As a small and growing business, Bluekore needed a way to get its sales process aligned and its sales reps be more efficient. The team had been actively looking for a sales CRM while juggling between CRMs with limited features and third-party tools. Then they learnt about the launch of a new CRM—Freshsales in 2016, and made the full switch. Using Freshsales, Bluekore has shortened sales cycle by 30 days, cut costs by 40% and integrated sales, support and messaging.
Bluekore— helping customers benefit from G Suite
Founded in 2013, Bluekore Inc. headquartered in Taguig, Philippines helps customers with technology solutions to address business problems. Particularly, it helps schools and businesses ease the transition to the G Suite web platform, and offers services in technical consulting, change management, training, and professional development.
We met with Mary Ann Manzano, Founder and Director of Bluekore, and learnt what her experience with Freshsales has been like over the past 14 months.
Mary Ann Manzano
Founder & Director
Before Freshsales
Mary and her partner at Bluekore previously being Salesforce users were inclined to choose the same for their team. However, they received an expensive quote from Salesforce which didn’t seem like a good investment for their small business. So they rejected it and settled for spreadsheets.
Soon, spreadsheets multiplied and information was scattered. And, it was time to move from excel to CRM.
They tried Podio, Insightly, Prosperworks and Pipedrive. But each came with certain limitations:
“Insightly worked well with gmail but didn’t recognize existing tasks. Prosperworks was limited on custom fields, and Pipedrive didn’t allow bulk emails. Although these CRMs were affordable, because of the lack of one or more features we needed for business, we were forced to also use third-party tools. This was becoming a hassle for my team.”
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Why Mary tried Freshsales
In June 2016 when Freshdesk (now Freshworks) launched Freshsales, Mary received an email with a video of our CEO Girish Mathrubootham talking about the evolution of the sales CRM.
After watching the video, Mary wanted to try it because she was able to relate to the same challenges. Instead of relying on multiple tools and a CRM, Freshsales came with built-in features that seemed like the best CRM for her business.
What happened next? Mary was one of our first customers.
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Using Freshsales
Managing sales and her team is an everyday routine for Mary, and using Freshsales she handles Bluekore’s sales process from end-to-end in one place.
When Mary learned that Freshsales integrates with Freshdesk, she was assured about keeping her sales and support systems synced for business. Add to this, Mary also integrated Freshsales with Freshchat so sales reps can talk to their website visitors in real-time.
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Favorite features
Email tracking
Mary appreciates the possibility to learn who’s opened emails, clicked links, and who hasn’t. Email analytics track campaign performance, and instant notifications on opens and clicks help increase the likelihood of converting leads by engaging at the right time.
Bulk email
Bulk email feature replaced a newsletter tool that they were using prior to Freshsales. Using templates and placeholders, she runs campaigns and nurtures customers directly in Freshsales.
Lead scoring
Being able to distinguish hot and cold leads is important for Mary so her team spends time on the right leads. Lead scoring in Freshsales ranks their leads based on profile information and email activity. It assigns a score to each lead so reps can determine which leads to pursue, and effectively prioritize their sales actions to optimize sales cycles.
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Freshsales—an ingredient to their secret sauce
For Bluekore, implementing Freshsales has influenced sales reps to run their process and activities more efficiently. They’re able to record and track conversations, prioritize leads, run email campaigns, manage customer service, etc. in one place.
Freshsales brought the end of third-party tools and with it eliminating additional costs. It has helped Bluekore reduce costs by 40%. With automated lead scoring, Bluekore has shortened its sales cycle from 75 days to less than 45 days.
Freshsales helps Mary and her team understand what happens in their sales process and how it works. A straightforward, fully-equipped and affordable sales CRM adds to their secret sauce:
“We streamlined our sales process within just three months of using Freshsales. Being able to track a lead from start to closure and zero in on the progress of each deal from the deals pipeline is influential for our meetings. If you want an effective sales team, then Freshsales is a secret ingredient you must have.”
