Base CRM

Groupon partners with Base to improve pipeline visibility & process management Groupon is a global mobile and online marketplace dedicated to increasing consumer buying power and driving more business to local merchants. The Challenge Groupon connects and powers real-time commerce across an expanding range of categories including consumer products, travel destinations, local businesses and live events. Before Base, Groupon tried a number of sales tools and even built its own internal sales platform on top of Salesforce. However, none of these solutions were able to help Groupon establish a formalized sales process or provide visibility into its sales pipeline. “We were looking for a way to help reps contain and manage their days, and on top of that give managers a tool to help coach instead of manage via email,” says Jay Klauminzer, VP of Sales and Merchant Operations at Groupon. “We evaluated several solutions and ultimately we needed something that was really, really easy to use.” Adds Senior Sales Operations Manager Ashley Mattis, “We also needed a good partner that would work with and support us.” The Solution After making the decision to move forward with Base’s All-in-One Sales Platform, Groupon welcomed the Base team to its Chicago HQ. The team spent two months learning about Groupon’s sales teams and processes, mapping and scoping out the implementation, conducting on-site tests and rolling the platform out to the team. “Making sure that we had a company that we could partner with and had our interest at heart really made me feel that we were setting ourselves up for success,” says Ashley. One Base feature used frequently by the Groupon team is Smart Lists. Smart Lists make it possible to build and filter custom lists using real-time data like time zone, industry, solutions in use, etc. The ability to quickly and easily sort through thousands of prospects helps the team better organize their outreach and accounts. For example, rather than simply calling down a list, Groupon reps use Smart Lists to identify which leads are more likely to close than others, and call these first. “I love that you can go in strategically and prospect someone who is very specific to certain criteria with Smart Lists,” says Groupon Sales Trainer Alicia Babich. To achieve greater pipeline visibility and measure rep success, Groupon managers turn to Base reports like Pipeline Development, Stage Duration, Deal Loss Reasons, Activity Outcomes and more. “Base reporting is very robust,” tells Phil Quackenboss, Regional Sales Director at Groupon. “You can easily answer any of your questions by simply clicking on a report. A lot of times with CRMs, you have to pick through the data to tell your own story, but Base presents this information in a very visual and insightful way.” The Results Because the Base platform is so easy to use and Groupon’s implementation was mapped to its unique processes and needs, adoption has been fast and furious. “Usage was less than 20% with our old tool. Now nearly 100% of our reps use Base – even our seasoned reps. Base has gotten full adoption across our sales team,” boasts Jay. Thanks to this level of adoption, the team has been able to put a formalized sales process in place that is followed closely by all reps. With tools like Smart Lists, lead prioritization and automated communication tracking, reps are able to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time selling. “Reps used to spend so much time making checklists and Google docs trying to keep everything organized,” says Josh Goldstein, BDR Manager. “Being able to replace those couple hours each day with a tool that does those things for us has been amazing. Now we can’t imagine our world without Base.” With so much information being captured around rep activities and processes in Base, managers are able to easily track performance and identify key coaching opportunities. In addition to monitoring reports, managers also receive real-time notifications when important events occur. For example, if Base detects that a prospect has replied to a rep’s email with negative sentiment, the manager receives an alert. He or she can then quickly identify the attributes of that email and coach the rep on how to approach the communication differently, rather than having to wait to discover this issue and provide feedback during a 1:1. “Managers get a ton of insight into how healthy a rep’s pipeline is, so they can see where they’re having issues, where things are being held up in their funnel, and take that information and coach to it,” explains Phil. Lauren Futris, Groupon’s Senior Sales Operations Project Manager, elaborates, “Base has been able to offer us a one-stop-shop of clear insights to understand where reps’ deals and contracts are sitting, what stage they are in and how they are being progressed through each stage of the funnel—and that’s something our managers didn’t have before.” Groupon Logo "As our business needs evolve, I see Base being right there beside us, able to iterate and adjust as we need and move forward into the future." - Dan Summers, Regional Sales Director at Groupon