What: Geoffroy van Raemdonck says the company is rebounding and supported by remote selling "scaling" relationships with customers.

Why it is important: The executive discusses remote selling development and changing the compensation structure.

“That’s something that existed in an unstructured way, where sales associates were texting to their customers. But in 2019 we built Connect, which is a clienteling tool, and in March 2020 we rolled it out to 50 associates as a beta test for two weeks and then the pandemic hit, and we accelerated that rollout. Those tools have done so well for us that we have continued to invest and it’s agile. It releases new features.”

With this third channel, the goal is “to scale the relationship” with customers, said van Raemdonck. It involves utilizing artificial intelligence machine learning, through Stylyze, a Seattle-based, women-founded SaaS platform that Neiman’s acquired last June. “It basically tells the sales associate; these are the customers you should call, and these are the looks you should provide.”

According to van Raemdonck, NMG has had eight million client interactions since launching Connect and sales associates interact with 50 to 100 customers via Connect each week, leading to significantly more conversion.

With the onset of Connect, NMG changed its compensation structure. “We reward sales associates for every interaction they’ve had so if you engage on Connect, but a transaction doesn’t happen immediately, the sales associate still gets credit,” provided the products discussed are subsequently bought online or in the store, van Raemdonck explained. “As long as we can track that there was an interaction, we give credit to the sales associate.”

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