Singapore Press Holdings Writes the Book on Effective Sales

Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) is one of Asia’s leading media organisations, engaging readers across multiple languages and platforms including print, digital, radio and outdoor. Its core mission is funded by advertisers and it is becoming increasingly more challenging to grow its share of the advertising pie.

“In a rapidly evolving media environment with keen competition, you need to be smart about customers and how to meet their needs,” said Su-Lin Tan, SPH’s Head of Sales Strategy & Operations. “This makes Salesforce essential to our business.”

The Salesforce customer success platform gives SPH’s integrated sales team information at their fingertips to sell more effectively. With Salesforce, they’re supported to provide a seamless customer experience, and solutions to customers’ business problems, rather than just pushing the sale of advertising inventory.

It has been a steep climb for SPH to get to where it is today. Less than two years ago, its sales team was split across different media types and lacked a single customer view. “We brought the team together so we could offer more integrated solutions, tailored to each advertiser’s needs,” said Tan.

It was a smart move and one which benefits the advertisers, but the job for the sales reps quadrupled in complexity with processes which were much more convoluted. Just to put together one campaign proposal, reps had to access multiple systems. The introduction of Sales Cloud has provided them with a more efficient and effective way to work. It provides a shared view of the customer and supports more modern sales processes, including automated lead scoring, sales forecasting and team collaboration. And at SPH, the integration of Salesforce with apps like Google Mail and Google Calendar has reduced the need for reps to move between siloed systems and improved productivity. Soon, SPH will roll out Adpoint from the Salesforce AppExchange, enabling reps to manage the entire sales and booking process from a single workspace. “We’re making life easier for reps and giving them seamless access to the tools they need, whether they’re in the office or on their mobile,” said Tan.

Reps have embraced the new technology, thanks in part to SPH’s decision to engage the help of a change management consultant through Salesforce. The consultant helped the change management team within SPH to communicate and create excitement about the benefits of the technology, facilitating fun activations including a celebratory launch.

Just weeks after rolling out Sales Cloud and training its reps, 85% are using Sales Cloud to manage leads and opportunities. Tan is targeting 100% adoption within the first 100 days and expects to see a wealth of new insights which can be used to improve forecasting and coaching.

“With 200 sales managers and reps, it is very hard to get a comprehensive view of leads and opportunities but it’s also critical. We need to be able to accurately forecast, and track the sales of products and packages,” said Tan. “Salesforce will give us the information we need to manage sales more robustly, and understand why some products may or may not be selling.”

The insights gained will help management to better coach reps and help them to close more deals. They should also lead to the development of better products and solutions for advertisers.

While SPH’s circulation team was already using Service Cloud to service subscription customers, moving more of its operations to the cloud was a significant undertaking for the publisher. Salesforce Professional Services helped SPH take the leap, ensuring successful implementation and also change management.

“Moving to the cloud was a very big deal for us. The Salesforce Services team helped us prepare for the change and lay the groundwork for adoption,” said Tan.

Regular communication and training have helped to fuel enthusiasm for Salesforce, and confidence in the benefits. SPH plans to build on this and facilitate personalised training with Trailhead, the online learning platform. Also on its agenda is the rollout of Marketing Cloud to manage 1-1 journeys and campaigns for subscribers.

“One of the things I love about Salesforce is their customer obsession and the way they mobilise the community,” said Tan. “We want to stay connected to that and accelerate our innovation and learning.”