At Showcase, we’re big on helping our customers green things up a bit, so we were especially excited to work with Green Gorilla, a recycling and waste company in New Zealand that’s bringing new technologies and new ways of thinking to the waste stream.
But before they got organized, their sales team was adding to the waste stream — with folders full of brochures, flyers, and documents that made for one big marketing mess.
As a company, Green Gorilla’s mission is simple: to divert as much waste as possible from going to the landfill. They realized early on that there were huge opportunities in the construction sector, as nearly 50% of all landfill waste comes from demolition and construction.
Over the years, Green Gorilla has innovated new ways to recycle and use building waste and other materials — but their sales process didn’t innovate along with it.
When the Marketing is a Mess…
Phil Yates was brought in to help with a rebrand and quickly saw the sales team was struggling because their sales materials were massively disorganized.
Green Gorilla’s sales team does a lot of cold calling, and potential customers were interested in hearing about how the service worked and the latest innovations in recycling — but sales reps struggled to keep their materials organized, relevant, and up-to-date.
“Quite often our sales staff would be out in the market, and they didn't have all the tools,” Yates said. “They might have old versions of pricing schedules or they wouldn't know exactly what to say. It was all pretty much down to a big fat folder full of pieces of paper and flyers — and I'm talking about old flyers that might've been eight years old. And they're still using them! They’ve passed out flyers that say ‘hey download this app’ — the app we stopped using. There was some co-branding on the flyers, as well, with companies that don’t exist anymore. So it was a real mess.”
Yates said that you could see the problem just climbing into a sales rep’s car: it was flooded with papers and exploded binders. A huge mess.
In addition, the sales staff relied on a single person at the company to email them photographs and other marketing materials. But if that person wasn’t available? No one could get the information they needed in a timely fashion.
Yates heard from his team that they didn’t feel like they could make a good impression, and it was hampering sales.
“The team didn't feel like they were represented in the best possible light, because they didn't feel that walking around with a big file full of paper represents a company that's trying to avoid landfill.”
Cleaning up the Mess
Once Yates found Showcase Workshop, he knew it was the right solution. The app provided exactly the functionality he needed, it was simple to set up, and the company's values aligned with Green Gorilla's as a nice added bonus.
“Building our showcase was really super straightforward,” he said. “I could create really good looking pages so simply, and on brand as well. I could apply everything that was in my brand manual, straight into Showcase.”
Plus, he can organize all the necessary information so that the sales reps are only ever “two swipes” from any information they need to access.
Now, as the admin, Yates can ensure his sales team are only ever using the most up-to-date information. Any time he needs to add or update a file, he can do so once and the entire team has it immediately. No more waiting on a reply to get an image or document: every member of the team has access to photos, videos, and PDFs on their laptop, tablet, or smartphone.
“I would actually say it is the most efficient piece of software that I use in marketing,” Yates said. “By far. I really only had to create one master style and then I just replicate everything and I just update it and it's so easy to do and when I need to add or delete people, it's really very, very easy to do. I actually really enjoy going in and using Showcase, which is probably a bit of a rarity. And all the sales reps actually enjoy using it as well.”
And the proof is in their cars! No more piles of paper, exploded binders, or old documents underfoot.
Innovating to Drive Sales
Another huge benefit of using Showcase over old paper files has been the response Green Gorilla has gotten from their customers.
When they were relying on paper sales materials, some customers actually complained. “I rang an old client up and just had a chat to them, and they said, ‘Well, what am I going to do with this brochure? It's worthless to me. I'm just going to throw it away.’ Which they did.”
Now, they use Showcase not just as a presentation tool, but as a way to demonstrate their commitment to innovation. Yates described how one sales person uses Showcase to present during a meeting, then offers to send the client a PDF of the information. “So he sends it to them. Great. And they get impressed straight off with that because he can do it straight from his phone and he doesn't have wifi. And that's part of the sales. That's part of the discussion. We're pretty innovative because we're using a single Showcase. And let's just do this for you. They love it.”
Other reps use their phones to access information even while walking construction sites with their customers. Nobody brings their laptop or tablet to a working construction zone, but the salesperson can bring out their phone and quickly and easily supplement an organic conversation with information, numbers, or even contracts — all on the go.
The sales team also loves the reporting tools, and they’ve developed a clever follow-up system based on Showcase’s reporting emails:
When a prospect opens one of the PDFs, the sales person gets an email to notify them. They wait about 45 minutes, and then give the prospect a call.
“They say, ‘Hey, just following up on that meeting we had last week…” and every single time the client goes, ‘Oh my Gosh, you're not going to believe this, but I've just opened up your PDF.’”
They’ve found it’s a wonderful way to surprise and delight potential clients — and close more sales.
Being the Experts — And Acting Like Them
For Green Gorilla, having a streamlined way to organize, brand, share, and update sales materials has revolutionized the way they do sales, and even their marketing message going into the future.
In a fast-changing industry, it pays to be the expert and be able to advise your customers on the latest news and innovations.
“There's constant change in the recycling world,” Yates said. “Things change and people want to know what's actually happening. So we get updates on recyclers and then we update our information that our team can talk to their clients about. In the past that wasn't happening. And it puts the sales rep in a really bad light if we're supposed to be the experts and they don’t know. But now we're the experts and they do know.”
Because of these new abilities, Green Gorilla is confidently launching a new marketing push around their expertise. “We're pushing the fact that we're the experts,” Yates explained. “And the team, now they have at their fingertips straight on the expert knowledge. It's there. They all know. And they all know the same thing.”