Instone is the largest wholesale distributor of Cultured Stone® in the United States, with distribution centers in New Jersey, Connecticut, Virginia, and Chicago. They have been providing products and services to designers, builders, homeowners, and contractors for more than 20 years. When a downturn in housing starts hit, Instone decided to look for ways to appeal to cash-strapped businesses while still protecting their profit margin — and to find a partner who could help them hone and extend their competitive edge.
The Instone Challenge
"We had a number of challenges we needed to address," explained CEO Gordon Strout. "First of all, we felt there was an opportunity to capture more business in our existing customer base. In addition, we were trying to change our go-to-market strategy in Chicago to focus more on exclusivity. Finally, we knew we needed to be doing a better job of monitoring and measuring our sales activities to optimize and boost productivity across the board."
Launching the Instone Power! Play
To address these challenges, Instone hired Baker Communications. The engagement had a serendipitous beginning — CEO Gordon Strout happened to sit next to a Baker Communications director on an airline flight. Their conversation turned to a discussion about Instone's expansion challenges and Baker's success with sales plays built to leverage Salesforce CRM as the corporate nervous system. Strout was intrigued, and additional conversations led to a decision to engage and deploy a Cultured Stone Power! Play.
The Play's objectives focused on growing pipeline and closing more business among the existing customer base, while developing an efficient sales management cadence that would monitor and drive performance by leveraging Salesforce CRM best practices. In order to create some friendly competition, the Instone sales force was divided into two teams representing the Northeast and Midwest. The Power! Play was designed to run for 24 weeks with team sessions conducted every other Monday.
Instone's management team and sales reps had to buy in to the Play's cadence and outcomes, especially the integration and use of Salesforce CRM. The fact that they had not been using any CRM technology before the Play meant a paradigm shift was required.
"The cadence and discipline of the Play prompted us to more consistently talk with our customers on a daily basis. Using Salesforce CRM's Task list, we were able to create a daily plan of attack."
Warren Weatherstone, Team Leader, InstoneThe Results
In addition to exceeding the projected revenue curve in the 6th week, the sales team was able to double the established goal by the end of the Power! Play. This level of success was created by a consistent cadence of activity followed by each sales team member on a weekly basis.
Outbound calls and follow-up activity were executed with precision, and 100% of targeted customers and prospects were contacted through a multi-touch process based on Baker Communications best practices. Sales leadership at Instone was delighted to have meaningful, accurate, and complete sales analytics at any given time — simply by refreshing one of several key dashboards built by Baker Communications.
