Financeit

With Salesforce, we can now make decisions based on data, rather than opinion, which makes us smarter and stronger.”

Daniel Mayne, Director of Customer Success at Financeit
 

Building stronger partner relationships with smarter insights

From kitchen renovations to boats, Financeit helps people fund their dreams. The company provides its partners in the home improvement, vehicle and luxury goods industries with consumer financing solutions that help to increase sales.

“Our aim is to provide businesses with a powerful tool, proven to increase their sales and close rates,” explained Daniel Mayne, Director of Customer Success, Financeit. “With our fully cloud based loan approval process, they receive instant decisions and can apply from wherever their customer is."

Financeit’s omni-channel cloud-based solution means consumers can submit an application when and how they choose – from a mobile app or a web browser to a self-service kiosk at a retail outlet. “Our differentiator is that consumers can complete the loan application process without having to share information with the retailer,” explained Mayne. “They can also fix their own monthly payments based on their individual finances.”

With such a unique model and free access to its loan management platform, signing up new partners is a fairly easy sell for Financeit. After that, things get more complicated. As Mayne explained: “We don't automatically generate revenue when we onboard a new partner; we need to ensure they are using and promoting our platform with their customers.”

To maximize the returns for everyone involved, Financeit needed to bring together its marketing, sales and service teams to create a more joined-up experience. “We used to manage partner accounts via printed spreadsheets and with shared inboxes, which gave us a very narrow view of our business,” revealed Mayne. “We couldn’t identify peaks in demands, common partner queries or growth trends. We needed more visibility in order to scale.”

 

Our aim is to provide businesses with a powerful tool, proven to increase their sales and close rates”

Daniel Mayne, Director of Customer Success at Financeit

Connecting sales and service

Financeit rolled out Sales Cloud and Service Cloud simultaneously in April 2014. “We wanted something off the shelf, so our developers could continue to focus on building new features for our loan system,” explained Mayne. Partner requests for new product functionality, which are logged in Service Cloud, help drive the development and innovation cycle for the proprietary system.

The customer service team uses the Salesforce CRM solutions to track 4,400 partner relationships – from queries raised to communications received. “Salesforce CRM provides a 360-degree view of our partner ecosystem,” added Mayne. “It enables our teams to collaborate better and work smarter.”

Regional sales reps use the Salesforce1 Mobile App to keep records up to date on the road. Every email and calendar invite is also logged automatically in a partner’s history, thanks to SalesforceIQ. “We’ve removed the administrative burden, so sales teams can focus on educating partners on how to get the most from our relationship and loan system,” added Mayne.

By integrating its loan system with Salesforce CRM, every new application can be viewed centrally. Since it was founded in 2011, Financeit has received $1.5 billion in loan applications from more than 6,000 merchant partners. “Our go to market proposition is based on three pillars: the best technology, phenomenal service and great pricing. Salesforce helps us reach these aims,” said Mayne.

Financeit’s commitment to service quality is demonstrated by the great feedback it receives from partners, prospects and consumers. The company uses a Salesforce AppExchange solution to ask everyone who contacts the business to rate their experience; it receives an average score of around 90% month after month.

Better data, smarter decisions

With ambitious growth plans, Financeit needs to ensure it follows up with every potential new partner. “We receive a huge number of leads from the website and online forums, but we don’t have a huge sales team,” explained Mayne. “Using Pardot, we can respond to these leads more efficiently by scoring and pre-qualifying them before they are passed to the sales team.”

Financeit’s marketing team also uses Pardot to automate the distribution of emails, particularly when unveiling new features. The ability to track recipients and responses gives the sales team a head start when following up with partners and prospects.

“With Salesforce, we can now make decisions based on data, rather than opinion, which makes us smarter and stronger,” said Mayne. “This will help us bring on board more partners and grow our business.”

 

Take a one-minute guided tour of some of the Salesforce products used by Financeit: Sales Cloud LightningService Cloud LightningPardot.

 

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