How Affinitext Onboarded the good ones and made them better

Case Study

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The right sales tools can help you train, coach, and sell more effectively. But what about when you’re bringing a new technology to market where quickly onboarding new salespeople is key to success?

Meet Affinitext

In 2018, a SaaS company based out of New Zealand was looking to recruit new salespeople to meet growth demands on an international playing field. With a mission to increase efficiency and effectiveness for companies handling high value complex documents Affinitext knew they needed a tool that could onboard and train quickly.

Due to their expansion into new geographic markets their need for more salespeople grew and with it the need for a tool that could onboard and train a team spread across the world.

Contingent upon their innovative and collaborative culture, they wanted a tool that was more than just a basic workflow and sales process. 

They were currently using Salesforce, but were unhappy at being forced to bring in an outside consultant whenever any minor changes were needed. Despite its power the technical complexity became a hurdle to company wide adoption.  

Mike Thomson

 

When we were starting out, we were working with the likes of the Ministry of Defense in the UK, so we thought we needed the power of a tool like Salesforce.
Mike Thomson 
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I found Salesforce rigid and difficult to use, which prevented me from easily opening it up as part and parcel of my morning process upon arrival at the office. Instead, I ran sales off of spreadsheets.

Mike Thomson, Managing Director, Affinitext

The Challenge



The Challenge

Chapter 1

From a sales perspective, there was a steep learning curve for the salespeople at Affinitext. With an array of differing customer challenges it was critical they help their salespeople understand how their product solves each of those challenges.

Knowledge transfer 
Passing down wisdom 

A downside to being geographically spread is that people aren't sitting in the same office. When your sales team is scattered across the globe, it makes it problematic in getting to know each other. It also hinders knowledge sharing from those with more experience.

Mike has been with Affinitext for 12 years and has found it challenging to pass on his wisdom and experience to his team. 

When we lose the serendipity of just running into each other around the water cooler it's harder to get the 'background of things' from those that have been with the company longer. 

 

New recruits performing quickly 

In order to get new recruits performing quickly, it’s crucial that the onboarding and training process sets them up for success.

Over the years, Affinitext has had a lot of really good experienced salespeople who brought different skills and strengths to the table.

The challenge for them has been figuring out a way to capture that skill and knowledge and not only make it accessible to their newer salespeople, but also, to push it to them at the right time in their sales process. 

 

It was a case of not only needing a process, but something that was also feeding information. Essentially an onboarding tool that would put the petal to the metal on indoctrination so current and future salespeople could start successfully performing quickly.

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Imagine being new to an organization with no idea that there's a spreadsheet or a Word document with the frequently asked questions that prospects will ask you. What you really need is a process to walk you through the process.

Mike Thomson
The Solution

The Solution

The Hunt 

Most of their team didn’t come from a sales background. In fact, before Mike joined Affinitext he was a lawyer. Despite their backgrounds, they knew that process was critical, even though they didn't know what a good one looked like. They had a rough template, but it certainly wasn't optimized. 

Which is why it made sense that the consultant they hired to help them find a tool to improve their onboarding process instead helped them identify the need for a tool like Membrain.

A tool that could actually educate, give tips, coaching and the history of how they as a business approach the questions that prospects have asked of them in the past. 

Mike felt they needed technology that could handle more of a dynamic process and Membrain was easily the best value for the money. It was a tool that could feed any process to their sales team, providing tips and giving relevant material to the salespeople at the relevant time. 

They liked the level of potential customization, and ability to put materials and “know-how” directly into the hands of salespeople, to help them sell quicker. An extra bonus they appreciated was actually being able to see what they were doing, from a management perspective. 

We knew it would help educate our people, both current and future since we wanted everyone singing from the same hymn sheet.
Mike Thomson 
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“The support Membrain provides is literally unbelievable”.

Mike Thomson, Managing Director, Affinitext

 

 

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Brenda McDonald
Customer Success Manager, Membrain

Adoption

The implementation of Membrain was comprehensive, proactive, and easy. The groundwork was largely making their processes from the sales side and getting their processes in place for the delivery.

From a support standpoint, as with most technology, they encountered the odd bug here and there, but when it was identified, the response time to get it resolved was very, very good according to Mike.

Membrain should be proud. They were very proactive in ensuring that we were putting our best foot forward to use the product. Always looking at what needs to be done to solve the challenges we were facing. Very collaborative and helpful. They were always following up. We feel like Brenda is one of us now. Part of our team.
Mike Thomson 
The Outcome

The Outcome

Mike describes how the onboarding process chewing up time is a common scenario in big organizations, resulting in an opportunity cost. And then, if that person doesn’t hit the ground running immediately, you are losing big money. And then the business becomes unhappy, and the newly recruited salesperson becomes unhappy because they're not performing and getting their commissions. And then the relationship comes to an end. And you're back at square one. Ouch.

Helping new recruits become independent

Membrain takes intelligence software to a new level with its dynamic processes. They link content, such as internal sales training material or suggested marketing material, to a specific step or stage within the process. That content is then served up automatically at specific times within a sales process. 

Before Membrain, Salesforce only allowed them to drag and drop opportunities between different stages. With Membrain they can now take it two steps further with a highly customizable sales process and dynamic steps. This living process responds to changing circumstances such as deal complexity or experience of the salesperson. 

This is a massive headache reliever for new recruits that might be struggling to find that document containing a customer’s most frequently asked questions and answers. Now that document will pop up in their process, right when they need it! 

Membrain has allowed them to stop the vicious cycle by giving them a level of agility that had previously been elusive with Salesforce.

New recruits are now onboarding quicker due to individualized guidance and coaching embedded within their process. 

 

Upgraded Process

In addition to serving up the right learning content and sales collateral to use, Membrain has helped the sales team at Affinitext bring useful structure to their process.  Their team gets guidance and tools to engage their customers in a more human way making it much easier to:

Ensure proper qualification by clarifying ideal customer fit.

Stay disciplined in following up professionally to prevent prospects from falling through the cracks.

Visualize the best actions to take at each step of their prospecting effort.

A streamlined process helps their salespeople know what’s expected of them making it easier to operate from day one.

 

 
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It's so obvious when you think about the need that you guys are solving
Mike Thomson, Affinitext

Hiring the best vs. hiring the good and making them better

Mike says that giving people just a tool doesn’t serve anyone. They have realized they don’t need to hire already top-performing salespeople, because with Membrain, they can get any eager salesperson to compete with their top salespeople by giving them the right process and guidelines.

Membrain not only puts processes in the hands of new salespeople, it gives them the workflow, education, tips, and materials they need to operate at a higher level.

Additionally, Membrain’s reports and dashboards help management understand how Salesperson A is performing against Salesperson B. 

Before Membrain Mike believes that they might have lucked out when picking the right person for the job as their onboarding efforts are now much more successful with a tool like Membrain.

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Membrain has now become a core part of our business, allowing us to expand effective process into other areas beyond sales.
Mike Thomson 
What's Next

What's Next

Affinitext has built up Membrain to improve their onboarding and now that it's not an issue, they can focus their efforts on the next challenge. 

Next year they're expanding into different markets in a big way, and that means they need more sales people in different jurisdictions. 

We’re proud to be Affinitext’s core process platform. If improving onboarding and process throughout your sales team is on your to-do list this year, let’s discuss whether Membrain might be a good fit for you, as well. Drop us an email and we'll take it from there!

Now that we have the tools and processes in place we don’t have to worry if we will be successful or not. We know we will be. 
Mike Thomson 

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