Thirty minutes may not seem like too long to make a prospect wait for a quote, but Daniel Barber-Trenbath, Director, Sales Development & Operations at ToutApp, thinks it is — twenty-eight-and-a-half minutes too long, to be exact. Daniel and his team wanted to get quotes out the door faster, so he turned to the AppExchange for help.

In this edition of the AppExchange Connected Leaders series, we talk to Daniel about his decision to implement SteelBrick CPQ, the AppExchange app he used to help his team respond more quickly to customers and prospects. Read on to find out how SteelBrick made the ToutApp quoting process more efficient while also providing  greater visibility into renewals and forecasting. 

Salesforce: Can you give us an overview of ToutApp?

Daniel Barber-Trenbath: Salespeople are generally flying blind in terms of outreach and engagement with future customers. ToutApp is built from the ground up to provide visibility into email tracking and deep insight into analytics. It helps salespeople close more deals and ensures that they’re as as successful as possible.

SF: What were the specific business challenges that led to your relationship with SteelBrick?

DBT: Our challenge was a function of the quoting process. Like many companies, we used Google spreadsheets to create calculations around complex data for customer quotes. That data didn’t always make it into Salesforce, so everyone didn’t always have access to the right information. As a result, salespeople were trying to make calculations on the fly—which is very difficult to do—and customers were left waiting for quotes. Sometimes salespeople would ask managers for help too, so we ended up using twice as many resources trying to get quotes out.

SF: Tell us about the results you saw after implementing SteelBrick.

DBT: SteelBrick does the calculations for us now and all that data goes into Salesforce, so everyone has access to the right information. Instead of taking roughly 30 minutes to get a quote out, it now takes about 90 seconds and requires no involvement from anyone else.

SF: That’s a huge improvement. How did SteelBrick change the game for ToutApp?

DBT: A fantastic byproduct of sending out more quotes, faster, is that we have greater visibility into our renewal pipeline. Since every quote we send creates a contract,  we now have very clear data regarding how many licenses of ToutApp a particular company has and we can forecast more accurately than we could before. Fewer than 20% of our opportunities used to be in Salesforce; now, thanks to SteelBrick, more than 90% of them are there.

SF: What advice would you give to peers facing similar challenges?

DBT:

1. Tap into your community. Ask peers for recommendations on which apps they like first.

2. Check out reviews on the AppExchange. See what people are saying there and find out how the app you’re considering integrates with Salesforce.

3. Read app reviews on G2 Crowd, the Yelp for B2B applications. 

Sales operations leaders are generally hesitant to ask for help, but there’s a big community of experienced people out there. I recommend taking advantage of that community and of your peers’ experience to find the best solution for your company.

The AppExchange Connected Leaders Series features conversations with forward-thinking Salesforce customers and leaders in their fields who solved a complex business challenge with an AppExchange apps.