PepTalkHer is a Trailblazer in gender pay equality
This small business is making a big impact on women in the workplace.
PepTalkHer is closing the pay gap with help from Salesforce Essentials.
Meggie Palmer knew she had to do something. As a young journalist, she’d already seen it time and time again: women being paid less, subjected to inferior workplace conditions, and passed over for promotions offered to their male counterparts. It happened to her colleagues and it happened to her friends. And then it happened to her.
“Once you’ve seen the gap that exists between men and women, you can’t unsee that,” Palmer said. Not one to sit idle, Palmer founded PepTalkHer, a company dedicated to closing the gender pay gap by coaching women to be more confident in the workplace.
How did PepTalkHer go from an idea to a global community of over 15,000 users creating measurable impact, in just a few years? Palmer’s passion for the mission and love of the business has been the driving force. And Salesforce Essentials has helped a small team foster big changes.
PepTalkHer is a Trailblazer in gender equality.
Equal parts social mission and startup business, PepTalkHer is all about relationships. While many are carried over from Palmer’s days as a journalist, a need quickly emerged to manage more — and more complex — customer relationships.
“I wanted to have all of my customers’ information in one place, because I knew that they were key to our growth,” Palmer said. An entrepreneur friend told her about customer relationship management (CRM) tools and how glad she was that her own business had started using Salesforce. “Her company has grown into a multimillion-dollar endeavor, and CRM made that process a lot easier,” Palmer said.
Before choosing a technology platform, Palmer tried every customer management tool she could find. “It drove my team insane, because I was like, ‘Nope, nope, I don’t like this. It’s not easy enough. It’s not intuitive enough — I was really picky.” Team members took their time trying and discussing tools before landing on Salesforce Essentials. Why Essentials? Lots of reasons.
Do business where you want, when you want.
First and foremost, Palmer uses Essentials for her email, tracking every customer interaction so nothing falls through the cracks. Keeping everything in a central location also makes it easier for anyone on the team to pick up a conversation with any lead or customer, whether today, tomorrow, or somewhere further down the line.
Emailing through Salesforce also lets Palmer and her team reply to messages and share pricing info, partnership decks, and other collateral anytime and anywhere. “I’m always meeting with people, catching up with people, and attending events late into the evening,” Palmer said. Essentials makes it easy to reply from her desk or from her phone in the back of a car between appointments. For a small business owner with an endless to-do list, turning commute time into work time is a real advantage.
A self-confessed night owl, Palmer also loves the Salesforce Inbox email scheduling feature, which lets her write after-hours emails that don’t go out until business hours the next day. “It’s a bit awkward getting a 3:00 a.m. email, isn’t it?” she asked with a laugh. With Salesforce Inbox — which comes free with Essentials — Palmer and her team can write now and send later, with the tap of a button.
Scale your time with business automation.
Like any entrepreneur originally from a non-business background, Palmer had to learn the CEO role on the job. When it comes to keeping financial oversight of the business, the Essentials dashboard features come in handy. Customizable, easy-to-read charts provide a bird’s-eye view of revenue, pipeline, and other key metrics.
Time is a precious commodity to any small business, and Essentials’ automation and AI capabilities help make the most of every minute. From tracking leads and projecting revenue to surfacing new opportunities and nudging team members to follow up with customers, Essentials helps PepTalkher get things done faster. “It absolutely scales my time and my ability to respond quickly and efficiently to clients,” Palmer said.
“Salesforce Essentials scales my time, and my ability to respond quickly and efficiently to clients.”
Leap and the net will appear.
Palmer lives life by one of her favorite quotes, “Leap and the net will appear.” Starting any new business is, of course, taking a massive leap. But Palmer’s convinced that if you’re setting out to make real change, leaping isn’t actually so hard. For her, that change is closing the gender gap.
Taking that leap not only conjured up a net for Palmer to land in, it also created a support net for thousands of other women around the world fighting to have their real value recognized. In just a few years, PepTalkHer has already helped thousands of women track workplace wins and develop their negotiation muscles through its coaching methods, corporate events, and mobile app. The company website touts the story of a woman named Charlotte who used the app to help negotiate a whopping $87,000 raise.
“We have this belief that if women know their worth and know how to negotiate their worth, everyone will be better off,” Palmer explained. It all flows from there: Help individuals be bold in negotiations, work towards collective success for all women, and impact everyone’s lives for the better.
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