Carrie Shaw
Chief Marketing Officer
Everybody deserves reliable, high-speed internet service.
That’s the motivation behind Sail Internet, a tech company that’s on a dramatic journey to change how we get internet service.
A few years ago, the technology used by internet providers started to change. And Sail Internet founder Kevin Fisher grabbed this new opportunity by the horns. His aim was to bring fiber-fast internet speed to customers, without the costly wired installations.
Today, Sail Internet services thousands of customers while saving them from the headaches that big internet providers are known for. We sat down with Sherilee Joe, Sail’s Technology Architect, to chat more about how they did it.
The goal: disrupt the big internet providers.
Data caps, unexpected price increases, and sticky contracts are all notorious side-effects of getting your internet from one of the big providers. (Can’t name them here, but let’s just say you know them well.)
Sail Internet is on track to blow these big internet companies out of the water. Using fiber points that are already set up, they provide clear, reliable internet service to homes and businesses. Their customers enjoy the speed of fiber optic internet without the hefty cost of installing the cables.
As if their new tech wasn’t enough, Sail Internet goes above and beyond by providing awesome customer service. And, since they’re a local service provider, they have a unique insight into the lives and challenges of their customers.
Basically, Sail Internet was primed for success from the start.
But they still needed to find a way to scale their lead management process.
It was time to scale beyond Post-It notes.
Once upon at Sail, the walls were lined with Post-It notes, each one containing vital information about new leads.
With about six leads coming in per day, this system seemed to work fine. But that number quickly increased to 10 per day, and then beyond.
Somebody was about to have a nervous breakdown.
That’s when the Sail Internet team found out about Copper. And finally having a CRM? That made all the difference.
After implementing Copper, Sail Internet was able to take control of all their processes.
“In the last year, since we started using Copper full-time, we’ve grown our customers by about 500%,” says Sherilee.
Not only that, but over the last year they’ve also been able to triple their revenue!
No lengthy training process, more $ saved.
Getting started with Copper was as simple as setting it up in minutes and diving in. The Sail Internet team had no formal training with Copper. Their main admin simply set up the account, got her hands on it, and figured out how to use it herself.
“I had no training!” Sherilee says. “Copper has a very intuitive user interface. It doesn’t require a week of training like other CRMs.”
Though simple to use, Sail Internet was pleased to find that the functionality of Copper was even more robust than other CRMs they had considered.
Their Head of Business Development raves about the Chrome extension, and how it feeds the leads into his inbox:
Another feature the Sail Internet team loves is Copper’s integration with Gmail.
“I love the seamlessness of it,” says Sherilee. “I love being able to track the emails that come back to us, and then being able to respond either in Copper or Gmail."
But one of the biggest surprises was the price tag: while other CRMs were miles away over their budget, Copper came in at exactly the price that the Sail Internet team was looking for.
With Copper’s automation features, Sail can now handle over 200 leads per day.
With their old system of Post-It notes, Sail Internet was having trouble processing just 10 new leads per day.
Now, they have days where over 200 leads come in, and they’re able to handle them without even breaking a sweat.
“Once we started using Copper,” explains Sherilee, “We found that one person could handle 10 times the lead processing work. That’s scalability!”
By using Copper to capture, track, and process their leads, Sail Internet has been able to grow their business and keep up with the demand.
Today, leads come in to Sail Internet through two different channels:
- Website leads that fill out their online form
- Phone calls from people who want their service
For the website leads, everything is automatic. The new lead’s information is pushed into Copper directly from the form they filled out.
The next step is assigning a status to each lead. Sail Internet has a specific service area, so leads are either inside or outside that area.
When leads are outside the service area, automation once again takes over: this time, the leads will get an automated email letting them know that they’re not in the service area and how they can champion bringing Sail Internet to their neighborhood.
With phone call leads, the sales team at Sail Internet inputs their information into Copper. Then, they update the status based on location.
When they determine that a lead is inside their service area and actually warrants a visit from Sail, that lead gets pushed into the installation pipeline.
That’s where Sail Internet really digs into the magic of Copper’s integrations.
Integrations can make all the difference.
Sail Internet uses many different apps and tools to get their work done, including Trello, Zendesk, Grasshopper, and Mailchimp.
That’s why Copper’s integrations with other tools have been so valuable to their process.
For example, Sail has set up integrations using Zapier to link incoming information from Copper to new Trello cards. When a new lead gets pushed into the installation pipeline, the Zap automatically sets up a new Trello card with a task:
This places all the right information in the right place, and allows the team to assign a technician who will go to the customer’s home or business to install the internet service.
It also includes automatically recording the time and date of installation, the price, and the equipment that was installed. That way, if the equipment is updated in the future, the Sail Internet team can see which customers need to update their equipment.
Another automation: customer IDs automatically get created for Sail Internet’s ISP billing system. They’ve set up this process so that all the information is recorded and added to the new opportunity that’s automatically created in the pipeline.
A success story that’s just beginning.
Sail Internet is still perfecting and adjusting their processes, but they’ve already seen huge increases in their business.
Looking back on the growth they’ve seen over the past year, Sherilee admits: “This would’ve been very difficult without Copper.”
It does mean they’ve had to say goodbye to Post-It notes on their office walls. But they’ve been able to say hello to thousands of new customers (and that number continues to grow).
They’re looking forward to watching Copper grow with them as they continue on their journey to disrupt the big internet companies.
Curious about what Copper could do for your company? Find out more here!
