Sutherland Black: Bringing Order to Financial Sales with OnePageCRM

Company Profile

Name of the company: Sutherland Black
HQ: Livingston, West Lothian, UK
Year founded: 2007
Industry: Financial Services

Since John McLaughlin became an accountant, he’s been on a mission to help companies get the most out of their business. 

“I wanted to provide a financial service that would model improvements to the amount of money that businesses can make.”

— John McLaughlin, Director of Sutherland Black.

From 2007, John and his team at Sutherland Black have been doing just that. Having jumped into the role of sales lead, John knows firsthand the particularities and challenges of sales within the financial industry. 

In fact, his top tip for working in financial sales is to “continue getting new clients, keep the communication open, move on when it’s not going anywhere, and try again.”

Per aspera ad astra, CRM style

“At the start of our sales process is always OnePageCRM!”

But it hasn’t always been that way. 

When John and his partner first started, they were acquiring leads through telemarketing agencies and adding them to their old CRM—ACT!

However, it was a cumbersome process that was admin-heavy and took valuable time that could have been better spent with clients. There were too many components and no clear flow to follow. 

So the old system was abandoned. And the hunt for a new, simple, and efficient, CRM has begun. Enter OnePageCRM (you saw that one coming, right?). 

Right from the start, the team at Sutherland Black found OnePageCRM easy to use and intuitive. The setup was quick and the onboarding was effortless.

Freed from the admin and confusion of the old CRM, John took the lead and set up a sales process that truly worked for them.

While they continued working with the telemarketing agencies, John and his team have enhanced their financial sales process with Next Actions. This helped ensure timely and consistent follow-ups.

At the same time, they were logging Calls and Notes in the CRM, always keeping the team on the same page. 

Automate for success

As their company grew, the team became more conscious of the time they spent on lead generation and data entry.

They’ve decided to automate the process using the OnePageCRM’s API. Now, when the leads fill out the web form on their website, they get automatically added to OnePageCRM as contacts, ready to be actioned.

“To make it even easier, a Next Action gets automatically assigned to me so that I can swiftly move into action.”

Financial sales on the go

As John is always on the go, he finds the OnePageCRM Mobile App to be his trusted partner in crime.

Prior to using OnePageCRM, John found it difficult to stay organized (as well as keep the lead info up-to-date) while out of the office.

Now, all he needs to do is open the app, check the Action Stream with the Next Actions scheduled for the day, call up the contact on top, and log the call results along with any notes in real-time.

The last crucial step is adding the new Next Action so the sale always moves forward.

“The OnePageCRM Mobile App has been a massive help in terms of  keeping up with admin, helping us not lose clients along the way. This is a brilliant aspect of OnePageCRM. And I think that the Mobile App is worth its weight in gold just for this.”

Classify and conquer

The sales process they’ve devised doesn’t only work well with following up with clients. Their constant updating of client information also gives them the chance to classify their contacts. 

Like many of us, John and his team like to know where their leads are coming from and how far along they are in the sales cycle.

With OnePageCRM’s customizable status labels and lead sources, the team has personalized these to suit their everyday business language. 

Using these labels allows them to find and target their clients based on their requirements confidently.

Being able to easily classify their clients makes their targeting much more accurate. This allows them to successfully follow up with “cold contacts”, bringing in more leads and sales!

Keeping it simple for success

OnePageCRM has enabled Sutherland Black to create an organized and simple sales process. This way, they could focus their energy on their clients rather than admin.

The team at Sutherland Black has been successful at getting new clients, keeping the communication open, all the while winning these clients with the help of a consistent sales follow-up system. 

They’ve stopped worrying about admin and missing out on those leads. And this is what gave them the edge and confidence to succeed in the world of financial sales.