Seasonal Impact Contracting

Pipeliner CRM Brings Seasonal Impact Contracting 100% Growth—and More

Seasonal Impact Contracting, of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, provides landscape maintenance, landscape development, landscape enhancement and snow removal services across five different business sectors: commercial buildings, multi-family dwellings, retail establishments, industrial buildings, and oil and gas. The new but rapidly growing company has been in business since 2011.

Pipeliner CRM

Seasonal Impact has been using Pipeliner CRM for the last 2 years. The application is used for all aspects of sales. “We’ve deployed Pipeliner with all of our sales reps,” says Keegan Andreas, co-owner and sales managerSales Manager Sales Manager is an executive who leads a sales unit, team or department by setting goals and meeting targets, formulating plans and policies, designating tasks, and developing salespeople.. “We use it on a daily basis to track all our sales—from lead generationLead Generation Lead Generation is a set of activities aimed at generating interest around a product or service through methods such as 1. content marketing (blogging, podcasts, free downloads); 2. advertising (PPC, banner ads, Yellow Pages, sponsoring an event); 3. referrals (recommendations from existing customers and other people); 4. outbound marketing (cold email, cold calling), and 5. partnerships (joint ventures, affiliate marketing). right through to the win stage. Once the call comes into the office it gets immediately put into lead generation, and then it goes through our sales processSales Process Sales Process is a series of strategic steps or a set of activities aimed at driving sales growth through the alignment of personnel, market insight, methodologies, relevant business units, and technology.. It’s been amazing.”

Seasonal Impact Sales Process

The company has learned the importance of a sales process, and has developed one they follow to the letter:

1. Lead Generation
2. Qualification
3. Proposal
4. Follow up
5. Proposal accepted
6. CustomerCustomer Customer is an individual or an organization that purchases a product or signs up for a service offered by a business. Service Highway. This is the stage in which the service is delivered and the customer is made happy.
7. Win. Service paid for. “I don’t consider the project a win until the customer is happy and has paid us,” Andreas says.

The Search for CRM

Andreas, who also serves as one of the company’s salespeople, knew that if the company was going to utilize its sales process and truly grow, a robust CRM solutionSolution Solution is a combination of ideas, strategies, processes, technologies and services that effectively helps an organization achieve its goals or hurdle its challenges. was needed.

“We were using Microsoft Excel, personal notebooks and white boards because we’re a fairly new company we’d never had a CRM program before,” Andreas reports.

Many salespeople shy away from CRM solutions, and Andreas was to discover why when he went in search of one. He tried out one of the biggest: Salesforce. “To be honest, I hated it,” he says. “It was so complicated. I spent hours trying to figure the program out and entering dataData Data is a set of quantitative and qualitative facts that can be used as reference or inputs for computations, analyses, descriptions, predictions, reasoning and planning. and that kind of thing. It originally turned me off CRM programs.”

But determined to solve customer relationship management issues, Andreas persisted. “Two years ago I researched CRM again, and that’s when I stumbled across Pipeliner in a Google search. It was simple and easy to use—it was great.”

It was this ease of use, along with Pipeliner’s unique customization features, that piqued Andreas’s interest. “When I first researched it, Pipeliner claimed we could customize the program specifically for our sales process. I loved that, because every sales process is different—especially ours up here in Canada with landscaping and snow removal. We’re constantly trying to refine things. Being able to customize it was definitely the best thing I thought about Pipeliner before we purchased it.”

Purchase and Implementation

Andreas decided to try Pipeliner out himself, then show it to the rest of his sales force. “Usually when I see something that I like I tend to just jump into it,” Andreas says. “The same went for Pipeliner. I read the details on the website, found a few reviews and then dove right into that thirty day trial. Once I used the trial I was sold on it, and from there it wasn’t hard to sell my partners. I showed them how it worked and showed them what it could do and from there we purchased it.”

The decision to buy was made on the point of how Pipeliner stood behind its productProduct Product refers to anything (an idea, item, service, process or information) that meets a need or a desire and is offered to a market, usually but not always at a price. education. “What finally sold me was how easy it was to learn,” Andreas says. “I knew that if I ever had any questions, I could mail the customer service rep and they would respond back almost immediately. Now since Pipeliner has updated the help button within the program, that’s been a lifesaver for minor questions that I’ve had. I can just go to that help button and instantly gain access to other people’s questions that they’re asking, or figure out what I need help with. It’s been brilliant.”

As many companies have discovered, Andreas found Pipeliner extremely easy to roll out. “I thought rolling out Pipeliner would be tough, but instead it has been really easy,” he says. “It gave us the ability to customize specifically for our sales process, and we were able to change things exactly how we wanted to. Then when our sales reps did have questions, instead of me having to train them hours upon hours, I could direct them right to Pipeliner’s website or right to the help application, and they could be trained through the online videos and the online help. Very simple for us.”

How Pipeliner Has Changed the Company

Andreas has witnessed many positive changes within the company due to Pipeliner. “Pipeliner has given me the ability to view our sales process on an entirely different level—through management reports and the ability to view any metric I would like. It has definitely helped define our sales process more and more.”

“Sales reps love it,” he continues. “Again, because it’s so easy to learn and so easy to use, they can spend more time selling rather than doing data entry. That’s definitely a win-win. The more selling they do the more money they can make.”

But the most significant change has been to the company’s bottom line. “With Pipeliner, we don’t need to spend those countless hours going through spreadsheets or creating formulas,” Andreas concludes. “We can click a button, figure out the report, view it and analyze it, and then refine from there.

“Since we started with Pipeliner, we’ve grown our company by 100 percent, and we’re on track again his year to do another 50 percent growth. I would probably credit that to Pipeliner because it gives us the ability to see everything.”