Selling in manufacturing requires deep product knowledge and a holistic understanding of customer pain points, which can vary by industry. For Hyster-Yale, with a North American sales team of 900+ channel partner sellers employed through dealers in addition to an internal National Account sales team, product knowledge, consistent buyer experience, and visibility into deal cycles were key concerns.
To help sellers succeed, various tools including a marketing collateral portal, sales playbooks, and an LMS system were implemented. However, as Hyster-Yale discovered, though meant to support seller workflows, often using multiple tools is challenging for sellers and mastering the system is unlikely. Adding an additional challenge, Hyster-Yale implemented a CRM, Salesforce.com (SFDC) to allow dealer salespeople to quote products and log contacts, activities, and opportunities. However, with no incentive to enter that information outside of the need to create a quote, sellers opted to skip the extra steps.
Hyster-Yale’s goals were simple: find a better way to deliver existing sales assets and drive adoption of SFDC with partner sellers. Though initially, finding a solution seemed less clear. Through exploring various options to fix what seemed like two separate problems, Hyster-Yale’s sales enablement leaders discovered Highspot’s powerful functionality and seamless integrations could deliver a solution for both problems with a single platform. The team was excited to put the solution to work and see how far it could go.
With other sales support tools already in place, prior to bringing in Highspot, 86% of internal stakeholders were skeptical that driving partner sellers to utilize SFDC would further impact deals positively. However, less than a year after Highspot was implemented with its robust integration to SFDC, including the ability to provide Best Bets and Recommended Content based on unique deal attributes, 100% of internal stakeholders were convinced that using Highspot within SFDC does increase the likelihood of a rep to close deals.
Beyond agreement amongst senior leaders, the proof of value was validated through accelerated adoption of both SFDC and Highspot by channel partners and internal sellers alike, which has resulted in better engagement with buyers and increased revenue.