The future of sales is multi-threaded, according to Kristopher Lengieza, vice president of global partnerships and alliances at Procore, a software platform custom-built for the construction industry. Gone are the days of lone account executives working in silos to close deals independently. Now top enterprise sales deals reach the finish line when account executives work across the organization, engaging teams and even external partners to craft the best offers for prospective clients.
As Lengieza says, “You simply can’t do everything by yourself anymore.” That’s why Procore relies on the combined power of Slack and Salesforce to strengthen its relationships with customers and speed up revenue growth. With Slack as its Digital HQ for Sales, Procore’s revenue teams—which encompass sales, customer success, marketing and partners—demolish communication silos. This ultimately allows Procore’s crew of account executives and external partners to facilitate more than 1 million construction projects across 125 countries, maximizing customer satisfaction and enabling Procore to hit its revenue targets.
Unlocking fast, efficient communication with a digital HQ
At Procore, Slack is the digital HQ, and channels are the home base for daily work and core selling activities. Procore’s sales professionals rely on channels, digital spaces where teams can collaborate, for crucial context and to quickly collaborate with stakeholders. Some top use cases include:
- Connecting sales representatives with the cross-functional partners and experts who are critical to deal coordination
- Working directly with solutions engineers to request and kick off demos
- Partnering with product and engineering teams on customer requests
- Replacing team meetings and stand-ups with Slack updates
Even before a deal is finalized, Procore may bring its engineers and consultants into Slack to work back and forth with them on a potential solution. According to Lengieza, this helps accelerate adoption and seal the deal faster for a prospect.
“Slack enables our sales team to bring internal and external stakeholders together in one place, streamlining workflows and allowing us to be extremely responsive to all of our prospective customers’ needs,” Lengieza says.
“For me, it’s all about spending as much time as possible with the customer. The less time I spend updating systems and sending messages internally, the more time I can spend building relationships externally, and Slack allows me to do that.”
Streamlining the sales cycle with Salesforce and Slack
Slack also connects tech stacks, allowing organizations to bring the apps they rely on into Slack. For example, by enabling Slack’s Salesforce integration, companies can connect the two platforms and unlock several key benefits:
Easier access to critical data. At Procore, the sales team no longer has to toggle between Slack and Salesforce to find key information about a prospect. Instead, account executives can access Salesforce data directly within Slack, reducing context switching so reps can spend more time selling.
Turbo-charged collaboration. Teammates can share Salesforce records with one another without ever leaving Slack, speeding up approvals and shortening deal cycles in the process. Teams can also add Slack conversations to Salesforce records, easily updating the extended team on the status of a deal or triaging a customer support issue. And by doing so, they’ll benefit from capturing their Slack-based collaboration in their system of record: Salesforce.
Improved sales productivity. As an account executive of strategic accounts at Procore, Nolan Frazier used to individually brief internal stakeholders about new customers, sharing files and updates to keep them in the loop. And the bigger the deal, the more colleagues he’d need to fill in. But with the Slack and Salesforce integration, he can simply share updates in a dedicated account channel and add the Slack conversation to the account record in Salesforce. This saves Frazier four to six hours per week, he estimates—that’s 10% of his week that he can reinvest in building and strengthening customer relationships.
Accelerated deal closing. By connecting conversations in Slack with account information in Salesforce, deals at Procore simply close faster. In fact, Frazier estimates that Procore’s sales cycle has been reduced by 15 to 20% thanks to the Slack and Salesforce integration.
Faster onboarding of new reps. Having relevant Slack conversations easily accessible within Salesforce is particularly helpful for new sales representatives. As they ramp up, they can review the full history of the account and get up to speed quickly so they can jump into new deals with full context.
4-6 hrs.
saved per week with the Slack + Salesforce integration
15-20%
faster sales cycles thanks to Slack + Salesforce
“Slack and Salesforce are the connective tissue that ties together every piece of the sales process, from quote approval to the day-to-day communication that ensures ongoing customer success.”
Supporting sales reps with a network of more than 100 partners with Slack Connect
Procore reinforces its sales deals with assistance from hundreds of the company’s partners. This group includes consultants, system integrators and construction associations.
Until last year, Procore facilitated communication with its partners via email—a process that led to long response times and missed opportunities. Now Procore’s sales teams expedite communication with their external partners through Slack Connect, a feature included in all paid plans that brings external communication out of siloed email inboxes and into channels. Slack Connect essentially replaces the need to set up a phone call, saving precious time and enabling a higher success rate.
“Slack Connect allows us to have multi-threaded deals, multi-threaded development, multi-threaded partnerships and multi-threaded collaboration to achieve business outcomes.”
Maximizing customer success and retention by providing faster support
When it comes to setting customers up for success, Procore’s sales team often relies on collaboration with third-party consultants in Slack Connect to assist with implementation and test pilots. By communicating with these consultants in real time, Procore is able to onboard customers more quickly.
Faster implementation leads to faster revenue recognition, which means Procore can reinvest in the business and product. It also allows the sales team to grow customer accounts more quickly. When customers know they can depend on Procore, account executives can better position themselves to coordinate upsells, cross-sells and a better customer experience.
“Processes that used to take us three to four quarters are now wrapping up within one or two quarters because we’re getting through the implementation process a lot quicker,” Frazier says.
Sealing the deal is just the beginning. When it comes to winning long-term success, a positive customer experience is mission critical. If a customer success manager (CSM) doesn’t have the answer the customer needs, he or she can quickly search for the right subject matter expert in Slack, reducing response time from two days to five minutes.
“Our customer success managers are always trying to figure out how they can help customers get more out of Procore,” says Lengieza. “A lot of times they suggest a partner solution; other times they need an engineer or product sales person to help. Slack Connect helps point them in the right direction.”
Communicating in Slack channels makes it easier and faster to identify the right solution for the customer. Procore’s CSMs use the @mentions tool to identify internal and external experts to weigh in and answer product questions. Keywords alert others throughout the organization who may have contacts in their network about a prospect account or knowledge that could be valuable to the account team.
“When you get a sales lead, you must act as quickly as possible,” says Lengieza. “In Slack, we know that the right people can see the right information, and that’s already starting to pay significant dividends.”
