On June 11, 2020, ARES representative – President Bui Thanh Phap had the opportunity to join 2 speakers: Mr. Wesley Kim, Regional Sales Manager, Developed and Developing Countries, Salesforce and Ms. Charlotte Tang, Sales Manager, SMB Vietnam, Salesforce, with the theme “Pioneer with the world’s #1 CRM solution for small businesses”.
During the sharing session, Mr. Bui Thanh Phap also had sincere discussions about the effectiveness that Salesforce brings to the business. The application of Salesforce to management and business activities has helped businesses solve many problems.
The following is the detailed content of the exchange of Mr. Bui Thanh Phap during the webinar.
Before looking at his exchange, let’s understand more “What is Salesforce?”
Salesforce is a total CRM software solution that offers a range of sales and customer service-specific CRM applications for small and medium-sized businesses. Salesforce provides optimal solutions for sales, management, and customer service. There are many companies that are using Salesforce because of its high security, great reliability and flexible costs depending on the size of the business.
Exchange content:
*Question 1: It is our pleasure to introduce today’s Salesforce guest- Mr. Bui Thanh Phap – Chairman of ARES Environmental Solutions JSC. Dear Mr. Phap, can you share with the audience a little more about the inspiration behind your business model? How did you start your company journey?
Mr Bui Thanh Phap:
Originally an environmental engineer, 22 years ago I worked as an installation worker – operating wastewater treatment plants, I have strived non-stop to get the career I am today.
Started in 2003, the company’s initial name was Green Environment, a pioneer company in the Western region doing water & wastewater treatment.
We changed our name to ARES in 2016 because of trademark registration. The business name is also the core value of the business, which we apply and practice in both management, business and cooperation. That is:
+ A: Aspiration
+ R: Responsibility
+ E: Ethics
+ S: Serve
With a wish that, ARES is a representative of the aspiration to protect life and protect the environment. ARES has been inspiring people to love this planet more. Each ARES person represents a mindful, ethical, responsible and living lifestyle that is meant to serve.
ARES does business by serving society, selling by consulting with the attitude of standing in the position of customers and serving wholeheartedly.
Over the years, the revenue that has grown every year is from “repeat customers” and old customers “referral” to new customers. So CRM (which stands for “Customer Relationship Management”) is very important to us.
We have found many ways to approach and use CRMs, including both Vietnamese and foreign software such as Pipeline, Infusionsoft. But failed for many reasons.
At first, we were intrigued by Salesforce’s “1st world”, but after 2 years of using the sales cloud, that’s right.
*Question 2: Can you tell me and the audience here more about how Salesforce helped you overcome those initial challenges?
– Mr Bui Thanh Phap:
We do B2B business nationwide. Each Account that we come into contact with has more than 10 contacts, our volume of contacts so far has reached several thousand people. Without Salesforce, we wouldn’t be able to “keep warm” so that we could re-establish the “old customers repurchase and refer new customers”, so that we could expand the business scope like today.
With a wide range of activities across the country, we always rely on Salesforce to carry out all sales and customer care activities.
Now we can be confident that our sales team can work from home or anywhere. Like the last pandemic, we have 1 month of Work from home but everything is still going smoothly and efficiently, after the pandemic got a new contract….
*Question 3: What is the overall impact of investing in technology on your business?
– Mr Bui Thanh Phap:
I love technology very much, in addition to Salesforce for sales and marketing, we are also using other software for business administration.
Salesforce alone has made an important contribution to increasing sales by more than 20% in 2019:
+ Technology has also made employees more satisfied with the company because they have freedom in work, no longer being confined to office hours.
+ Customer database storage becomes more secure and expandable every day, despite staff fluctuations. This is a huge benefit for businesses when using Salesforce. Because I think, in business, the quantity and quality of the customer database is the size of the revenue.
+ Salesforce pipelines and forecasts also help sales managers see the future picture of the next quarter, the whole year, even next year. This helps business owners to be proactive in setting business goals and adjusting strategies in a timely manner.
