MLEC Group provides customers with a faster and easier transition to solar

MLEC Group was founded by a pair of qualified electricians who wanted to transition Australians to a more sustainable and economical energy source, without compromising on quality. The business is now a leading installer and retailer of residential and commercial solar in Western Australia and—supported by Salesforce— it’s continuing to grow quickly.

MLEC Group has also become a national company with recent expansion into Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Northern Territory.

Solar is a highly regulated and complex business, with requirements varying from state to state. These requirements include approvals and documentation needed from energy retailers, network operators, councils, and strata managers, all of which can delay sales and installations.

With Salesforce, MLEC Group is able to better manage the complexity of sales and keep deals on track. The business is also streamlining its operations with plans to expand further.

“Salesforce helps us stay on top of things so we can provide customers with a hassle-free experience and some of the fastest turnaround times in the industry,” said Ben Morrison, Co-founder and Director of MLEC Group.

Before adopting Salesforce, MLEC Group was already growing quickly. However, the complexity of selling solar and obtaining the right approvals meant some opportunities were put on pause before eventually slipping away. 

MLEC Group needed a CRM to keep everything on track and help reps manage a growing number of leads. It chose Salesforce because it could be customised to the business’ sales process and used to support the entire customer journey through to installation. Sales Cloud was rolled out first, bringing added structure and visibility to the sales process. 

The business now has defined opportunity stages in Sales Cloud which focus reps on what’s required to drive deals from one stage to the next. With Conga Composer and Conga Sign from the AppExchange, they can create professional quotes faster and quickly collect signatures without being physically present with customers. Once customers sign, reps create a work order in Sales Cloud to schedule installation.

“Salesforce has helped connect all of the touch points involved in the sales process so we can see where everything is at and be proactive about following up with customers and moving things along to the next stage,” said Robin Saab, Director, MLEC Group. “Our best salespeople absolutely love it because it allows them to manage large volumes of leads without dropping the ball on anything.”

Slack contributes to the speed and efficiency of sales with MLEC Group’s sales and administration teams using the secure channel-based messaging platform to collaborate on deals. Slack was first brought in by the telesales team as they wanted to be able to share information on incoming leads quickly and broadly.

Slack has now been integrated with Salesforce, enabling these same messages to be automatically attached to the leads’ contact records in Sales Cloud. This saves time on data entry while also ensuring that sales reps have a more complete view of customers’ and their needs.

MLEC Group is now closing as many as 120 sales per week across the country, which is up from an average of 23 sales per week in July 2020 when MLEC Group was first formed and selling only into Western Australia. This represents nearly 500% growth in just over one year.

The business has also streamlined installation, with Salesforce providing a central view of jobs and ensuring installation, logistics, warehouse, and admin teams are all on the same page. As part of this, there are different calendars for each state and territory so that everyone can see at a glance what is happening in each area. Salesforce also dynamically determines what applications and approvals are required for each installation, based on the guidelines for where customers are located.

MLEC Group is additionally using Salesforce to track time and materials spent on jobs so it can better manage costs and ensure timely installations. The future use of Field Service Lightning will add to these benefits and further enhance the installation process.

MLEC Group plans to extend Sales Cloud to its reseller partners through a new partner community built on Experience Cloud. The community will help partners avoid the cost of establishing their own CRM and provide them with everything they need in one place to close and manage deals. This includes current pricing and resources like warranty documents.

The community will also provide MLEC Group with increased visibility into partner sales and will ultimately eliminate five to seven hours per week spent on reporting and manually checking accuracy of pricing.

While the efficiency of sales has improved significantly, MLEC Group’s lead volumes have continued to grow. The business has adopted Marketing Cloud to better engage and nurture these leads.

Previously, if leads were uncontactable by phone or not quite ready to purchase, they would often get dropped from the funnel. However, the business has started to recycle these leads to the sales team and, through the use of nurturing campaigns, it expects to increase conversion.

MLEC Group’s first journey on Marketing Cloud is a nurture journey for leads which have come from the business’ social media channels. The nurture journey has been tailored to different audiences and includes unique and relevant messages based on their social media inquiries.

The business is now starting to capture more information about leads and customers which will allow it to personalise campaigns and journeys. For instance, if contacts are interested in solar batteries, MLEC Group can send them emails and SMS messages to inform them of related promotions or government rebates.

Building on all these capabilities, MLEC Group is continuing to streamline its processes and getting ready for its next phase of growth.

"Salesforce gives us a huge degree of scalability which means we can grow without a lot of the pains we would otherwise experience,” said Morrison. "In the future, we plan to open warehouses and sales offices in every state and territory in Australia and hopefully go on to become the largest solar installation company in the country.”