Why pipedrive?
We asked Stuart Rowell, a successful business consultant, to report his own experience with Pipedrive, what he likes about it, and his experience in its implementation with teams.
Many clients report a positive feeling when they start using Pipedrive, we selected Stuart because of his role and his seniority matter.
The wide team of salespeople he deals with is also important: wide teams are more complex and often risky to implement due to human dynamics you carefully have to handle, but when you succeed the benefits are huge.
An organisation with large sales teams can really benefit from a well-shaped CRM.
Hi Stuart, thanks for your availability. Please, can you tell us what is your role, and how do you work with technology and digital transformation with organisations?
I am the Interim Chief Revenue Officer (responsible for all global sales) at Sunamp Limited in the UK. Sunamp design and manufacture heat & cool storage systems (batteries) for residential, commercial, and automotive use.
My role is to grow the global sales team & drive revenue and margin growth for the business, as well as drive our international expansion.
Integral to that is the design and implementation of new systems and processes that support our sales teams – CRM (Pipedrive) is central to this.
You suggest Pipedrive to your clients when they come to CRM. Pipedrive is a B2B sales CRM, which means Pipedrive is quite specific for that business model, as we know no product is good for everyone. How a CRM in B2B can be useful in supporting sales processes, and what is the killer feature that your clients really can’t wait for?
Pipedrive provides a common, easy-to-use system that helps standardise our sales approach.
The key features for me are speed of implementation and the KPI reporting. For the sales teams, it’s really ease-of-use & flexibility.
The APP version is also critical for capturing data whilst salespeople are on the move. Read more!
In your experience, what are the most critical areas to care for when it comes to design and to deploy the implementation of a CRM?
The critical thing for me is to do something quickly with a small group and then listen to the feedback. Make changes and roll out rapidly – don’t hold back! Then keep making small changes as you get feedback.
The other key is to make it clear that Pipedrive is the system everyone is reporting on, and the data integrity is critical. Also, make sure you can the outputs you need to make decisions.
Quite often, organisations report that salespeople do not like to use a CRM. Does that match your experience too? If so, what can be the reason for that?
Yes, I think that’s true – quite often that’s because the systems become a constraint and put too much admin onto the sales team.
It’s important that your sales team are invested in the new platform, and you make changes to suit them. Pipedrive makes that really easy.
What is your secret weapon to make salespeople love the CRM?
Use it for sales meetings (no additional reports) and make the changes they ask for.
When companies start implementing a CRM or project migration, what do you suggest checking or defining before choosing the digital tool?
The ability to migrate data from the current system and that there is the potential to grow the system as you grow.
Make sure there are plenty of potential add-ons to grow your functionality in the future. Don’t worry about the minute detail – choose a flexible tool and be adaptable.
What is the impact of a visual pipeline and there is any special goal that Pipedrive specifically truly helped to achieve and you can report?
Pipedrive was transformational for Sunamp, we have achieved multi-double-digit revenue growth in 2019, and now have a robust set of KPIs for reporting.
We can also generate the sales forecast in a fraction of the time it took previously & with much better detail, this is also for other businesses I have worked with. It really helped us reset the sales team’s approach quickly, in a matter of days or weeks (other tools we looked at would have taken many months).
The key with sales transformation projects is to act quickly (PACE is the keyword) and do things for the sales team that provide an immediate positive impact.
What we learned:
In short, we understood why salespeople so often fall in love with Pipedrive: a faster learning curve, outcomes easier to reach; less hassle in data input, and fully integrated activities’ management.
“The concept behind Pipedrive, Activity Based Selling, really boosts effectiveness of sales people who can, just via their phone, manage all scheduled activities and contact management.”
If company management’s key benefits are the speed of the implementation process and the learning delay of salespeople, that with Pipedrive are both dramatically reduced, for sales management the core value is on report and dashboard control of KPIs upon the whole sales.
However, the real success of Pipedrive relies on the easy-to-use trademark that supports any salesperson to easily unlink their daily effort.