How UGURUS Doubled Sales Productivity and Halved Management Time With Close

Running an international sales team isn’t easy. As the Sales Director at UGURUS, not only do I manage the people on my team, but I’m also in charge of the intricacies involved in selling a high-ticket item. 

So I need my tech stack to be a helper, not a hindrance.

We spent over a year giving everything we had to make our CRM work. We hired experts and engineers and used an internal team, but we could never get it to the production levels we needed.

At the time, I was working until eight o’clock at night just to figure out what had happened during the day. Now, if I want to, I’m done at five. 

What changed? Let me explain.

How UGURUS is Helping 10,000 Agency Owners Achieve Freedom

UGURUS was one of the first mentoring programs for agencies to hit the internet in 2011. I’ve been around since the company's inception, working as a mentor while running my own digital agency. (In fact, UGURUS founder Brent and I were initially competitors, but that’s a story for another day.) 

Eventually, I transitioned into a full-time role with the company, and now I run an international sales team of setters and closers.

Today, our goal is to help 10,000 agency owners achieve freedom. That means different things for different people: it could be about money, time, impact, or other things. We want to know the personal reason—the business reason is secondary.

Once we know the personal reasons behind scaling up their agency, we can help them. Whether they’re a freelance creative or a digital agency doing seven figures in revenue, we have a program to help them grow.

Why the Wrong CRM Was Stunting My Team’s Growth

Choosing a CRM is a big decision for a sales team. When one comes highly recommended, it can seem like an easy shortcut through the maze of CRM options.

A couple of years ago, UGURUS was purchased by DigitalOcean, and they used Salesforce as their CRM. As the holding company, we were grandfathered in to Salesforce as the chosen CRM for their enterprise business.

In reality, an enterprise sales process developed for a 2 billion company differs from one used by small to medium-sized companies doing 7 figures. We could never get Salesforce to work in our business, it was bloated and slow to use for our fast-paced team that moves through hundreds of leads per day.

Let’s be clear: I don’t want to talk negatively about Salesforce. They’re good at what they do. 

But for our needs, it just wasn’t a good fit.

I have a younger team that’s good with technology, but they couldn’t get into a flow. With Close, you just hit the dialer and go—but nothing was that easy in Salesforce.

Anyone who has used Salesforce knows it’s not ready out of the box; you need to program it and set it up to make it do what you want.

And believe me, we tried. But we kept getting stuck on things like:

• Using multiple tools to get things done: We used Salesforce as our CRM and Groove as our dialer, which meant the team constantly switched back and forth to find the needed data.
• Getting stuck in spreadsheets for reporting: We just had so, so many spreadsheets. They were all connected and would regularly break, or someone would accidentally kill a formula. It was overwhelming.
• Needing constant external help to set things up: Between engineers, experts, and an internal team, we spent thousands of dollars trying to set up Salesforce in a way that worked for our team.

But there was one point where I finally realized that something needed to be done.

When UGURUS Decided It Was Time for a Change

We needed to optimize our process to help my reps get into a better sales flow. So, I hired a part-time Salesforce expert. We spent a lot of money. But, after six weeks, we saw no lift in productivity. We didn’t have any more insights into what we were doing. It was painfully evident that we would never get where we wanted to go with Salesforce.

My team had been begging for me to switch to Close for six months at this point. 

I knew if we couldn’t get Salesforce to work, that Close was the next option. There was nothing else to look at, and we felt no other CRM options could work. It was time to make the leap.

The Turning Point: How Using Close Has Improved UGURUS’ Sales Process and Team Efforts

I relate Close to an Apple product: It’s just simple. You can use it logically—just do what you think will work, and that’s all you need.

There are five main areas I’d say we’ve seen the biggest impact after switching to Close:

• Management productivity
• Speed to lead
• Clarity in the sales process
• Improved culture
• Faster onboarding

Management Productivity

We all know how a manager’s time works—you need to coach, train, and enable your team, but you also need to spend time understanding what’s happened during the day.

I used to spend two extra hours every day sifting through spreadsheets and reports, trying to understand what my reps had accomplished that day.

Now, I turn off the computer at five o’clock and I’m done.

Close has cut my management time in half.

But it also gives me freedom. For example, if we need a new status for leads, I can create that status without an engineer or expert help. That’s been really helpful to me.

Speed to Lead

In Salesforce, one of my reps would have trouble making 100 daily calls. Now, we’re easily hitting 200, or even 250 calls in the same time. 

Our production has doubled, and the speed at which we can operate has increased by 100 percent.

My sales team is also able to set up their own automated workflows, which has increased the number of calls, emails, and texts we can send. The automations are simple, and it takes the burden off of following up and keeping deals moving forward.

Close is just simple, and the team really enjoys that.

Clarity in the Sales Process

Having a clear Pipeline View and organizing it in different ways has given us so much clarity.

Even segmenting our lead lists, whether by revenue, location, or other criteria, has been much easier in Close.

Before, it was really hard to segment our calling lists. We have clients worldwide, but using Salesforce and Groove, you didn’t know if you were calling the UK, the US, or Ireland—it was just a spin of the wheel. 

Now, my team can choose who they’re calling before they start, so their calls can focus more on that lead profile. And their calls are more successful as a result. All I need to do is set up a Smart View with the right criteria and hand it off to the sales rep, then they can rock and roll. 

Improved Team Culture

Having that clarity has also affected how our team works together—in a good way. Now our closers understand what our setters are doing. Our setters understand what the rest of the sales team is doing. And they’re more inclined to work together as a team.

Before Close, reps had no insights from the rest of the team. But now, they listen to each others’ calls and give feedback. They’ll praise each other for a great call, or talk about whether or not a lead looks like it could be a good opportunity. There’s a sense of camaraderie that comes with shared information that’s available to the whole team.

Onboarding and Training

As a manager, one of my favorite features is listening to a live call. 

For example, we just hired a new sales rep. Using the Listen feature, it was easy for me to shadow him on his first days without scaring him. I can jump in and listen to an active call without him knowing, so I don’t add extra pressure.

This helped me onboard him in just three days, as opposed to six days in our old process.

Before, if we wanted to do a call review, the process was more interruptive—we’d have to wait for the recording, and then go listen to it together. I’d say, “Do you remember this call from Monday?” But they already had 700 calls since Monday, of course they don’t remember.

Now, call reviews and training can be integrated into our day, and anyone can do it. I can open the Conversations tab, see who’s live on a call right now, and jump in to listen. It’s optimized the way I train my team because I can listen to calls live or watch Zoom recordings right on the lead page and give instant feedback.

We focus on being quick with prospects, but I want to be that quick with training. If a rep is falling behind at 10 AM and I can jump in to help them improve, they still have the rest of the day to get back on track.

Final Thoughts: A Better CRM Starts at $49, But a Happier Team is Priceless

My team knew which CRM was going to work best for us long before I did. 

They were right—Close has been the perfect tool for the size and style of our business.

Since switching to Close, We’ve improved our productivity, production, and follow-ups. We have better sales lift and more customers. But most of all, I have a happier team—and that’s worth its weight in gold.

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