With Salesforce CRM Expansion, CT Corporation Cuts Sales Cycle and Doubles Average Number of Weekly Sales Calls per Rep

Challenge

• CT Corporation, a leading provider of compliance and governance workflow tools and services, needed a Web-based, centralized repository of sales and customer information to streamline operations and boost the effectiveness of the sales process
• The incumbent manual spreadsheet solution could not meet the expanding needs beyond contact management
• Lags in the sale cycles revealed a need to condense the time to close
• Execs needed real time data so ad hoc reports were constantly requested

Solution

• CT Corporation initially deployed Salesforce CRM Enterprise Edition to select users; it subsequently rolled out the solution with Microsoft Outlook integration to 215 users in six departments that span sales, sales engineering, finance, service, telesales, and compensation
• Integration with an order system sends real-time feeds so order information shows up in Salesforce CRM within minutes
• One-way integration with JD Edwards displays consistent real-time financial and compensation information in Salesforce CRM
• To enforce 100 percent adoption, the company mandates the use of Salesforce CRM as a condition of employment and bases compensation off numbers reflected in the system
• Customizable dashboards track pertinent metrics, such the number of orders taken, orders cancelled, and a bevy of sales performance data that can be viewed at a glance
• Using Salesforce CRM Marketing, the company creates campaigns that generate leads from contests and tradeshows
• CT Corporation replaced Remedy with Salesforce CRM Call Center to manage a 40-person 24/7 call center; cases track each customer issue so anyone can see what’s happening with a particular customer at the click of a mouse
• Custom tabs such as EDGAR Order Forms, Finance, Collections, and SWAT Forms, which provide empty/full meters to gauge the workload of a group that takes on overflow work, house specific information relevant to each group

Results

• Salesforce CRM helped the company identify the cause behind lags in the sales cycle, resulting in 80 days cut from the process
• CT Corporation doubled the average number of weekly sales call per rep
• By tying the conditions of employment and compensation to the use of Salesforce CRM, the company ensures 100 percent adoption—thereby driving data consistency and integrity
• Service, marketing, and sales have access to account activity from any location while management has better visibility into productivity, pipeline, territory coverage, close rates, and other key metrics
• Eliminated all ad hoc manual reports