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Salesforce.com & Sacramento Kings - Innovation in Sales

 

Gold Stevie Award Winner 2019, Click to Enter The 2020 Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service

Company: Salesforce.com, San Francisco, CA
Company Description: Salesforce is the world’s #1 customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Our cloud-based, CRM applications for sales, service, marketing, and more don’t require IT experts to set up or manage — simply log in and start connecting to customers in a whole new way.
Nomination Category: Sales Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Award for Innovation in Sales - All Other Industries

Nomination Title: Sacramento Kings, Sacramento, CA: Achieving 'Wow' Moments with Salesforce

Tell the story about your organization's innovations in sales or business development since the beginning of July 2017 (up to 650 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

The Sacramento Kings are a Western Conference Pacific Division NBA basketball team based in Northern California since 1985. In 2013, Vivek Ranadivé, an entrepreneur, technology visionary, New York Times best-selling author and philanthropist purchased the Kings, becoming the first Indian majority owner of an NBA team. Under Ranadivé’s leadership, the Kings have embarked on a technology journey that has come to a climax in results this year — focused on delivering a more convenient and modern sales experience for their customers, fans and ticket holders.

Prior developing their industry-leading “Sales 3.0” platform, the Kings sales team was a typical Excel-based organization, using spreadsheets to track thousands of customer records. The team lacked real-time information — there were no live opportunities for them to share. To move beyond the 21st century and achieve 'wow' moments, the Kings needed a solution that not only integrated with their other software solutions but served as the central source — a scalable, 'internal bible' for all customer data and records.

The Kings sales team found their single source of truth with Salesforce. Today, all ticket sales — season tickets, packages, group tickets, ticket support, operations and sponsorships — are all managed in Salesforce Sales Cloud. When the Kings are in season, renewal predictions are crucial, as they help the team forecast things like budget for the following season. Based on current and historical data, Salesforce is able to provide the Kings sales team with a list and a score, surfacing high-risk accounts, new leads and also key opportunities for both — increasing opportunities to deliver 'wow' customer experience moments in real time and enabling the team to see their Net Promoter Score increase by more than 100 points since implementing Salesforce. With these tools, the sales and service team has become proactive over reactive. The sales team can monitor attendance of ticket holders, to make sure that each is best utilizing their tickets and address issues at the moment of highest impact via mobile notifications and remote account access. For example, if a season ticket holder misses two games in a row, the sales rep for that account will prompted to reach out to the ticket holder to make sure everything is okay the moment tip-off occurs and the fan hasn’t scanned in for their seats. This type of interaction and proactive service has helped the team reach a 10-year high with a 25% increase in season ticket renewals this season.

Since the implementation, Salesforce has also helped the team create a culture internally where technology is not only used but trusted. Before, information was frequently questioned. Today, sales reps for the Kings not only trust the information in Salesforce, but find that the technology allows them to be better — and more efficient at their jobs. The Kings sales team is now driven by a technology-centered culture and have been able to create an industry leading best-practice ecosystem through Salesforce. With over a dozen active tools from artificial intelligence to video-based messaging, centering on Salesforce for day-to-day sales and service, the team is armed with the right technology that’s most convenient for each specific customer to interact and provide a winning experience at the exact right time helping them to achieve league-leading sales and service results.

Salesforce has become an integral part of the Kings sales team — providing a substantial database to understand customer behavior and characteristics. With Sales Cloud the sales team was able to go from being reactive to proactive — while building deep, long-lasting customer relationships.