When I did a demo of BenchmarkONE and saw how similar the interface was to Hubspot - at a fraction of the cost - I knew I needed to give it a try.
Organizers Direct is a network of dealers specializing in home storage solutions including closets, garages, home offices, pantries, laundry rooms and more. As they grow their network, they are focused on finding new dealers, training them on the closet/garage storage business and continuing to support them as they grow their business.
Kristin Schneider has been with Organizers Direct since 2013, starting out as an office manager and working her way up to Business Director.
“We were having a tough time finding a CRM that best fit our business,” Kristin says. “We didn’t need something complicated and expensive, but there were also key things we were looking for, most notably a lead analysis report that could be generated from the CRM so that our dealers could see their ROI and where to spend their marketing dollars.”
As a one or two person shop, more features wasn’t necessarily better for Organizers Direct dealers. Tools like Hubspot, Salesforce, and Marketo can be excellent options for enterprises, or for marketing agencies with large clients. However, the complexity of these solutions is often overkill. Organizers Direct simply needed a way to organize their database and stay in touch with their prospects and customers.
“When I did a demo of BenchmarkONE and saw how similar the interface was to Hubspot – at a fraction of the cost – I knew I needed to give it a try.”
In becoming BenchmarkONE customers, Kristin found the BenchmarkONE Partner Program to be the perfect way to scale sales and marketing resources across their dealer network. As a BenchmarkONE Partner, Organizers Direct has access to special features for their network – like co-branding and custom template libraries that can be shared with every dealer.
“The biggest benefit of BenchmarkONE has been the master account,” says Kristin. “Dealers can sign up and already have a customized account waiting for them.“
From the master account, Kristin can pre-populate email templates, campaigns, tags, contact statuses and more. It’s a turn-key package for Organizers Direct dealers that allows them to keep the focus on running their business, rather than worrying about creating content or putting a sales and marketing process in place.
With a CRM solution in place, Kristin’s next challenge was to tackle lead analysis. Manual lead analysis and reporting could take several hours per week.
“BenchmarkONE solved the lead analysis challenge we were having with a custom report,” says Kristin. “No CRM we used before – or investigated since – could do this for us. It’s huge for our dealers.”
Now, dealers can easily see which marketing sources are working – and where they’re wasting their money. They have intelligent insight into how they can get the most ROI from their marketing budget – and get more hours back in their day.
The efficiencies haven’t stopped there.
BenchmarkONE’s integration with Zapier makes it simple to connect BenchmarkONE to other apps, eliminate data entry and automate repetitive tasks. Like many other BenchmarkONE customers, Organizers Direct took advantage of this feature to further automate daily processes.
“Our BenchmarkONE Consultant showed us how to use Zapier to connect BenchmarkONE to our Google calendar so that we no longer have to do double entry,” says Kristin. “Between our Google Calendar zap, email templates and campaigns, I’d say we are saving another several hours a week.”
In addition to implementing BenchmarkONE for their dealers, Organizers Direct also uses BenchmarkONE to manage their network.
“I love being able to send an email on behalf of another employee,” Kristin says. “It is extremely helpful for sending out a welcome letter to new dealers since I am the one adding them into our system. We have 4 regional managers so this feature allows me to send the welcome letter right after I enter them into BenchmarkONE. Then, the new dealer can then contact their regional manager directly instead of me.”
Finally, hands-on consulting and support have been key to Organizers Direct’s success on the platform.
“BenchmarkONE support is extremely impressive, and they work hard to find solutions for us,” says Kristin. “It makes all the difference!”