in the system to get new leads. The button also adapts depending on the types of leads available, the button shows how many brand new leads there are (e.g. "8 New Leads") that have just come in or it will just say "Get next lead" if there are only "bucket leads" (Leads that have been called but contact not yet made). With this approach at the click of the “Get Next Lead” button we rely more heavily on the technology to do the heavy lifting to select a lead, check to see if the rep qualifies, serve up the lead that has been in the queue the longest and initiate the phone call with the lead.

Step 6 - Validate
With interfaces and clickable prototypes ready I started conducting usability interviews with our group of sales reps to validate the design decisions made. Feedback was very positive, however, based on some of the tests I uncovered a few issues with the UI that needed adjustments to better meet the needs of the users. I also presented the designs in product meetings with the business owners and executive team. To better meet the needs of the business goals it was decided to not include the multiple views of the pipe and just deliver the “List View” to better meet the very strict timeline we had to complete this tool. The “Board View” is still in our backlog for a future update to the app.

Step 7 - Deliverables
After design, prototyping and testing, specification Figma links are shared with engineering and product management. I present the screens and flow to the development team and continue to collaborate and touch base through the development process.

Outcome
​The tools designed and built meet the needs of our users and have simplified the sales rep onboarding process because of the sheer simplicity of the pipe and “get next lead” tools. Since launching the pipe interface with built in calling and the “get next lead” button we have seen company annual revenue more than double. Continued testing is being performed on these app features and it continues to delight and offer a solid usable experience for our sales team.