EBSCO is a 60 year old company that specializes in information. EBSCO has three main groups that they provide information and services for- academic, medical, and corporate. Chappy Floyd is the Vice President of Discovery Innovation for Corporations for EBSCO information and services. He deals with clients such as Microsoft, United Nations, and other corporate customers selling EBSCO software as a service. Chappy has been able to continuously grow throughout his career with the help of Daylite since 2004. We interviewed Chappy to learn how Daylite has contributed to his success.
The most challenging part of my job is maintaining the activities in the process. I need to be able to connect all my emails, phone conversations, with the to-dos and the next steps. It’s hard to juggle all those different aspects of the sales process. Traditionally resources have a way of holding contacts and emails but they don’t hold relationships or have the ability to cross over when an email turns into a task or a task needs to be repeated for multiple customers. That’s where Daylite comes in. Daylite is the centre of my sales cycle because I can access it anywhere from my iPad, my iPhone, and my laptop. Daylite gives me constant access to the information I need to do my job. It’s the next steps, my thoughts and ideas that may not be ready to implement but I don’t want to forget about or lose. Daylite also gives me a very efficient way to repeat successful activities from the past so I can replicate them moving forward.
As a company we use NetSuite, I’m the only one using Daylite. I use NetSuite to identify opportunities and close deals, but everything in between (from initial meeting to creating the proposal) I do in Daylite. When a lead comes in, the first thing I do is export that contact information into Daylite. From Daylite I make the initial contact with the person (either by phone call or email) and as they send corresponding emails and other people get added to the decision process, I link that information in Daylite through Daylite Mail Assistant. As I gain new information and meet new contacts related to the deal, I can easily add them to Daylite and get an over all picture of what I need to discuss and with whom. From an email I can create an appointment in my calendar and connect the event with the tasks in Daylite. This way I don’t lose any valuable information.
I was able to move very quickly from a Field Force Representative to the Vice President of a product line because of the abilities in Daylite. Daylite set me apart from my peers because I was able to respond faster and was able to engage in more opportunities, which lead to a higher close rate. It also gave me information to improve my profit margins based on the multitude of conversations and activities that I could see from the activity view. Increasing my margins has also helped me close more deals. Daylite gives me a dashboard of opportunities that I need to touch base with. Using Smart Lists, I am able to see – at a glance – who I need to keep in touch with to keep the process moving.
The first and foremost key component is the ability to ensure that you automate as many recurring steps as possible. For me, the integration of Daylite Mail Assistant and the ability to assign Activity Sets for processes that repeat really help me ensure that I am following the right steps so I never miss anything. The other part is to keep a good history of all interactions. You don’t know when those interactions will be important, so you always need to capture them. For example, when I place a phone call, I initiate it in Daylite so I can track what was talked about and when. Then I have the option to create a follow up task or appointment. That’s what has made me successful- the ability to capture 100% of my activities.
I had specific defined fields in Daylite that I needed to see in a list print view. I got help from Blue Rock which has a packaged based solution that was easy to install. This ensured I was getting the most out of what I needed from Daylite.
