400% more leads became customers. A CRM that kept up.
A plunge pool maker growing faster than its sales tools. Now HubSpot follows the real order, from enquiry to dispatch.
- Client
- Project lead
Trav WhiteFounder and Head of AI Engineering
- Industry
- Plunge pool manufacturing
- Platform
- HubSpot Sales and Service
- Scope
- CRM rebuild, pipelines and automation
- Award
- 2022 Impact Awards
01 The briefRebuild HubSpot around Plungie's real order process, automate the admin that deposits and balances create, and give the sales team a clear view of every deal and of their monthly KPIs.
Growing fast, on tools that had not caught up.
Plungie makes plunge pools, a way to get a pool in days, not months. By the summer of 2021 demand was growing so fast that the pools were close to selling themselves.
James Murphy, Plungie's Head of Sales, could see the business heading into the deep end, and the cause was the speed of its growth. Every sale sets off a long run of steps before a pool arrives: a quote, a deposit, a balance, equipment ordered from suppliers, freight, and a delivery date.
Our first audit found a gap between what was being sold and the tools it was sold with. The HubSpot setup did not reflect the quality of the product or of the people selling it.
Why it stayed that way. Deposits and balances were followed up with reminders set by hand, and the few emails that went out tended to reach people at the wrong point in their purchase. With little confidence in the system, the team did not feel they had the capacity to set up nurturing, automatic reminders or proper pipeline management. Growth was taking up the hours, which left none for fixing the system that would have given them back.
What the audit found
- Emails at the wrong stage. Customers who did get an email often got it at the wrong point in their journey.
- Reminders set by hand. Every deposit and balance follow-up relied on someone remembering.
- No daily task list. Little project management, so important tasks could slip.
- Little confidence in the system. So nurturing, automatic reminders and pipeline management were not happening, though the team wanted all three.
Two pipelines that hand work to each other.
The sale runs in a deal pipeline and the equipment runs in a ticket pipeline. Payments move the deal, the deal creates and moves the ticket, and the ticket sends the freight costs back to the deal.
The customer's preferred installation date is where every schedule starts. Balances fall due 30 days before delivery, so the payment reminders count back from that date and go out without anyone writing them. Because demand is high, an unpaid invoice can cost a customer their place in the queue, which is why the reminders had to be dependable.
Deposits are 30% of the deal, worked out by a calculated property. When an invoice is paid, the accounts team records the amount, and if it matches the deposit required the deal moves to Deposit Paid on its own. That also handles customers who pay in more than one instalment. A second calculated property takes out GST and freight, for reporting against Plungie's internal KPIs.
Once the balance is paid, tickets take over. Each supplier purchase order is tracked in its own ticket, which gives the team a clear schedule to work through each day, and entering freight once on the ticket saves typing it again on the deal.
Workshops first, then the build.
Nothing was configured until the whole order process had been taken apart with the people who run it and mapped from first enquiry to dispatch.
Take the order process apart, In person
Several in-person workshops with Plungie's team broke order fulfilment down into every step between becoming a lead and receiving a pool, for the customer and for the teams inside Plungie.
Every step from lead to delivery
Map the journey, In Miro
Together, the workshops mapped the sales journey in Miro: Active Enquiry to Quote Accepted, then Sales Order Issued to Balance Paid and Dispatched.
One journey, agreed before any build
Build the pipelines and properties, In HubSpot
Deal stages for the sale, a ticket pipeline for equipment and suppliers, and calculated properties for the deposit, GST and freight.
Deal and ticket pipelines, joined
Automate the communication, From the install date
Emails and notifications tied to each stage and to deposit progress, so customers can see where their pool is up to without the team sending every update by hand.
A consistent cadence for every customer
Three ideas the plan was built on
Rebuild from the ground up
Strip the existing process back to its steps first, instead of adjusting the setup that was already there.
Keep it simple
The product is a simple way to get a pool quickly. The process behind it had to be as simple for the team as it is for the customer.
Anchor it to the install date
Reminders, payment deadlines and equipment orders all count back from the date the customer chose.
Every deposit and balance chased without anyone chasing it.
Still chasing deposits by hand?
How the four goals turned out.
What Plungie asked for before the project started, and where it stood once it was live.
| The job | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Deposit and balance follow-ups | Reminders set by hand | Emails that count back from the install date |
| Moving a deal to the next stage | Time spent processing each order | Moves on deposits paid, balances overdue or balances paid |
| Customer emails | Often at the wrong stage | Tied to each stage of the journey |
| Equipment and suppliers | A convoluted, mostly manual process | A ticket per purchase order, on a daily schedule |
| Freight costs | Handled twice | Entered on the ticket, copied to the deal |
Goal 01
Less time on admin, through automation
We set up deal stages that move on deposits paid, balances overdue or balances paid, and reminders that count back from the install date.
30 days
before delivery, the balance reminders run without anyone writing them. Every deposit and balance is chased without anyone chasing it, so the team no longer worries about missed sales or lost deposits.
Goal 02
A clear view of every deal in the pipeline
We built one journey from Active Enquiry to Balance Paid and Dispatched, with the equipment in a joined ticket pipeline.
49%
increase in the opportunity conversion rate. The pipeline’s fixed stages follow the real order, which gives the sales team more chances to convert.
Goal 03
Monthly progress towards the sales team’s KPIs
We set up calculated properties for the 30% deposit, and for the deal value after GST and freight.
Every deal
reports against the sales team’s internal KPIs. The deal value after GST and freight is worked out on each deal, so the KPI numbers come straight out of HubSpot.
Goal 04
The right message to the right customer at the right time
We built emails and notifications tied to each stage and to deposit progress, from marketing through sales to service.
400%
increase in the lead to customer rate. Customers hear from Plungie at the right point, and can see where their pool is up to without the team sending each update by hand.
Put together, more of Plungie’s leads became customers and more of its opportunities were won, with every deposit and balance reminder running on its own.
James measures the partnership by how many Wow
moments it produces, and the count is still going.
The work kept going after the award, and grew with Plungie as it expanded into the United States.
“We engaged Neighbourhood to help us with a significant renovation and continued custom build out of our HubSpot Professional Growth suite, including solutions across CRM, Sales, Marketing, Service and CMS Hubs and the thousands of features these enable! As a rapidly growing start-up -to scale-up evolving business, with teams and operations in Australia and USA, having effective and scaleable systems that enable the business and its people to thrive in these conditions has been integral to our success here at Plungie.”
James Murphy
Head of Sales, Plungie
Who ran it
Trav WhiteFounder and Head of AI Engineering
Led the audit, the journey map, the deal and ticket pipelines and the automated reminders in HubSpot.
HubSpot Certified Trainer, Multi HubSpot Impact Award winner, Founded Neighbourhood in 2015
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