Customer Story

The Garland Company reaches 90% end-user adoption rate with Pipeline CRM.

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Garland

As a top manufacturer of building products, The Garland Company's sales teams are used to staying on top of the competition.

For more than 100 years, the company has successfully built its name around constructing building envelopes and innovating with industry standard software and applications to meet their clients’ needs.

 

“When you go on premise here, it’s dirty, messy, loud, and it even smells. After all, we manufacture building products,” said Lauren Castagnero, CRM Manager at The Garland Company. “But behind the scenes we are always advancing. We even develop apps like our roof builder app which makes our customer experience that much better.”

The Problem

As the company continued to innovate and grow, they looked at other areas they could improve upon and that’s when they honed in on its sales process.

 

“At the time, our sales representatives were writing contact details and phone numbers on napkins,” said Castagnero. “Business cards would stay on their desks and customer data had no place to go. That was a sign the sales process needed a change.”

The company decided to invest in sales by searching for a customer relationship management (CRM) software that would help them organize and manage their customer data.
garland logo color

The Garland Company

Cleveland, OH

Manufacturing Industry

When The Garland Company, a top building products manufacturer, implemented Pipeline CRM, its sales teams experienced a high 90-percent end-user adoption rate which improved their sales process.

Summary:

However, industry odds to quick-and-easy CRM adoption didn’t seem promising. Leading analyst firm Gartner found that the average rate for customer relationship management (CRM) software adoption is below 50-percent. According to CSO Insights, less than 40-percent of CRM customers have end-user adoption rates above 90-percent.

 

Finding the right CRM also had to fit into their business values. The staff believed their work had much more to do with manufacturing and installing building products. The company thrived for more than a century by providing dedicated service throughout the life of a customer’s building. They made a bet that CRM software could help them improve that service tremendously.

“Our CRM search started with the thought that we don’t have all of our valuable customer information stored and in one place. When turnover occurred, we’d lose anything that former sales representatives worked to collect. We needed a sales process in place to keep our precious client relationships going strong and help our sales team truly build great relationships for years to come.”

We're excited to have a high 90% usage rate of Pipeline CRM among new sales reps that join Garland.

The Search

One of the first CRMs that Garland’s team tested out was Salesforce. However, they quickly realized it wouldn’t work with the business because “it was too complex.” That helped them realize they needed a CRM that was easy to use.

That’s when a sales rep heard about Pipeline CRM and recommended it for Garland. Castagnero said the user experience was “great from the start.”

Since implementing Pipeline CRM, The Garland Company team has effectively centralized their data and customer information. Representatives can easily follow up with clients. With Pipeline CRM at their fingertips, they can easily pull up the history of returning clients as they are speaking on the phone with them. Favorite integrations such as Mailchimp enable sales reps to tag their contacts for marketing campaigns which go through The Garland Company’s marketing department. Garland’s reps also use the Google Calendar integration to keep their appointments and visits organized.

“At Garland, it is up to each individual sales person to decide how to take advantage of the features.”

Today, Garland offers four CRM sales trainee classes a year. Pipeline CRM has also been set in the company’s improving sales process. To emphasize the importance of having Pipeline CRM as part of the sales process, new trainees sign an agreement stating they will use the CRM.

 

Castagnero says just a few sales reps have resisted using the CRM, noting that – like at any company going through a technology migration – there will always be a few who hesitate when having to learn something new and different.

 

“There’s a knowledge gap or a generational gap – always. So considering that, we’re excited to have a high 90-percent usage rate of Pipeline CRM among new sales reps that join Garland.”

The Result

Most recently, Castagnero upgraded “power” Pipeline CRM users to the Grow account which comes with more intuitive and useful customer relationship management features and tools including task automation, sales intelligence, advanced analytics, and email automation solutions.

 

“The Grow account helps our business tremendously, with great tools that are made for sales teams. It worked out so well we’ve got sales trainees on board now, too.”

Pipeline CRM is so much a part of the sales team’s daily lives that the company made even more use of its tech savvy roots by developing a CRM mapper that integrates with Pipeline CRM.

 

“Through the Pipeline CRM API, we’ve been able to take info from the CRM’s fields like Companies, People, and Addresses and create an app that pinpoints all of the company locations of wherever a sales representative may be standing.”

Pipeline CRM users are not only reaping more benefits on a Grow account, they have adopted a sales process that works for their company. Sales reps have the technology they need that is easy to use and most importantly, makes their jobs easier than ever. With Pipeline CRM, sales associates can keep track of client relationships that will be of value to the company well into the future at one of America’s oldest building envelope companies.

“We may be a loud and messy kind of manufacturing business and that’s exactly how we make great products. On the other end of the spectrum, we’ve been proven to develop great apps that serve the customer in innovative ways,” said Castagnero. “What Pipeline CRM brings to the table is software that manages those precious relationships and after over a century in this line of work we’re doing it better than ever.”

What Pipeline CRM brings to the table is software that manages those precious relationships.