The unique sales process ResQ Club uses to power their mission to zero food waste

Last-mile food waste happens when restaurants, cafes, and grocery stores throw away food that could’ve otherwise been eaten. The surplus leads to food waste—a global problem that ResQ Club is on a mission to solve.

As of now, ResQ helps save 1,000 tons of CO2 emissions every month, which is the equivalent of 150 tons of perfectly good food.

This unique business comes with its own challenges and processes. So, how does the sales team at ResQ Club work? How do they build connections with new partners and grow towards their goal? And what tools are they using to set up and automate that process?

Company profile: ResQ Club

Did you know that up to 10% of food produced in restaurants ends up in the trash? Globally, this would equal around 11 million tons of food being thrown away every year.

ResQ Club is on a mission to change that.

This Finnish company connects sustainable restaurants, cafes, and grocery stores with consumers that appreciate eating affordable, quality food.

Their mission: make zero food waste a reality.

How the sales team at ResQ Club is structured

With the goal of fighting food waste around the world, ResQ has big plans and the gumption to see them through.

The goal of their sales team is to bring in new business partners—so far, there are 2,000 sustainable food businesses using their platform, and new partners are being added every day. The impact of this so far is huge: over 400,000 portions of food are saved from the trash can every month with the help of ResQ’s platform.

So, how does their high-powered sales team work to bring sustainable eating into the modern world?

Inbound and outbound focus

ResQ enjoys a healthy amount of inbound signups from their site that keep most of the team busy. These leads sign up on their website as new partners—the goal of the sales reps is to get these new signups to start using the platform consistently.

The team also has an outbound focus, building awareness among new businesses about their platform and signing them on as partners.

Team size and structure

With around 30 total team members, ResQ Club is looking to make a big impact with a small team. Here’s how they’ve structured their team to reach that goal.

First, the team is separated into Local Ops and Global Ops. The Local Ops team (AKA Team Finland) consists of:

Sales team: 6 reps, focused on inbound and outbound sales, plus account management

Marketing ops: Communication and marketing campaigns

This team’s superpower: Collaborative selling with all touchpoints visible

“Close really helps our team work together,” says Venla. “Especially since many people are often working with the same lead.”

“When you can see each other’s activities in the same place without switching tabs, you know what’s happened, you know what’s been discussed or what’s missing. That’s the reason our team works together so well—everything is documented and easy to see in Close. You don’t need to read through email threads or listen to recorded calls because you can trust that the notes and records in Close are top-notch.”

The tech stack that empowers ResQ Club’s mission

Lead gen/prospecting
Marketing automation
Internal Communication
Documentation
Analytics and automation
CRM

‍

Connecting marketing to sales with Zapier + Close

ResQ’s marketing team wanted to make sure marketing activity was included in the CRM so the team could stay in sync.

To accomplish this, they’ve built Zapier automations to import marketing activity as well as engagement actions on emails and campaigns. Once Zapier sends that data to Close, the team automatically creates a task or a note on the correct Lead record.

Using Looker to create custom dashboards from Close data

“Looker had a big learning curve for us,” says Venla about their data analytics platform.

The team worked with a consulting company to help them set Looker up. After several months (and a few bumps and bruises), the team is now in a great position to answer all their data questions.

“Now that we know how to use it,” says Venla, “we can get almost any data from there that we want and make it look good—it's easy to understand what's going on. Anyone from the sales team can go to Looker and build any dashboard they want.”

ResQ makes use of Close’s REST API to sync Lead data from the CRM to a data warehouse which powers Looker’s dashboards. The team even has Looker reports linked to individual Lead records in Close. All they have to do is click on the Looker link, and they’ll automatically be directed to the right dashboard.

A sustainable process for a sustainable business: ResQ Club’s 6-step sales process

With a small team working towards such a large goal, how does the sales team get their work done efficiently? Here’s how ResQ’s sales process works, step-by-step:

Step 1: Preparation and research

Any good sales process starts with knowing who you’re selling to. That’s why Venla’s team regularly talks to customers and partners.

When we understand them better and we understand their daily lives, it's easier to talk to them. For us, it’s important that the sales team actually talk to customers, since they’re the ones who talk with these people the most anyway.

Venla Wiik
Sales Manager, ResQ Club

Step 2: Prospecting

For outbound sales at ResQ, prospecting is simple: find food businesses that have a surplus.

One of the ways the team does this is by scraping data from various websites using a tool called Dexi.io. From there, the team builds a list of target restaurants that they import via CSV files into Close.

The team then builds Smart Views for individual reps, and follow-up sequences are started.

For inbound leads, the team focuses on their Close Inbox, paying attention to new tasks assigned to them or inbound emails.

