Admissions Consulting Company Streamlines and Increases Sales Activities by 145%

CHALLENGED BY A LACK OF TECHNOLOGY

When we started our partnership with Princeton College Consulting (PCC) back in 2017, we were met with unestablished processes, hours worth of manual steps in their system (really!), and a lack of true ownership of the CRM. 

On the PCC team, there was a lot of task-juggling between many people, often times with folks waiting for others on the team to pick up the task to avoid adding to their already overwhelming number of to-do items.

Leads kept slipping through the cracks left and right, data was shambled, and sales follow-ups were difficult to keep track of.

It wasn’t that people weren’t doing anything—it’s that everyone was already doing so much for the company. It was nearly impossible to log and manage sales activities in a way that was visible to upper management on top of their growing list of responsibilities.

But as PCC was entering a major growth year, they were ready to invest in state-of-the-art tech to streamline their sales process and tackle their three major issues:

1. They had no dedicated CRM champion user savvy enough for their new tech stack.
2. Their existing processes were painfully inefficient (arguably non-existent) and too time-consuming.
3. There was a lack of transparency between existing opportunities and activities done with them.

In essence? They were ready to start from scratch and build a sophisticated, automated, and transparent HubSpot CRM system that could achieve all their goals.

SOLUTIONING A RAD NEW SYSTEM

First things first: appoint a sales system champion.

With every optimized sales system, there needs to be the right candidate for managing it.

Kim Delmont had recently left her position at a marketing executive at a Fortune 100 company, with previous agency experience, when PCC enlisted her help. Having never used the HubSpot CRM, she was anxious to hit the ground running with the new and unknown.

While Kim underwent extensive 1-on-1 training with the Revenue River team, it became clear we finally had our champion. Not only did she work with us with the utmost grace and dedication, but she also took steps to learn additional functionality entirely on her own—to our pleasant surprise, she became an expert in just a few weeks thanks to her added dedication outside of "work hours."

Next, we needed to automate some seriously manual work.

One of the key responsibilities for Kim was to send a Word doc to the newly closed customer with a series of about 100 questions for them to answer and return back to her (you know the process: download attachment > complete > save > attach > email back, oof!).

Simple enough.

Until we learned that upon receiving it back, she then had to manually copy and paste each individual answer into another separate document that they would analyze and send back to the client.

There’s more.

She then had to manually copy and paste each individual answer into the CRM so we could keep an aggregate of the data and save the questionnaire file to the contact record. This would take upwards of several hours, depending on how many new customers PCC generated for this product.

Are you cringing yet?

We knew there had to be a better, more user-friendly way to collect the questionnaire answers, store the data in an easy-to-find place, and deliver a kick-ass document assessment to new clients.

Thankfully, automation and integration are Revenue River’s bread and butter.

We built PCC a custom web form for a more professional experience for their customers to fill out their given questionnaire. Microsoft Word has a place in this world, but it certainly is not in the customer experience at PCC. Thank you for your service; you can retire now, Word.

The magic then happens on the back end. Each form field is populated into the contact record in the HubSpot CRM.

To take things a step further, we designed and developed a custom document to integrate with HubSpot with a newly introduced piece of technology for PCC: PandaDoc.

We enabled the native HubSpot-PandaDoc integration and built a custom template with a more professional look that could be delivered to customers. Creating the document is now a breeze. The only steps required are 1) pulling up the HubSpot contact record and 2) clicking "Create Document" from the PandaDoc integration. In a single click,  all questionnaire answers from the client are pulled into the correct corresponding placement in the document. This created a streamlined process that involved just a few clicks, but increased customer-experience with a faster, more professional process.

No copy-paste needed.

And the result? Literal hours have been given back to Kim and the team.

Front cover of the new PandaDoc template

INJECTING AUTOMATION TO INCREASE EFFICIENCY

Next, we needed to build automation to save time & increase sales outreach.

With a powerful CRM in their hands, we weren't all that surprised to find such an enormous opportunity to use some key HubSpot functionality that not only saved Kim and the team more time, but encouraged regular sales follow-ups, increased sales meetings, and improved visibility in sales activities.

The use of HubSpot's meeting links reduced friction for prospects looking to schedule time with PCC members. Since Kim often has prospects who want to speak with Peter Tilles, the Co-Founder and Managing partner, this has enabled her to send his availability via his HubSpot meeting link.

To further streamline sales prospecting, HubSpot sequences enabled Kim to bring her A-game for sales follow-ups. Automated, human-sounding emails not only increased prospect email engagement, but ultimately led to more frequent sales calls for both her and Peter.

To further streamline, Peter needed a quick way to update the CRM after his calls. Logging notes and @mentioning team members were okay, but we needed something simpler, faster, and more holistic. We developed automated mechanisms that:

• Notified Kim and other team members of Peter’s updates.
• Moved deals to appropriate deal stages, depending on the outcome of calls.
• Assigned tasks and sent reminders.
• Logged his call activity
• Reassign contact owners.

All of this was automated with about 3 clicks from Peter. And as a co-founder with a million different hats to wear in a day, this was an absolute win.

EMPOWERING SALES PEOPLE WITH SALES ENABLEMENT

After using the new automated system over the last several months, PCC has grown into a well-oiled machine.

Sales qualified leads are more clearly captured, and Kim gets automated reminders and tasks about opportunity statuses so nothing slips through the cracks.

She and Peter have been able to handle their sales prospecting with heavily increased productivity that also gets logged on record, all with the use of sophisticated and automated tech. Now, they're able to collectively make hundreds of sales calls a month AND manage hundreds of personalized sales emails. Take a look:

Compared to prior years, Kim and her team are already lightyears ahead of sticky-note reminders, manual email follow-ups, and back-and-forth "What are your availabilities next week?" emails.

The results speak for themselves. Less than halfway through 2019 and compared to 2018, we are already:

• Up 140% of sales emails to contacts.
• Down 12% in days to close.
• Up 108% of email engagement from prospects.
• Logged 135% more sales meetings.
• 15% increase in sales when comparing the same time frame between 2018 and 2019.

And remember that PandaDoc integration to help sell and deliver one of their services? In 2018, 42% of those sales converted into a second, upgraded sale.

Not to mention, they're benefiting from the use of email templates that perform at open rates of 87% and click-rates of 65%. With, of course, the added bonus of additional time saved no longer having to manually type out the same email repeatedly.

When all is said and done, we see an average of about 145% increase in sales activities. Their team may be small, but it's damn scrappy.

ONGOING OPTIMIZATION

Princeton College Consulting's partnership with Revenue River is deeply rooted in the fundamentals: carefully listening to their needs, extending trust, and an enormous amount of auditing and planning.

Like many companies, PCC found tremendous success by investing in the right tech and the right implementation team.

After a year of rigorous building, planning, testing, and more testing, we were able to create a sales system to truly impact their productivity and sales prospecting. But we won't stop there. Like many great things, PCC's sales system and HubSpot usage must grow and evolve—you can never get it right on the first try. Thankfully, as Kim and the PCC team have strongly demonstrated, they're always ready to adapt and adopt new changes for the greater good of the company.

With all these new processes and tools in place, Princeton College Consulting has a sturdy foundation to continue its rapid growth. And with their resilience and determination, they're prepared to tackle any new challenges that come their way.

Are you ready to level up? Reach out today to learn more about how we can help with your sales enablement and integration work.