‘You don’t need a Cadillac…’: Salesforce Easy Start for Quick ROI

G2 Performance, a national marching band uniform supply company based in Wilmington, DE, had a common sales funnel problem: How do you keep your salespeople focused on sales activities that return the most orders while at the same time filling the top of the sales funnel for nurturing future customers? That’s when I explained to the founder: “You don’t need a Cadillac; you just need Salesforce customized to your sales process.”

Read the Full Case Study Here.

G2 specializes in designing and producing high-performance marching band uniforms for high schools and colleges, treating band members as “Marching Athletes.” G2 had a deep database of existing, past, and potential customers, but they lacked the time and tools to organize and prioritize these contacts for their salespeople.

Although their customer service was excellent in handling product ordering, tracking, and delivery efficiently, they lacked a systematic approach for managing how to manage and upsell products to existing customers while farming new prospects. G2 had been using Salesforce for a year-and-a-half, but the company wasn’t seeing any ROI.

Once this company realized that getting the most out of Salesforce was going to require some effort, they asked The Alias Group to optimize Salesforce in their “Easy Start” customization program to bridge the gap between their ROI expectations and their real-world experiences. Salesforce customization means organizing leads, matching unique sales terminology to Salesforce’s opportunity stages, and developing seamless reporting to analyze and measure sales performance.

Alias focused on making certain input fields mandatory and then following through with periodic review of reports based on those fields. These are the four pillars of that feedback loop:

1. Input Lead Source: Understanding where leads are coming from is a critical component for growth.

2. Populate Account Information/Profile Fields: Creating a structure on the types of questions sales staff should ask enables sales to develop more efficient and successful strategies.

3. Create Opportunities: With structure in the opportunity process, shortening that sales cycle becomes part of your culture.

4. Analyze Metrics: Meaningful reports and dashboards identify where sales staff are doing well and where they need help.

(More on these four critical processes here.)

Both sales staff and management were now able to visualize the fruits of their efforts. The company immediately gained customized fields, more meaningful stages, targeted sales efforts, and visibility into leads and contacts. The company now had real-time visibility into the progress they were making in connecting with leads, managing the pipeline, converting prospects, and discovering what strategies were working.

Read the Full Case Study Here.