The company
CIMCO Refrigeration is division of Toromont founded in 1913. Being in the business for over a century, CIMCO pride themselves on the sustainability of their product designs and environmentally friendly systems. A pioneer in the industry, they're one of the largest suppliers of thermal solutions that caters to industrial, recreational, and commercial sectors.
Currently, CIMCO boasts a size of over 1,200 employees, with nearly 30 offices in Canada and the US.
The challenge
For years, CIMCO's sales team relied on a CRM called ACT! to manage their sales activities, which was primarily used as a contact management system and an opportunity tracker. However, as the company scaled, CIMCO's Director of Sales, David Fauser, recognized the tool's inefficiency.
CIMCO needed a more defined and organized sales process that could scale along with the business. Upon arriving at the decision to replace ACT! with another CRM tool, Fauser had another challenge to face: user adoption. He knew it wasn't going to be easy for the sales team to drop ACT! after years of using it and to adapt to a new software system—yet this was a task that would be worth the toil.
Choosing the right CRM system—not just the popular one
During his two years of research and evaluation of CRM systems in the market, a consultancy firm sent Fauser a quote of $1,000,000 to implement Salesforce. He contemplated the quote for a while, naturally; paying such a hefty price for a CRM tool without knowing how well the users would adopt it was a huge risk.
While Fauser was considering it, a trusted source and Zoho partner, Hero Technical Solutions, recommended Zoho to him. He dismissed the recommendation at first, feeling he didn't have the time or the bandwidth to evaluate yet another CRM tool—but then the partner reassured him, saying, "No, these guys [Zoho] are different. Take a look."
After a consulting session with Hero, it became clear that CIMCO could implement Zoho CRM for just $30,000, which included the partner's active involvement in the process, as well as customizations to the system to suit CIMCO's unique business requirements. Despite the difference in the quoted price, Fauser still wanted to give Salesforce another chance.
In conversation with his contact at Salesforce, Fauser was curious as to how Zoho could meet CIMCO's business needs like Salesforce and yet be 60% cheaper. When asked to understand the difference between the two systems, his contact claimed they didn't know enough about Zoho to consider it competition. Having derived no new insights about Salesforce's product, Fauser chose the underdog. And so he worked together with Hero Technical Solutions to implement Zoho CRM for the organization.
"Hero is an excellent partner to work with. They have been with us since day one and continue to add value to our operations."
The solution
CIMCO's sales team consists of 150 sales executives and 25 sales managers spread out across four regions in North America, all of whom—prior to adopting Zoho CRM—had their own methods of executing their tasks and no shared space through which to keep the team informed. With Zoho CRM, CIMCO has not only centralized all of their data, but also defined their sales process using a sales pipeline. Zoho CRM's automation features and integrations make each step of the process clear and simple, and enables the sales team to focus their time and efforts on fostering customer engagement and prioritizing tasks.
Visibility into sales operations with customized reports
Zoho CRM's easily configurable analytics have provided CIMCO with advanced insights to make more well-informed business decisions. As someone with no technical background, Fauser has faced no difficulty in creating and analyzing reports. "I'm not an IT person," Fauser says, "but I can quite easily make whatever chart or graph that I want to help me understand or diagnose what's going on."
Zoho CRM's analytics have been a particularly big help to CIMCO's management team, who have used their enhanced visibility into the business's sales operations to track various KPIs, such as the number of business transactions performed, sales quotes issued, and more. The management team also understands the stages of the sales team's pipeline clearly, as well as the team's performance. Zoho CRM's customized reports have enabled CIMCO to identify training opportunities for employees having difficulties adapting to the new system and process. Improving employee training has in turn improved CIMCO's customer experience as well, as the team is now more effective than ever at anticipating issues and resolving them before they get out of hand.
Driving efficiency with effortless integrations
Zoho CRM's seamless integration with Zoho Marketing Automation enables the team to connect to customers and measure the success of campaigns. The sales team also utilizes Zoho CRM's third-party integration with Pandadocs to create sales quotes and achieve increased efficiency.
Benefits
Since deploying Zoho CRM, Fauser notes that CIMCO's has had a double-digit percentage growth in sales. As a result of maintaining and updating all sales data in a single, consolidated system, CIMCO's sales team achieved a 25-30% increase in their sales pipeline activities—in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic. The system has also played a fundamental role in retaining employees, too.
"Employees learn faster and stay longer, and leads are responding better to our sales approach. Zoho CRM makes our sales team more efficient by allowing them to focus on what's most important, which is being side by side with our customers and bringing value to their operations."
- Industry typeManufacturing
- Employees1,200
- Type of businessB2B
Looking forward
Fauser continues to utilize Zoho CRM and is considering expanding CIMCO's usage to other Zoho products as well—thanks to the trust he has in Zoho and its people. Just as CIMCO has helped Zoho grow, CIMCO attributes a part of their success and growth to Zoho.
"We see Zoho as part of our team, because we feel that they were a key part of our growth journey as an organization. It has been rewarding to see our team members grow and become empowered by what Zoho brings us. It's great to be a part of a winning team and I think it makes sense to stay with people that'll help us win, right?"
David FauserDirector of Sales, CIMCO Refrigeration
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