Overview
Need for Strategic Alignment of Sales and Marketing
Bravo Store Systems, an early-stage SaaS company, began to gain momentum and scale up. With the rapid growth of the company came the rapid expansion of the sales team and its unique requirements to meet business goals.
Bravo’s sales and marketing functions were ready to shift from a siloed operational model to a cohesive operational model with a primary focus on CRM transformation.
Kathleen Owen, VP of Marketing, along with other sales and marketing leaders, was charged with overseeing the strategic shift.
Bravo was using the Hubspot CRM for its sales and marketing functions. Kathleen and the team soon realized that they needed a partner to support this initiative of CRM transformation—but they were not looking for a quick fix.
Instead, they sought a process-oriented partner that would help them identify the gaps in their current functionality and recommend as well as execute a new strategy that supported Bravo’s expanding business.
Challenges
CRM in Disarray
When Kathleen and the team initiated the transformation project, we first analyzed their current CRM situation. Bravo was using Hubspot Enterprise Suite as a CRM. They soon realized that their CRM was in complete disarray.
Duplicate properties, outdated contact information, and lack of segmentation were all just surface-level issues.
The problem was much deeper, explains Kathleen:
“The CRM was in a really, it was kind of in disarray, there were a lot of duplicate properties, contact records weren't necessarily updated. We knew that we really had to go in and spend some serious time and effort cleaning up the CRM. So it would be useful for our marketing team, useful for our sales team, and that we could actually use the really powerful automation that exists within Hubspot.”
Lack of Database Segmentation
Database segmentation is the key to the effective nurturing of marketing subscribers and contacts. But with a lack of accurate segmentation of the database on their CRM, Bravo’s marketing and sales teams were sending manual ad hoc emails to contacts that were not effective.
“There was no segmentation among the different verticals that we serve or really between customers and prospects. Everybody was basically getting the same messages at the same time regardless of what industry or vertical they serve, says Kathleen."
The team was also not leveraging Hubspot’s full automation capabilities.
Inaccurate, Decentralized, and Manual Reporting System
The reporting and visibility on key performance indicators were almost non-existent for Kathleen and the team. The existing reports were disintegrated across spreadsheets, Hubspot, as well as emails. This made it almost impossible to track sales and marketing success.
Kathleen adds:
“There wasn't this centralized place for us to be pulling information from, to know how both our sales and marketing team were performing. And so we realized that we're going through this growth period, expanding the sales team, expanding the marketing team.”
The team was desperate for a streamlined and effective reporting system for both sales and marketing.
Lack of Standardized and Documented CRM Process
Kathleen and her team discovered that many of their challenges stemmed from not having a standardized and documented process for using Hubspot CRM. As Bravo grew, they didn't create a user guide for how their organization should operate and for their CRM system, resulting in ad hoc instances and disorganized data. This chaos had a negative impact on their sales and marketing performance.
Solution
Partnering With Processology
After considering their options, Kathleen and the team sought a partner that would help them clean up their Hubspot CRM.
But after talking to Processology, they soon realized they needed a partner also to ensure their Hubspot operations remain sustainable and support the sales and marketing functions.
Kathleen says:
“What really struck me was that Processology, unlike a lot of other agencies I've worked with, had a very deep understanding of the relationship between marketing and sales and how using our systems could actually improve the collaboration and improve our joint efforts.”
And so begin the partnership between Bravo and Processology.
CRM, sales, and marketing process re-alignment
Digging deeper beyond the surface-level CRM issues, Processology helped Bravo uncover the root of its challenges in the process, technology, data, and enablement functions. After getting to the root cause, the process experts at Processology helped the Bravo team evaluate, improve, and implement processes that align with Bravo’s business goals.
Leveraging Hubspot’s powerful capabilities of automation, segmentation, and customization helped speed up the implementation of the improved processes.
Database cleanse
The first task Processology took on was cleaning the Hubspot CRM system to strengthen the integrity of the data. Doing so allowed Bravo to get some quick wins that were backed by data and helped direct the CRM improvement initiative.
Territory management
Since Bravo offers its services internationally, getting the right lead to the right sales rep created complications. Processology worked closely with the Bravo sales and marketing teams to design and develop a territory assignment-based process to streamline sales rep assignments.
CRM customization
Despite all the powerful capabilities, HubSpot didn't fix Bravo's needs. Processology designed and developed custom additions to HubSpot offering to help Bravo create and manage client locations, customized views, record layouts, record creation forms, custom properties, lead prioritization, and so much more
Automation transformed the CRM, sales, and marketing processes
Processology helped the Bravo team implement streamlined automation workflows to fit the exact needs and fill the gaps within the sales and marketing processes. This helped them:
- eliminate redundant manual work
- replace ad hoc nurture campaigns with planned and segmented automated campaigns
- automate tracking of campaign performance
- automate lead assignments to the sales team
- automate sales follow-up and accountability processes
- automate pipeline stages and status changes
Needless to say, Bravo finally made automation work to their advantage.
Sales and marketing alignment redefined
The seamless handoff between sales and marketing for leads, contacts, reports, and intelligence, helped Bravo enhance the collaboration and also improve visibility and accountability.
Without disrupting the current operations, Processology addressed the challenges of both teams and recommended solutions that transform the sales and marketing operations to improve collaboration. Processology successfully completed over 350 tasks, resulting in increased revenue, improved efficiency, and a better experience for both Bravo's employees and customers.
Automated and Flawless Reporting
On reports and metrics, Kathleen says,
“What's been fantastic is that with the reporting, not only am I able to sit with my leadership team and report accurately on where marketing is doing really well, but also where we need to improve.”
The implementation of a newly improved reporting process helped the Bravo sales and marketing teams shift direction and strategy based on real-time accurate data.
Everything Documented
As process experts, Processology documented the improved CRM, sales, and marketing processes in detail. This helped Kathleen and the team improve team accountability, maintain process integrity, and simplify training for new joiners.
Future expansion with Processology
Bravo has expanded the scope with Processology to take advantage of process expertise and improve day-to-day operations.
Kathleen goes on to say,
“ I know that the work in the future with Processology is only going to help elevate us because I'm already seeing how much they've elevated us over just the past nine months.”
The mindset of continuous improvement is a common ground between both parties, according to Kathleen.
“Improving processes is iterative and as our company scales and grows and changes and our needs change, we need somebody who can help us in a way that supports that growth and that change within our organization. Quite frankly, I just couldn't do without them.”
Based on the team’s experience, Kathleen doesn’t hesitate to recommend Processology to others.
“If anybody is considering working with Processology, hands down, I would recommend this team, the work they do will be one of the best investments you make.”