CRM - January 2009 - (Page 44)

his “biggest lead-generating system.” Of those, he’s physically worked with eight buyers since the implementation, all of whom came through MoxieChat. The solution works similar to a popup message triggered when a visitor is about to leave the site. The virtual chat agent “stops them in their tracks,” he says. Using artificial intelligence based on natural-language parsing, keyword recognition, and company-approved messaging, the system delivers automated responses that resolve basic, immediate questions. In doing so, the virtual agent aims to nudge visitors toward a specific action. Johnston directs them to a page where they can add their contact information and what type of property they’re looking for. (About 10 percent of visitors do so, he says.) He can then respond at his convenience. This not only unshackles him from his desk, but enables him to literally run a 24-hour business. The solution captures and stores every conversation, allowing Johnston to identify the in-demand topics that should be incorporated into the virtual chat. MoxieChat’s success shattered the idea that visitors would be more receptive to a live rep. In fact, Johnston suspects that clients are hesitant to talk to a salesperson.“They’re more willing to give me information when they don’t have to talk to me at that specific time,” he says. Familiar tasks, he adds, have grown difficult in the new economic climate. Buyers are now having trouble getting loans and financing down payments.Yet despite the tough market, Johnston’s optimistic. “Most agents are leaving the business and going hungry. I’m able to produce a steady flow of leads and generate a steady income. It’s nice.” —Jessica Tsai SALES CONTENTMENT FOR CONTENT MANAGEMENT Monk Development gets a handle on its sales process and pipeline T the payoff WITH MOXIECHAT, REALTOR RICHARD JOHNSTON HAS BEEN ABLE TO: $ increase the number of potential leads generated through a chat agent from 15 each month to 100; engage his site visitors 24 hours a day; cut the time spent at his desk each day from 10 hours to as little as one hour; and entice 10 percent of visitors to leave their contact information. here comes a time for any small business when the founders are no longer the ones pulling in new accounts. Suddenly, there’s a sales force to consider. That change can be a test for the company’s business model and sales process, and not every firm survives. Monk Development is one of the survivors. Monk Development has been building custom Web content management systems and e-commerce sites since 2004. The company sells direct to several verticals and also white-labels its systems for other vendors to resell, and has used everything from Microsoft Excel to open-source CRM software to manage accounts. “When we started the company, there were just two of us. We had a hodgepodge of different systems—we tried several but got no real benefit from them,” says James Martin, a partner at Monk and the firm’s chief operating officer. “Once we had several remote salespeople, we had no way to automate or collaborate on activities, no way to track and rate leads, or pull historical data on clients.” When Monk Development was first founded, its primary sales team was outsourced and regionally distributed. As the company grew, the sales team was brought in-house, in the sense of no longer being outsourced, but continued to remain geographically scattered throughout the country and focused on distinct industries.“We had a lot of stress because there was no real measurement of the pipeline,” Martin says. That stress began to melt away once Martin found Landslide Technologies. “The salesperson walked us through Landslide’s capabilities, and was able to jump on with his own Landslide tools,” Martin says. “We experienced the sales process, as a customer, through him. I saw the ability to switch between pricing documents and provide relevant information quickly.” Monk sealed the deal soon after the demo in April 2007, and was soon up and running with Landslide’s iO Channel and VIP Assistants offerings. The iO Channel is a secure, centralized portal for storing, managing, and exchanging documents, and can send salespeople an immediate alert when a prospect downloads a document. The VIP Assistants service offloads data-entry jobs to Landslide personnel. Monk’s sales reps can simply call or email with requests to update contacts, accounts, opportunities, and tasks so they can spend more time selling. That advantage sped the sales team’s adoption of Landslide, without any special incentives. “As companies adjust to the economic downturn, even a smaller company like Monk can have sophisticated tools to convert the pipeline prospects into customers,” says Saman Haqqi, vice president of marketing for Landslide Technologies. “They’re not depending only on the natural talent of the salesperson.” The effect of Landslide on Monk’s sales team was immediate. “Time to ramp up [for new hires] was about six months, which is not out of the ordinary; you don’t want salespeople not selling, though, and now it’s half the time or less,” Martin says. “With warmpipeline handoff, one new salesperson closed a sale after one week on the job.” Martin recalls some initial difficulty integrating Landslide, but says it was only growing pains. “After the first year of experience we discovered we needed to add another step in our sales process,” he says. “Prior to Landslide, though, we didn’t really have a sales process. Now we do, and we follow it.” —Marshall Lager the payoff IMPLEMENTING LANDSLIDE TECHNOLOGIES ENABLED MONK DEVELOPMENT TO: $ double its revenue; expand the sales team while keeping it virtual; and reduce from six months to three months (or less) the time it took new hires to close a first deal. 44 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | JANUARY 2009 www.destinationCRM.com http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - January 2009

CRM - January 2009 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point The Shots Heard ’Round the World 30,000-Foot Views Of the Cloud Stuffing the Ballot Box— With Complaints The Marketing Line for ’09 CRM on Twitter Technology Helps Insurance Weather the Storm Required Reading The Google-ization of CRM The Feedback Funnel Email: What’s Inside? Shake Your Moneymakers Lead Sweet Lead Incentives at the Speed of Lightpath Sales Contentment for Content Management A Worthwhile Excursion Into Call Recording Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Connect Pint of View

CRM - January 2009

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