Easygenerator connects knowledge seekers to experts with Salesforce

Easygenerator has been supporting elearning with its cloud-based authoring solution since 2013. Founded in Rotterdam, it’s grown from a team of four to more than 100, with global offices in Dubai and the Ukraine. It serves customers of all sizes across more than 50 countries and has a passion for making knowledge-sharing easier.

“Traditionally, creating courses to train staff is slow and expensive. Often, a team of external designers create the materials, which makes them harder to update,” revealed van Berkel. “Our solution helps subject matter experts to create their own courses using drag and drop functionality. They don’t have to rely on anyone else, and they can update materials in line with the rapidly changing landscape.”

While the company is all about making life easier for customers, van Berkel joined the team in 2017 with a vision of making life easier for his colleagues, starting by implementing a smarter approach to sales and pipeline management.

Having previously worked for Salesforce, he was excited to find an opportunity to use his knowledge and experience to help a start-up to make it big. The company kicked off its digital transformation with Sales Cloud and Salesforce Inbox, implemented by van Berkel himself. The platform is integrated with the company’s marketing solution and Google Analytics to unlock 360-degree visibility across the business.

“We used the Salesforce implementation to introduce best practices to our sales processes,” recalls van Berkel. “When customers signed up for a demo there was no standard procedure to follow up, they would simply get in touch later to enquire about licensing. Today, we have workflows in place to make the most of every opportunity.”

For enterprise customers, the sales cycle can be long and complex, involving multiple decision-makers. Engaging with the right people at the right time is crucial to close more deals.

Salesforce acts as a central repository for all customer data and correspondence so business development and sales reps can see the latest updates on every prospect at a glance. This means when customers request a demo, the team can use qualification data to understand the customer’s pain points and make sure they’re addressed during the session.

Insights from Salesforce Inbox also help the team to predict when a lead is likely to close. “Salesforce helps us to understand the bigger picture and see how responsive each lead is. If we don’t have any meetings scheduled with a customer but the data indicates we should be closing soon, we can reach out to find out if they need any extra information,” added van Berkel.

And its not just inbound leads that had a revamp. Six months after the initial implementation, Easygenerator hired an outbound team to proactively reach out to potential customers. Every rep handles between 300-400 leads, and Salesforce supports the process from quoting, to closing the deal, and renewals.

The sales team of around 33 is growing every month, and knowing the company uses Salesforce is helping to attract the best talent.

“Just like Salesforce we actively invest in diversity when it comes to recruitment, and it really pays off,” added van Berkel. “We have staff from 43 nationalities and we’re a very ambitious team. The company fosters excellence on both a company-wide and individual level, and our differences can be our biggest strength.”

When a lead converts, it’s seamlessly handed to the customer success team, which has two divisions. One handles onboarding and advises customers on how to get the most out of the elearning solution, and the other manages renewals.

“The customer goes through four teams at Easygenerator, and Salesforce helps us to act as one. Everyone has full visibility of the customer’s record and call history, so we can have more relevant conversations at every stage of the customer journey,” comments van Berkel.

To identify the most likely candidates for upsell and renewals, van Berkel used custom objects and automated workflows and help the team understand each customer’s health score and growth potential.

“Growing our business with existing customers is a really important part of revenue generation. Salesforce has great functionality, and it’s really easy to customise it to suit our exact needs,” he revealed. “We have a cycle of continuous innovation and we’re always looking at which processes we can automate to free up the team to focus on adding more value to customers.”

To keep its finger of the pulse of the business, Easygenerator uses Salesforce dashboards tailored for individuals, teams, and managers. Individuals can monitor KPIs to identify areas to improve efficiency, and they can see how their performance compares to the rest of the team.

Dashboards help to identify which leads to focus on next and track trends such as how much revenue is generated from new business or upselling. This means the business can make smarter decisions about where to invest resources to fuel company growth, for example.

“I look at certain dashboards on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis,” confirmed van Berkel. “Salesforce gives me the flexibility to work to my own rhythm: on Fridays I look at data points to define my priorities for the week ahead. Everyone here is very data driven, and creative decisions are always underpinned by real data.”

This approach helps the product development team shape its roadmap based on real conversations with customers about features they’d like to see in the future. To monitor customer satisfaction with the elearning solution, the company tracks its net promoter score, which is currently around +50.

To diversify its growth channels, Easygenerator is planning to acquire more strategic partners, and it built a partner community on Salesforce in December 2021 where they can log leads, view insights, and handover leads to the sales team.

Partners will also have access to Salesforce dashboards to monitor revenues, for example, and resources such as whitepapers to help them sell. When a lead closes, they’ll be able to follow the customer journey to track customer success and see whether they choose to renew.

“I’m really proud of how far we’ve come with Salesforce, and there are plenty of exciting opportunities ahead,” said van Berkel. “We’re keeping an open mind about the future. Salesforce and the AppExchange are growing and evolving all the time, so while we don’t know exactly what the future will look like, we know Salesforce will have a solution to help us get there.”