Reps start their day by opening up Close and checking the tasks and emails in their Inbox. Before 10:30 AM, they’ll make calls and answer inbound emails. Then, from 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM, they’ll import new outbound leads and send email sequences.

“We use the Power Dialer in Close to call a targeted lead list, one after the other, inside a specific Smart View,” explains Venla. “We also send all of our emails from Close—the Gmail + Close integration works perfectly.”

The goal of each rep is to empty their Close Inbox by the end of the day.

Step 3: Needs assessment and qualification

Qualification at ResQ is actually quite unique.

“Any food business that has any surplus at all can be a customer,” says Venla. “So, we don’t want to differentiate leads too much. Whether you have a surplus every day, every week, or every six months, you can still join ResQ. There are really no partners that we would say no to. And since there’s no subscription or opening fees, they don’t lose anything if they open an account but only use it occasionally.”

If Venla’s team knows that a new customer will be infrequent or sell irregularly, they set the custom Lead Status as ‘Infrequent offers’. Then the team knows to contact this lead no more than twice per year.

Step 4: Handling objections

Just like any sales process, objections are a part of daily life for this sales team. So, how do they handle objections effectively?

Venla’s team has documented all the sales-related questions they commonly receive in their Sales Playbook. This playbook is stored in Notion, where the whole team can easily access, use, or adjust it when needed.

Pro tip: Thinking of setting up your own sales playbook? Download the Sales Enablement Toolkit to get a headstart for your sales team—including a sales script template, email sequence strategy, pricing comparison calculator, battle card template, and more.

Step 5: Closing the deal

Venla’s team uses Close for the whole process: calls, emails, notes, and more. They also track their pipeline stages through their custom Lead Statuses, changing and updating these as the deals progress to a close.

Of course, once a partner is set up on their platform, the team needs to make sure they’re using it.

To help improve efficiency through the customer lifecycle, the team has set up automated tasks. “We want to make sure that we contact all the partners soon after they sign up—automated tasks are helpful for this,” explains Venla.

“After the first sale on ResQ platform, there might be also other automated tasks depending on how well the partners sell, since we want to make sure that they keep on selling.”

Step 6: Follow-ups, repeat business & referrals

“We love email sequences when contacting the leads: it makes everything much easier,” says Venla. “Close tasks are important follow-up reminders for us as well, but we also like to use smart views for follow-ups.”

How ResQ Club uses Close to build their own custom process

The right CRM allows for flexible usage depending on the unique style and process of each business.

As we’ve seen, ResQ Club’s sales process is as unique as the concept of their business—so how does Close enable them to run their process without getting in their way?

Using Lead status labels instead of opportunities

Close is simple enough that you can get up and running in minutes instead of weeks. But it’s also flexible enough to accommodate almost any sales cycle or sales process. ResQ’s sales cycle doesn’t require them to use Opportunities in their sales process. Instead, they make heavy use of custom Lead Status labels.

These labels go from A to Z and span the entire lifecycle of leads—from new lead to customer, all the way to advocate.

Customizing their Custom Fields

ResQ knows which types of leads are most likely to sell in their platform, so they try to prioritize their outreach to those leads. The team uses custom fields to determine whether a Lead is considered a priority lead or not.

Sequences for cities around Europe (and eventually, the world)

Each rep on the team has the freedom to create their own custom email sequences to follow up with leads.

But to give her reps the best chance of success, Venla has created a starting point by building unique email sequences for different cities around Europe.

“We strongly encourage the team to build their own sequences as well,” says Venla. “Of course, we have some guidelines and instructions on what to include, but give enough flexibility for everyone to build their own sequences.”

Setting up Smart Views by lead status and region

Venla wants her reps to have the most convenient view of their most important leads. So, she has created a process for Smart Views based on the characteristics that matter most: region and Lead Status.

What ResQ loves about Close: Simple UI with powerful customization

“We love Close because of how easy and intuitive it is for everyone,” says Venla. “Anyone can learn it really quickly. There’s no fancy weeks-long team onboarding to study how the CRM works. It's very simple and easy to use."

You can do everything you need to do with Close. Of course, having Looker and other tools is helpful, but our sales team could basically survive with just Close—it has everything we need.
‍
Venla Wiik
Sales Manager, ResQ Club

Building a flexible process inside a customizable CRM—the perfect recipe for success

Venla and her team are on a mission to reduce food waste around the world. That makes their business and process unique in more ways than one, meaning a cookie-cutter CRM wouldn’t be enough to encompass their custom sales process.

The team at ResQ needed a CRM that would bow to their wishes and complement their process (not burden it with processes and features they didn’t need).

This team’s recipe for success includes a large helping of genuine care about our beautiful planet earth—the best motivation for a powerful selling process. But it also needed a dash of CRM that they could customize to their needs, while still being easy enough for the team to start using right away.

That’s why ResQ Club chose Close.