This Fortune 500 manufacturing company knew it needed to revamp its inside sales process. The outsourced team it was using to generate opportunities was sending over bogus inbound leads to hit promised numbers. Even worse, they responded to prospects with the same message instead of personalizing messages based on the industry or lead source.
The company decided to overcome these issues by bringing the inside sales function in-house. Building out a team was just part of it. They also needed to find a sales engagement platform that mapped tightly to its business structure and needs. For that, the company turned over the evaluation process to Slalom, a global consulting firm focused on strategy, technology, and business transformation.
The Highlights
A Fortune 500 manufacturing company that sells some of the world’s most popular technology products was at a crossroads. Its B2B division had been relying on an outsourced vendor for inside sales, and the arrangement was generating serious quality control issues. Unqualified leads were being created to meet quota and no effort was being made to personalize messages. The company decided to bring inside sales in-house, which also required finding the right sales engagement platform for its new inside sales team. The company turned to Slalom Consulting to provide them with an expert evaluation of the leading sales engagement providers, with the most important criteria being Salesforce integration and ease of use for their sellers.
After an extensive evaluation, Slalom selected Groove, which Slalom was able to implement in a matter of weeks instead of months. This enabled Slalom to focus on client strategy, Flow design, and template creation instead of the heavy and time-consuming operational lift required with other platforms. Within a month of implementation, the Fortune 500 manufacturer saw a 32% increase in the conversion rate for leads that came in through the new process that Slalom created with Groove versus their previous outsourced provider.
Finding the Perfect Fit
The company gave strict parameters to Slalom for its new sales engagement platform. On the technical side, it needed to integrate tightly and easily with Salesforce, as well as being quick to implement and not difficult to manage.
On the user side, the most important criteria was an intuitive UI that would maximize adoption by reps not familiar with sales engagement platforms.
“The company initially asked us to look at Salesforce Engage as well as two of the biggest providers,” said Zenobia Noor, Sr. Consultant, GGP Salesforce. “Salesforce’s solution was too lightweight for what they needed, and the other two required too much IT time to implement. Plus, their UIs were so complicated that the company didn’t think that their reps could figure out how to use them.”