*Question 4: Can you share why ARES decided to choose Salesforce as a solution provider to accompany your business?
– Mr Bui Thanh Phap:
During a chance at a conference in Ho Chi Minh City, I heard a friend briefly talk about you using Salesforce to run your sales & marketing apparatus, then I looked it up on Google and “1st world” was interesting. me because my opinion has always been to use the best.
I myself have always secretly had a desire to automate my business and help the team do it freely, autonomously, and self-managed.
Before:
- Sales are unstable, sales targets are often dropped;
- Loss of customer data when a sales or sales manager quits;
- Membrane client database is not updated, each one keeps a little… no increase in quantity or quality;
- Continuity of meetings but sales effectiveness is still poor;
- Did not accumulate experience, lessons to close the sale (both win and lost).
After:
- Sales increase;
- Customer data is centralized;
- The store of sales experience has both success and failure;
- The freedom of the team;
- Manage the tasks of the sales team without having to “investigate or ask”;
- Peace of mind, no longer worry of me and the manager when seeing the forecast, pipeline.
*Question 5: Can you share more challenges that you and your business have experienced in the past few weeks? And how can you still ensure interaction with your customers during this COVID-19 pandemic?
– Mr Bui Thanh Phap:
The pandemic has brought pain and tragedy to the whole world, it is the pain of anyone who thinks about the past, that pain is still not over. Each of us should pray for the world to quickly recover from this scourge.
Like many businesses, ARES was also affected, but ARES has known how to transform this golden opportunity to improve internal activities from management regulations – corporate governance to improving internal processes in the company. there’s Salesforce. Despite the losses, we have also really benefited from this season by looking back at the core and improving the process.
As we worked on improving Salesforce, we realized that we weren’t actually exploiting the full potential of Salesforce. One thing we figured out was, if we had a good idea, Salesforce could be customized to whatever we wanted.
During the pandemic, in addition to sending warm emails to the thousands of contacts we have, with opps in the pipeline, we send advice and explanations about each item in the proposal, about product knowledge. , training customers to understand the value that we bring to customers. We also set up dozens of tasks right on Salesforce to be ready for immediately after the translation.
As a result, after the pandemic we have a new contract.
*Question 5: What advice would you give someone that is just starting their journey with Salesforce?
– Mr Bui Thanh Phap:
Dear friends, in this unpredictable world, anything can happen, the same pandemic this time can repeat with a different manifestation, at an unexpected time. Therefore, to build a solid business, we need to create a highly automated system, less dependent on people and external conditions. In which sales & marketing is always the first and most important system for any business. And Salesforce is one of the platforms that I confidently recommend to you because I and many companies have had success with it.
Starting a business at the age of 29, ARES has been 16 years old so far, through many failures and successes, one of my great experiences is: If you are a business owner, you have to get out of the business. That day, as long as you do a lot of professional work in your business, that day your business can’t reach far. Salesforce is a platform that works with your employees, according to your own goals and processes. I am also doing this step by step and I hope you do the same soon.
My own lesson is, with small business, if you’re a business owner, you should be involved with the team building and improving Salesforce, even acting as a director, you have to have an understanding. a lot about Salesforce, because only you know best how your business should do business, how to operate processes to be better. And the good thing is that when you think of those ways, Salesforce can implement your idea.
In my experience, in addition to leadership engagement, to build Salesforce successfully, from a leader’s perspective, you need to pay attention to the following things:
- Transparent business model, clear business philosophy and business strategy implementation down to the lowest level employees.
- Build internal processes, customer processes in a specific and clear way to be able to put on Salesforce, avoid having to change later.
- Build the right corporate culture to be able to deploy and maintain the operation & improvement of Salesforce after setup. This is important because Salesforce becomes effective only with consistent team practice.
In my opinion, investing in a business automation and digitization platform like Salesforce not only helps your business grow steadily in terms of sales, customers and brands, but also brings freedom and freedom. owner, happiness for employees in the company. That is truly a great benefit, a service-by-service business that all good businesses should do.
ARES Environmental Solution JSC
