If you talk to Cisco’s Business Operations Manager John Wayne “JW” Maioriello about his team’s switch to Salesloft, he’ll tell you it was the right decision: “It took us nearly zero time to see the benefits of using Salesloft.”
His sales reps were able to focus on delivering better, more meaningful content without spending as much time on training as before. They also had benchmarks for open rates, click throughs, and replies, so they could see where to make improvements. That, layered with the fact that our revenue workflow platform is more user-friendly and intuitive, made Salesloft a win for JW’s team. “We saw an immediate impact,” he said.
In an interview from Saleslove on Tour in Austin, JW shared three pain points he and his team at Cisco faced with their previous sales technology — and how Salesloft was the perfect solution to each of them.
Why seek out a new sales tool anyway?
For JW and the Cisco sales team, there wasn’t a compelling event that forced them to assess Salesloft. It really just boiled down to timing. With some key contracts about to close, they decided that it was important to research what else was out there and to choose the best solution.
Cisco had a few criteria in mind for their new sales technology solution. It needed to:
- Support their admins
- Support their users
- Align to their desired goals and outcomes
Plus, their new sales technology needed to alleviate the pain points their old tool gave them:
Pain point 1: Lack of partnership
With the previous tool Cisco had, there was something missing in the way of a good working relationship. “We didn’t have a strong partnership with our prior vendor,” JW shared. As the Cisco sales team evaluated new sales tech, this was a major aspect they hoped to correct with a new platform.
How Salesloft solved it
“The partnership with Salesloft is so strong,” JW said about the switch his team made. “It is one of the tipping points that made us choose Salesloft as a vendor.”
Now that they have Salesloft helping them run their sales channels, Cisco is meeting with their Salesloft account team on a weekly basis, going over things like how they run their business at a very deep level. “Our Salesloft account team knows us inside and out, and is able to offer great suggestions of how we can increase adoption and really get closer to the outcomes that we’re looking for,” JW said. Which is a depth of partnership they didn’t have before.
“We’ve had so much more success with [Salesloft] that I now have a growing team of people that I work with — I used to be on an island all by myself,” JW shared. That’s the kind of growth that can change a sales team exponentially.
Pain point 2: An unintuitive tool
What Cisco had before Salesloft was not very easy to use. In fact, it was leading to more time and labor for JW. “To quantify how much training I was doing before we used Salesloft — it was literally all of my day,” JW said. His team needed something more efficient.
“To quantify how much training I was doing before we used Salesloft — it was literally all of my day.”
How Salesloft solved it
Salesloft was the user-friendly answer to their problem. “The idea that a user would come in and things would feel intuitive on how to operate the tool? That really was the biggest,” JW said. Instead of the issues his reps had in their previous tool — like not being able to remember how to navigate within that platform from one week to another — using Salesloft felt like riding a bike.
“The benefits that Salesloft offered our users greatly outweighed any other benefits from any other tool.”
After measuring their previous tool against Salesloft, JW said, “The benefits that Salesloft offered our users greatly outweighed any other benefits from any other tool.”
Pain point 3: Poor adoption
Lastly, because Cisco’s previous sales technology was more difficult to understand, it was slow to be adopted by the reps on JW’s team. In order to see success with any new platform, he needed to find something that his team would readily adopt and get value out of.
How Salesloft solved it
The nuts and bolts of JW’s daily work changed in some key ways once Cisco switched to Salesloft. In theory, he was fulfilling the same role: supporting sellers and helping them get adopted within the platform. But in practice, he was able to become more strategic and focused on what his team was actually producing.
“I didn’t have to spend as much time teaching the basics on what to click and where to click. So we got to be a little more strategic on the content,” JW told us. With an intuitive revenue workflow platform on their side, they gained back valuable time and crafted better messaging and responses as a result. “The fact that Salesloft allowed us to focus on the content was very, very nice.”
“I didn’t have to spend as much time teaching the basics on what to click and where to click. So we got to be a little more strategic on the content.”
The bonuses of Salesloft
Cisco has a lot of teams and departments using Salesloft, including every sales segment from their biggest accounts to their smallest — in every geography across the planet. To serve an organization that thoroughly, a platform like Salesloft has to provide more than surface level solutions.
While Cisco has implemented Salesloft as a customer engagement and prospecting technology, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. “We do have a lot more use cases, including deal management,” JW shared. Teams across his organization are able to track the progress of deals, emails, meetings, and more. “We want Salesloft to be utilized to help follow up with customers and check that their business is going well. So it’s really used all throughout the cycle.”
“We want Salesloft to be utilized to help follow up with customers and check that their business is going well. So it’s really used all throughout the cycle.”
JW and the sales teams at Cisco are a proactive bunch. They’re not going to wait around for systems to break or fail in order to replace them. Their organization is going to do their due diligence to measure other tools against what they have and proactively find the right platform to serve their needs. But JW shared that Cisco is all-in on Salesloft for now. “I just don’t see how another tool could beat Salesloft in the near future.”
Here’s to a long, user-friendly partnership.
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