The 2015 CRM Market Elite: PERQ

THE CHALLENGE

Founded in 2001, PERQ is a marketing technology company that arms brands with the tools to engage customers through incentivized promotions. PERQ has more than 75 employees and works with automotive dealers, publishers, and retailers across the country.

By the end of 2013, the company wanted to expand and had a new team in the works. It had been using a straight Salesforce.com CRM system to track customer engagement since 2006, but it needed tools that went beyond the standard ones. "Salesforce had a lot of great tracking and analytics, but it didn't help us figure out where we were and where we needed work in the sales process," Stephanie Thompson, director of marketing success at PERQ, says.

For one thing, the company needed a way to automate processes; logging calls was a 12-click process, a drawn-out routine that manifested as time the salesperson could spend actually selling. Likewise, it needed a way to interpret the logs, as the data was buried in Salesforce without a filter to sort it. "We realized that we didn't have a solid sales process in place," Thompson says. "We had no way of zeroing in on the specific areas our sales rep either excelled at or needed help with."

THE SOLUTION

After evaluating the products of three companies, PERQ turned to Salesvue in January 2014 for its sales acceleration and business intelligence solution. Of the others, "none of them really dialed into sales cadence and included the other analytics behind it the way that Salesvue does," Thompson says.

"Salesvue takes any process—all the way from cleansing data through renewal of customers—and automates that process native in Salesforce," says Kim Glaze, vice president of client success at Salesvue. The program analyzes data for individuals and teams, breaking it down to identify areas that need attention.

For PERQ, the analysis revealed that reps needed to make more attempts to reach prospects. Reps were making an average of six calls before throwing in the towel. Salesvue's analysis showed that the 11th call to a prospect pushed the conversion rate to 30 percent. That realization led to an average jump of 330 percent in conversations per representative. The agents now make 125 percent more calls. These improvements ultimately led to a 500 percent increase in sales conversions overall.

The tool's data-driven approach can also help the company make more informed staffing decisions. Peter Fuller, who has since stepped down from his position as CMO at Salesvue, told CRM magazine last year that the solution lets users see how staffing choices can affect their bottom lines. For instance, a sales kickoff meeting typically takes agents out of the field for a period of time, which amounts to lost opportunities and revenue. But clients typically "[don't] see the cost beyond…the food and hotel," Fuller said. That time away from the field results in measurable numbers of conversions and sales that aren't being realized.

Today, more than 20 people at PERQ are using Salesvue, and the company has tripled its amount of licenses. PERQ has also begun rolling out the solution to its prospecting team.

Though PERQ hasn't made a routine of measuring ROI, it is confident Salesvue has been working as well as ever. "Our increased usage speaks to the value we see in Salesvue," Thompson says. "If we didn't have it, I don't know how we would manage our processes, or how we'd make sure we're on the right track as a sales department."

And since the initial deployment, the company has found a need for new functionality—and Salesvue has come through. "We needed a date feature so that we could base actions and activities on specific start and end dates," Thompson says. "They got that built and made it effective for us."

REAL RESULTS

• The number of calls agents were able to make increased by 125 percent.
• The average number of conversations per rep jumped by 330 percent.
• Sales conversions increased by 500 percent overall.
• Data revealed that the 11th call to a prospect yielded a 30 percent conversion rate.