How Freshsales’ automation capability is helping Sify's digital sales team ride the digital wave

 

Chronicling Sify’s Journey

For more than two decades, Sify Technologies has been central to India's rapid internet and e-commerce growth. As India’s only true-blue ICT company and among the earliest to list on the NASDAQ, Sify offers a gamut of services like enterprise connectivity, managed cloud, and data center services, with revenues topping US$350 million.

In 2018, they began to discover that their customer base was revealing a business trend that looked promising for the future.

 

Need for a cloud-first CRM to meet customers’ digital evolution 

Sify was selling to a range of businesses through a mix of channels and sales teams - direct, reseller partners, and the web. Among these, the web became the preferred channel for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) to enquire and interact with Sify. This was not surprising but certainly new - several startups and small businesses were riding the digital wave to adopt web-based tools and platforms to run their businesses.

Sify’s digital sales team started to engage these potential customers through a digital-first engagement model, touching every stage from lead to deal.

But such a model meant increasing the pace of selling and deploying a CRM platform that would help the digital sales team streamline their selling.

 

Enter Freshsales

“Clearly, Sify needed a sales force automation solution that would deliver on the scale, scope, and premise of SMB customer requirements,” says Arun Rajamani, Head – Digital Sales at Sify. The evaluation was accelerated as some team members had prior experience with the platform. Once the evaluation process was initiated, Freshsales (formerly Freshworks CRM) quickly became one of the shortlisted products that ticked all the boxes, and ultimately, the contract.

A quick implementation period helped Sify go live and ramp up their digital sales channel to use the solution. As their hands-on experience with the product grew, here is a look at their initial reactions to Sales Cloud:

• User-centric experience - Sify's digital sales teams adopted Freshsales quickly, thanks to features ranging from intuitive sales activity management to rep-based pipeline views, resulting in higher adoption and better data quality.
• Improved prospect engagement - Nurturing interest via emails became automated and customized. Freshsales allows Sify's digital sales teams to experiment and configure email sequences to meet individual needs based on territories or industry verticals. Another addition that helped was the easily configurable feature of sending tailored messages on special customer occasions.
• Better account management - Given that a majority of Sify’s revenue is generated from existing customers, team leads and managers discovered new ways to keep their 2500+ customers engaged. By using territory and industry-based segmentation of accounts available in Freshsales, they were able to personalize their communication or renewal offers.

 

Product strengths that drive Sify’s digital sales team today

• Sales sequencing: Arun is a huge advocate of ongoing customer communication and is a fan of Sales Cloud’s sequencing feature. It allows her teams to configure their emails according to individual preferences. Managers of the digital sales teams also use the feature to trigger a smart sequence targeted at a certain set of prospects. For instance, having customized email nurtures triggered to prospects groups either opening and reading an introductory email.
• Reports - Freshsales’ reporting capabilities were a leading reason for Sify to pick Freshworks. Today, their digital sales teams can configure and customize a range of report formats, from activity, velocity, or trendline reports. All powered by powerful analytics capabilities. And all of the data can be custom mapped onto dashboards based on the nature of the business needs.
• Workflows- A CRM is meant to lessen mundane steps in the sales cycle, unlocking time for sales reps to do what they do best: selling. Sify is a power user of Freshsales' workflows that automates actions when certain conditions are met. For instance, conditions like leads sharing product interest can auto-trigger an action where customers are tagged into a group, and assigned to pre-sales experts for a potential demo.

 

The Results Speak for Themselves

The cornerstone of a successful CRM rests on its voluntary, not forced adoption by the sales force of an organization. At Sify, adoption was rapid given the minimal training and intuitive UI that Freshsales is known for. Over time, adoption rates touched 80%. Moreover, the product, according to Arun, was able to help plug gaps between the tactical and strategic arms of their broader sales goals, unifying efforts across the sales hierarchy.

Freshsales helped Sify increase customer engagement from 50% to hit 75-80% of their customer base through smart sales force automation capabilities.

 

Finding predictability in an unpredictable world

We are operating in a world where the fittest survive. Sales organizations who are relying primarily on their selling skills are leaving things to chance, as markets and buyer interest fluctuate rapidly. Arun believes that the trump card for sales during this time will be how they leverage smart and agile CRMs to find opportunities as soon as they emerge.