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Company: Varsity Spirit, Memphis, TN
Entry Submitted By: Hill and Knowlton Strategies
Company Description: Salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing leader. Our social and mobile cloud technologies—including our flagship sales and CRM applications—help companies connect with customers, partners, and employees in entirely new ways. And thanks to the cloud, all of it comes with low cost, low risk, and fast results. Our 100,000+ successful customers tell the story best.
Nomination Category: Sales Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Use of Technology in Sales

Nomination Title: Varsity Spirit - Varsity Spirit 'Bringing It On' with Salesforce.com

Tell the story about how your organization used technology to improve sales operations, drive sales growth, and/or improve customer satisfaction since the beginning of July 2012 (up to 525 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:

Cheerleading is the most social sport of all, and Varsity Spirit leads the cheer market. In the United States, more than 1 million athletes participate in high school, college, or All Star cheerleading teams each year—and most use Varsity Spirit’s products and services.

When Tammy Pilgreen, Varsity Spirit CIO and VP of Operational Strategy, was in the field with the sales and marketing teams she noticed a huge issue – sales representatives didn’t have time to sell. They were so burdened with administrative systems and entering orders and trying to keep up with paperwork manually, they didn’t have time to do what they do best: sell.

After taking over the IT group, Tammy implemented salesforce.com technologies to take the administrative work off the sales teams’ shoulders. With capabilities like mobile, sales reps can now work from anywhere, at any time, and take advantage of workflows to keep deals moving forward. Instead of spending hours trying to keep up with administrative paperwork, reps can spend their time helping customers make buying decisions.

Prior to Salesforce, Varsity was dependent on a 25-year-old IBM system that was weighed down by a variety of custom apps that had been bolted on over the years. Data was siloed, and it was difficult to adapt tools to address changing market conditions.

Now, data from Varsity’s business lines is consolidated in Salesforce for improved forecasting. Over 500 sales representatives and managers use Salesforce to manage accounts and opportunities at the squad level, and monitor campaign effectiveness. A custom design tool, integrated with the Salesforce Platform, lets them work with individual schools to create unique looks—with school colors, logos, and mascot— automatically including design and activity information in Salesforce records.

With the visibility that Salesforce provides to Varsity’s sales management, Varsity was able to see the following and act upon changes to reinforce new behaviors with the Sales Team, which in turn, helped the company achieve sales growth:

•Average sales increases for Reps who did sales planning at a detail level vs. an aggregate level achieved more than 10% increases in sales
•Reps who managed their opportunities proactively achieved higher sales increases
•80% of Reps who participated in sales driven campaigns, via Salesforce.com, increased their sales
•Reps who did not manage their territories proactively, using Salesforce.com, had decreases in sales year on year

Varsity also created a template for each sales representative down to the actual school and cheerleading squad creating an automatic gap analysis for the representative which allows them to do what-if scenarios. Through the template and scenarios, many representatives had double digit sales increases in territories that were previously thought to be saturated by Varsity.

For the first time, Varsity Sales Management was able to track true impact of face-to-face customer pre-consultations, resulting in the following:

•Reps who did this best practice most consistently increased their sales by up to 60%
•Reps who ignored this best practice had decreases in sales, ranging from 10-50%

Varsity knows that, as a result of implementing Salesforce.com as both a CRM and a platform, there have been positive changes to the business in Brand Image, Revenue Generation, Cost Savings, and Customer Satisfaction.

Provide a brief (up to 125 words) biography about the person(s) who led the nominated initiative:

Tammy has spent half of her career leading technology initiatives in various capacities, ranging from chemical and automotive industries to cheerleading products and services. The other half has been spent on management and consulting, with a focus on sales, marketing and R&D. The intersection point of deeply understanding these areas of business, combined with 10+ years of experience in managing IT, make Tammy an enabler of leveraging technology for advantage to the business.

Business Intelligence tools, Salesforce.com and front office applications, Varsity Design Studio online tool for Sales Reps, and the Salesforce.com platform for event registration and management are a few results of Tammy’s leadership in technology.