Black Swan Data Saved 20+ Hours Weekly and Improved Forecasting

Editor's note: This is a pre-merger Clari customer story. Results are still relevant, some product details may have evolved. Learn more here.

• Clari Copilot is now Salesloft Conversation Intelligence
• Clari Groove is now Salesloft Cadence

Overview

Challenge

Pipeline visibility Issues, slipped deals, and inaccurate forecasting

These were several of the "huge challenges" Greg Reardon, Director of Growth Operations and Strategy at Black Swan Data, faced when making data-driven decisions.

Black Swan Data is a London-based technology and data science company. It uses a proprietary data analytics software platform, Trendscope, to predict future market trends.

Black Swan was running all their forecasting through spreadsheets. They didn't even have a business intelligence tool to augment the data. The net result was the four pipeline issues presented above.

Solution

The Black Swan Data sales motion transformation began 

This is how Black Swan solved its forecasting challenges after partnering with Salesloft. Greg shared how the team:

• Saved 20+ hours per week by removing manual processes
• Relies on Salesloft as the single source of truth
• Seeks guidance from Salesloft's "11 out of 10 customer service team – the best customer support I've experienced."

So how did they get there?

There was a huge need to uplevel our sales tooling and overall sales process," shared Greg.

Black Swan traditionally relied heavily on consultants to run much of its data analysis. A move to a SaaS platform that automatically — through technology and AI — generates insights from ingested data "required us to change the way our go-to-market motion was focused," said Greg.

Working with Salesloft was a substantial step towards transforming their sales motion.

Before Salesloft, there wasn't a solid (nor standardized) forecasting process.

We were chasing down a million things, manually prompting on the operation side. I spent a lot of time bugging people for updates: 'Hey, can you convert this opportunity? Where are we at on this? Have you followed up with them

To make matters even messier, with even less data integrity and accuracy, Black Swan's Salesforce instance had "awful opportunity hygiene."

It was, in Greg's words, "a no-brainer" to use Salesloft.

From "no-brainer" to "this thing is awesome" to single source of truth

Greg has participated in (and led) many sales tool rollouts over his career.

Salesloft was unique.

"I have never heard such overwhelming positive feedback as I got from Salesloft" said Greg. "We heard comments such as 'This thing's awesome' many, many times, from both SDRs and AEs."

And on the backend (support), Greg rates customer success 11 out of 10, the best customer support he's ever experienced.

"There's an umbrella of support that covers all aspects of everything we're doing within these three tools. With one email, I'm confident I'll get connected to brilliant people who I trust and put in the extra effort."

On the front end, Salesloft is simple, easy to use, intuitive, and has a clean interface.

However, powerful adjectives from sales team members are only a plus if those words are backed up with data that has a net positive impact on the company.

Since implementing Salesloft, Salesforce data has been "way way better" because it's easy for account executives to update, take notes, and so on — right in the Clari interface.

Salesloft does all the heavy lifting, and Greg loves how the CRM score makes it "super easy" to see how "on top of things" AEs are.

Before Groove, Black Swan Data's provider was "causing more issues than it was solving." It was overpriced, there were too many unused licenses, and it was siloed — not taking into account the entire tech stack.

With Groove in place, everything's getting logged automatically — something their previous platform did not do well.

Greg loves how Groove "just sits on top of Salesforce" and isn't creating its own objects. A "game changer," in Greg's words. "Night and day for me. It's removed headaches and hours upon hours of manual cleaning and creating processes to avoid duplication. Groove never creates duplication issues because it just stays in Salesforce ... the data is way more reliable."

Greg summarizes it nicely: "If you're using Salesloft without using Groove, you're only getting a portion of the value."

Groove is different. "We've finally reached that single source of truth where we know anything customer-facing is getting recorded. It's sitting in Salesforce. It's getting reported on and dashboarded through Salesloft"

And Salesloft is saving time — a limited resource.

Greg estimates he saves 2-3 hours per week. But when he looks at the time savings across the team, that number jumps to 20+ hours per week since moving from manual to automated.

Salesloft does such a good job of putting the data where people are already working and living. That saves us a lot of mental worrying ... knowing the data is reliable.

As Greg looks into the crystal ball and muses over the future — the evolution of his sales organization, where it needs to go to continue having success and seeing growth — he knows Clari is "crucial to that process."

Ready for better revenue outcomes?

Let's talk. Book a quick 15-minute call. No pressure, just a conversation about your goals.

Book a Call