One of the most interesting things
about working in technology is
the things I get excited about
are the things that stress everybody else out.
Stress? We leave stress at the door
here at Simply Put, Sean.
What's up, I'm Emmanuel Acho,
your host for Simply Put,
where we take complex business challenges
and give them easy-on-the-brain explanations.
So, if you hear, "Got bandwidth to pivot
to an ideation session?"
We'll say, "Simply Put, let's talk."
You just met Sean Andrews,
the Salesforce Admin at Armstrong Steel,
which sounds like a TV action hero, right?
DUN DUN DUUUUN,
Armstrong Steel to the rescue!
Now, Sean will give us an overview of the company,
what he does, introduce us to the team, and lots more.
You'll also hear from Fatima Mekkaoui,
all-around Salesforce expert at Sales Cloud,
who'll help us understand
what it's like at the sales department of a company.
I'll pop up throughout the episode to show how Sean
and the sales team at Armstrong Steel
skilled up and how your sales team can too.
Thanks, Fatima.
Now, let's get back to Sean.
My role is, honestly, primarily supporting sales.
I want the sales team to be able to focus on
building relationships with customers
and not have to focus on, you know,
spending hours and hours of doing data entry
or learning different systems,
or, you know, clicking a thousand places.
It's really trying to make them as efficient
as possible so they can focus on their job.
So, at Armstrong Steel, we're a steel building manufacturer.
We take people through the whole process
of designing their building, engineering logistics,
and we actually manufacture the buildings ourselves
here in Colorado.
You know, the sales team, they don't like change.
You know, a small update to Gmail or to Google Chrome
and people lose their minds because it's different.
I love new technology.
I love implementing new things,
but it's a fine line between optimizing our business
without causing too much of a stir
in the rest of the company.
If you have a relationship built with them
and you work well with them,
I find it easier to explain
why it's gonna be beneficial for them,
and they're more receptive to it.
Now, your team probably doesn't sell steel buildings,
but I bet you can relate to Sean.
Learning new technology is hard.
Changing the tools your team uses every day?
That's especially hard,
even if you know those tools will ultimately help
your sales team work better and faster.
Fortunately, Sean and his team found calm on the other side
of all that change.
Without Salesforce, my life would be a mess.
When you have thousands of calls going in and out every day,
trying to identify trends with those calls,
if you're doing it manually
it's not just difficult, it's impossible.
A steel building is a complex product
and it's not unlike a car in that, you know,
there's a thousand different components
and pieces that make up the car.
But one of the differences, everybody drives a car,
not everybody has, you know,
even the slightest understanding of a steel building.
The reps that come on board,
they don't know anything about this product.
So, the training process can be very, very complex.
When the pandemic first hit, and we had to go remote,
it was kind of a whirlwind.
But all that technology allowed us to go
from working in an office environment,
which we've been doing for years,
to working in their houses, you know, 70-plus people
and we did it in a matter of a couple days,
and we didn't really miss out on anything.
Sales Cloud helped the team adapt to change
without missing a beat
and without letting their customers down.
With 90% of B2B sales moving to a virtual sales model
in 2020, adapting was key.
What's great about the Sales Cloud is the ability
to integrate, you know, so many different apps
and pieces into one place.
All these different tools that make the jobs
of a salesperson easier.
Things like the Salesforce Inbox,
which integrates our Gmail into Salesforce,
the Lightning Dialer, and being able to click,
to call through the system, Einstein Call Coaching,
High Velocity Sales, all these different pieces
that we can kinda plug into the Sales Cloud,
that automate things and just make their job,
so much easier to do so they can they can focus
on what their job is
and that's building relationships with customers
and understanding what they need.
That, right there?
Music to my ears.
Tools that make a salesperson's job easier
is what Sales Cloud is all about.
That's because Sean and his team took full advantage
of the Sales Cloud 360 platform.
They learned new ways to connect,
got into the new scope of selling,
and developed new methods for managing.
So, that's how Sean and the team use Sales Cloud
to skill up.
But you want more, correct?
In the next three episodes of Simply Put,
we'll see how a sales director, manager,
and rep each use the tools Sean talked about.
Whether it's coaching sales reps on virtual selling skills,
or looking at a
single source of truth for customer data,
I'll explain the Sales Cloud magic
that helps Armstrong Steel every day.
Speaking of the team,
here's a preview of the characters you're about to meet.
On this season of Simply Put,
you're gonna meet some of my co-workers.
Alex Searls is a great personality.
I don't even know what I do for a living!
He's always growing peppers
and brings them into the office and has people try them
and I don't ever eat them,
but I like to sit back and watch everybody cry
and run to the bathroom.
Brooke Gerhardt is our Sales Director.
You don't want me to say that.
Brooke is also my fiancée.
Yeah, work together, live together.
We drive separately because, you know,
you gotta have some, some time to yourself.
And Charlie Newton,
always willing to go kind of above and beyond.
Yeah, I could do that all day long
if you wanna keep going that way.
They're all just great people.
I love the people that I work with.
And we have a lot of fun together.
My name is Sean Andrews, and this is Simply Put.
That was awesome, Sean.
Big thanks to you and Fatima for giving us an overview
of sales at Armstrong Steel and how the team managed change
and new technology during this pandemic
with the help of Sales Cloud.
I'm learning tons. Are you?
Good news, there's a lot more to come.
Stay tuned for episode two, which starts.... right now!