Lederne

Lederne represents more than 115.000 members in Denmark - across all industries. With more than 100 years of experience, Lederne is Denmark's oldest professional organization and unemployment insurance fund for managers. We've spoken with Heidi Bligaard, Head of Sales and Membership at Lederne, to hear about the advantages of using Adversus.

Lederne works to provide the best possible conditions for a successful career as a manager through managerial help, legal aid, and wage insurance for their members. 

Communication with both their existing and new members is an important part of their core business. Numerous calls are made daily to present their many benefits to new potential members.

In the past, Lederne has had an external call center to handle its outreach sales but decided a few years ago to handle it in-house. To begin with, the canvas team worked from their existing CRM system. 

"We've had sales going in-house for a few years now, and our CRM platform has done what it was capable of given the circumstances. The problem was that it was never intended for a sales team's work. When we decided to move canvas sales in-house, it wasn't optimal for sales to work in the CRM module we were already using. At that time, the salespeople didn't get the attention they needed and, therefore, their work was extremely administrative," says Heidi Bligaard, Head of Sales and Membership at Lederne.

Manual tasks weighed down the workload for the salespeople. Not only did they have to focus on calling the leads they were given but also had to handle the administrative workload behind every single call, regardless if they'd spoken to the lead or not. Thus it was hard for the sales reps to focus on what they did best; selling.

"Even though we were attentive to the sales staff, we didn't reach the cadence we wanted to when the administrative tasks were such a big part of their work."

The joy of change

It was made clear that Lederne didn't have sufficient tools to exploit their salespeople's full potential and resources. Thus, they began looking for a tool that could ease the administrative burden associated with their outbound activities and the salespeople's unnecessary workload. Simultaneously, there was a huge need to optimize their workflow. Automation, availability, and ease of use were vital attributes to support the salespeople in the best way possible.

"Initially, we looked for an outbound system in the phone system we already used. It's always nice if it's possible to keep it within the same framework, but it was made clear that it's best to use systems to what they're built for. We expanded the search and contacted different suppliers of dialing systems. There, we got the best experience with Adversus based on availability, help, and support. I liked the fact that a lot of the employees of Adversus have experience with outbound work, so you know what's important," Heidi Bligaard continues.

Calls made more effective

The first step towards an easier day for the salespeople was taken. The implementation of Adversus could take off. Automation of manual tasks was the main focus.

Using Progressive Dialing, the salespeople no longer have to call manually from lists, saving them many clicks and waiting time daily.

"It's a demanding job to be an outbound seller, especially if you constantly have to take the initiative yourself. That part is much easier if the system dials for you. And we notice the excitement from the salespeople, which is the critical point. We can easily sit back-end and think everything is amazing, but if the salespeople don't think it has helped their work, it's all for nothing. Now, it's almost 1,5 years since we took off, and especially the salespeople that have experienced both the old and the new system are still extremely thrilled!"

Less administrative nonsense

Lederne's change to Adversus has not only been beneficial for the salespeople who have experienced an improved and more efficient workflow. As a manager, the setup and user-friendliness are vital parameters because they form the salespeople's work. Therefore, it should be as easy as possible to create campaigns, manage leads, and create reports.

"Setting up campaigns was quite the workload before. We had to make each campaign fit into an already defined template. Using Adversus, we can customize the campaigns in relation to which campaign they are calling from and what data the salespeople need when they call. There is incredible flexibility in the system, and it's easy to configure everything by ourselves. We don't need to be IT-experts and actually manage to do almost everything without any help. It gives us far more agility, and there's not far from thought to action."

Focusing on performance

Today, it's almost 1,5 years since Lederne started using Adversus. During that period, Heidi Bligaard has experienced a far better usage of the salespeople's resources, which speaks for itself when looking at the activity and sales. With no unnecessary administrative tasks, they can now focus on performance instead.

"It has boosted our sales. We have increased call activity by 50% and increased sales by 10% on average per seller. Sales are still as strong as when we started, and we experience that the high call activity is stable. We also have better visibility to the sellers about what we expect from them, e.g., how many calls they should aim to make and their conversation duration goal. It's no art calling a lot of people. It's also about keeping the conversation going," Heidi Bligaard explains.

With Adversus' integration and cooperation with Plecto, the salespeople always have an easy overview of their activities, KPIs, and goals both individually and across the team. They get this through customized dashboards that help and motivate the agents.

The salespeople have both individual and team-based dashboards. Here, they can closely follow how they perform on their leads, how the campaigns are performing, and the conversion rate. 

"It definitely helps when they can see that they converted 50% of the leads last time they worked on a specific campaign. Then it's probably okay to work on that campaign again. Obviously, as a canvas seller, you experience days without any sales, but if you can see that you've had a high conversation duration and have sent some deals, it's not a bad day, even though there haven't been any sales."

Read more about Lederne and their work right here.