You need to understand your reps’ capacity, and look at technology as a means to do more with less. Don’t just consider it from a macro-down view, but look at the user-level, too. Will it stick with your team? Part of why Yesware works here is our reps have bought into the value. It’s really, really intuitive and easy-to-use.”
Basile Senesi, Head of Sales
Background
Fundbox is dedicated to helping small businesses grow by giving them access to credit that doesn’t require a personal credit score to get started. It uses cutting-edge technology, data science, and common sense to give small businesses access to previously unattainable financial options.
Problem
Sales reps were tasked with more leads than humanly possible to follow-up with
As with any startup, Fundbox is hungry for rapid growth.
Scaling up business starting back in 2013 meant dealing reps hefty lead flow goals: thousands per person per month.
Not only did this make it difficult for two-handed reps with under ten hours each day — but it threatened a reality of diluted messaging.
Think of taffy being made, spreading thinner and thinner as it’s stretched farther apart.
That’s what happens with marketing messaging as you add team members, leads, and time.
On top of that, sales leaders like Basile Senesi at Fundbox had no way to see email conversion patterns over time. They could see in Salesforce which open opportunities converted to closed deals, but there was no way to track how email engagement played into that.
Solution
Yesware’s Templates bring in automation and added hands for writing
Enter, Yesware.
Finding and spreading Yesware was a grassroots movement at Funbox. It started with a sales rep discovering the tool through Google search and finding the UX to be “really, really appealing” as Senesi puts it.
This one rep’s experience ended with the entire sales team on Yesware. Not only that, but marketing, compliance, and underwriting all bought into the tool, too.
Head of Sales Basile Senesi explains that this is the reason why Yesware has been so powerful:
"When you’re evaluating a sales acceleration tool, you need to understand your reps’ capacity and look at technology as a means to do more with less. Don’t just consider it from a macro-down view, but look at the user-level, too. Will it stick with your team? Part of why Yesware works here is our reps have bought into the value. It’s really, really intuitive and easy-to-use."
Here are the Yesware features Fundbox users love most:
- Email Tracking — To see when prospects in both the application and usage stages of Fundbox’s product funnels are opening emails, for reps to call;
- Templates — To save company messaging in reps’ inboxes, where it can be customized in 5 seconds;
- Salesforce Sync — For sales managers to rest assured that reps are pushing activities to CRM (automatically) and that Salesforce data is clean and up-to-date.
Benefits
Yesware shifts the sales team mindset and reporting helps build new commission structure
With the entire sales team on Yesware, there was a big change that happened at Fundbox.
“Our mindset shifted away from the “if we rely on emails, we’re going to turn into robots” perspective to realizing that you’re still humanizing and selling via email,” says Senesi. “Email automation is a results multiplier rather than a replacement to how you sell.”
Sales wasn’t the only team seeing the benefits.
Fundbox’s marketing team started using Templates Reporting (and continues to) to see opens, click-through rates, and reply rates to better understand which messaging best converts leads.
When asked how to explain Yesware to a friend, Senesi paused, then thoughtfully replied:
“For small companies, Yesware means getting the power of a marketing department at a fraction of the cost. It helps people become much more efficient, making phone calls and emails that are tailored and targeted — at scale.”
“For larger companies, Yesware helps salespeople stay honest. It creates visibility about email activity, while increasing efficiency. There’s no need to keep sending one-off emails. Yesware means less clicks and less time.”
Another interesting benefit of the team’s use of Yesware is that it has helped to form a new commission structure put in place two years ago. Fundbox can automatically track what qualifies for commission or not based on when email replies are logged in Salesforce.
“The accuracy in our commission process has been a game-changer,” says Senesi. “We can see how email activity converts over time — whether it be a week or month out. What we’re seeing is that 90% of our leads convert in the first week or two, and the remaining 10% convert in a 60-day window if we nurture them with staggered touches.”
