How to compete in a new environment

GLC Minerals is a 5th-generation family-owned company selling a product literally as old as the earth: Pure calcium carbonate. Operating in business as old-school as mined and processed minerals, and with a 75-year track record of profitability, it would have been easy for the company’s leadership to rest on its laurels and continue business as usual.

Historically, new customer sales had depended on word of mouth and referrals. Garner, with the company’s president and COO Holly Bellmund, was determined to take a more proactive approach.

GLC Minerals partnered with sales development expert Mike Carroll of Intelligent Conversations to develop a sales process and implement an effective sales methodology. Carroll introduced Baseline Selling to the team and recommended Membrain to enable and improve execution.

Implementing Baseline Selling and Membrain

“What we were trying to accomplish,” says Bellmund, “was a standard way to close business. We’d have prospects but we wouldn’t know how to move them to close business, and it was done differently by different people, using different messaging at different times.”

Carroll worked with GLC Minerals’ sales and customer service teams to define the process and methodology that would work for them, based on the Baseline Selling system. GLC Minerals was in the process of planning to migrate away from their old CRM system, and Carroll recommended that they use Membrain to make the implementation of their new process easier.

“Once we saw the demo of Membrain, we pretty much immediately saw the power that it would bring us,” says Bellmund.

The new process was built into Membrain, and Membrain was used to train, enable and reinforce the new behaviors and skills expected of the sales team.

But there were challenges…

At first, there was concern that it might be difficult to get reluctant salespeople to buy in to the new system and process. It turned out not to be as big a challenge as expected.

“Some salespeople walked right into Membrain because they instantly saw the value,” says Bellmund, “while others were intimidated by it. But once they saw that they can use Membrain in a way that does not add work, and how much it helps them,” says Bellmund, “they became very positive about it.”

A bigger challenge was the fact that as a complex b2b sales organization, GLC Minerals couldn't use a one-size-fits-all process."

“We serve different types of customers,” says Bellmund, “and they each require a different approach.”

Carroll gives the example of the difference between selling direct to farms, versus selling to industrial clients:

“With direct to farm, you only have a few different stakeholders. There’s an owner or GM, who thinks like an economic buyer, and a nutritionist who’s a technical buyer, and maybe a few others. With industrial, it’s more complex. You may be working with a product manager, a quality manager, purchasing, and a plant manager. There’s a testing period to make sure the formulation doesn’t interfere with their operations. And even the machine operator plays a role because you have to make sure it doesn’t interfere with their ability to do their job.”

Carroll helped them map out their sales process using Baseline, and customize it for each segment. Membrain makes it easy for salespeople to follow the new process, and it does so in an easy, beautiful, intuitive format. Bellmund says they especially appreciate that they can access Membrain on their mobile devices, and that it’s easy to type notes and other information and to access whatever information they need easily in different ways within the software.

“Membrain is very customizable,” says Bellmund. “We’re not locked into how we designed it originally, so we can customize it to work with multiple processes.”

Membrain makes life easier at every level of the organization

Membrain makes everything easier for the sales organization, from the salespeople to the sales leadership.

“It’s really good to have the sales process road map right inside Membrain,” says Bellmund. “It’s been really good, and I love the mobile app. It’s got an easy interface, intuitive, and it’s very searchable. There’s no guessing, and you don’t have to manipulate it to get what you want.”

She adds that Membrain streamlines the salesperson’s workflow, and helps them stay on top of what they need to do.

For Carroll, the biggest benefit lies in how it makes his training “sticky.”

“We spend a lot of time and energy and effort training the sales team,” he says. “With Membrain, all that training is right there in their hands every day, even when I’m not there. They have to follow the process, and it reinforces the lessons we teach, reminding them what to do. It’s nice to have a solution that doesn’t work against sales team development, but actually reinforces it.”

The sales leadership team appreciates how Membrain makes forecasting and budgeting better, and more actionable.

“With their old tools, the GLC Minerals team knew when they were behind on their budget, but not why or how, or details behind the numbers,” says Carroll. “With Membrain, they can get more granular and detailed about not only where they are, but why they are there, what they need to do to move forward, and what is the next step in that process.”

And while the executive board doesn’t need all of the full, granular detail Membrain provides, they appreciate that the numbers they see are based in that level of detail.

“From an insight standpoint, they now have much more information available,” says Carroll. “And from my perspective, I see that they have a stronger sales team, a clearly defined sales process by segment, a CRM that reinforces the sales process, and better visibility not just into where they are in the budget, but what needs to change. In short, they’re in a better position to succeed now and into the future.”

At Membrain, we’re proud to work with partners like Intelligent Conversations to better sales enablement to customers like GLC Minerals. Contact us today to discuss strategic partnerships, or how Membrain can arm your sales teams to succeed.