Improving performance and bridging the gap between departments in PL & Partners

Challenge: PL & Partners needed a structured sales process with a transparent system to measure, motivate, and develop the employees overall.

Since PL & Partners was founded in 2015, they have become the leading marketing agency within their field of advertising on Facebook and Instagram. During the first years of the company's existence, they experienced a huge demand from the market, and they had to handle a significant amount of organic leads. But given the company's young age, they did not have any structure.

“During the first three years, we did not have any structure for our sales machine. We didn’t have to focus on developing the sales process. However, as we grew larger, we needed a transparent system to measure and motivate the employees into developing new sales and reaching higher targets. Other departments were interested in sales, but they had no easy way of knowing what was going on.”

The challenge was clear; there was a need for more transparency and a better system to control the sales machine.

Solution: A Plecto Dashboard solution was implemented to bring the performance out in the open.

“Since the problem was transparency, lack of system, and a bit of lack of motivation, we needed something to bring the sales out in the open. We needed to make the accounts proud of selling.”

In PL & Partners, the most important values are transparency, honesty, and all employees' constant wish to develop themselves and others. The team aims to be the best – both internally and externally. They turned to Plecto to get a visualization tool that has enabled them to increase the transparency in the company, bring the departments closer together, and will allow them to follow their vision to be the best in their field.

“For us, the need for a dashboard was the low hanging fruit, and therefore this was the first Plecto feature we implemented. In the beginning, Plecto can seem difficult as it needs competencies in coding, but as long as you have the interest, this is not a problem. I’ve had a lot of great talks with Plecto’s Customers Success team who have guided me on how to make a more complex setup, and the great support I got, in the beginning, means that I am now more or less able to do anything in Plecto myself.”

For Nicklas, the success of implementing Plecto was dependent on implementing the tool into the culture of the company, and this has been a big focus for him and the rest of the management team.

“I believe that choosing a tool like Plecto shouldn’t be a quick decision - it should be a wise decision. You need to implement Plecto to the culture and get all employees to buy-in. Once you’ve done that, Plecto can help you develop your business into the direction you wish to take it. I really believe that the complexity of Plecto ads value, the more complex the tool, the better the outcome can be. We’ve got a complex but also a very adapted tool.”

In PL & Partners, the main focus will always be customer satisfaction. In 2019 the team had a high emphasis on improving NPS, and every day all employees work hard to better the satisfaction. For Nicklas, it is an obvious next step to use Plecto to showcase customer satisfaction.

"In the future, when we expand our use to other departments, I'm sure it'll help us motivate the specialist into delivering even better client satisfaction. We've seen how the gamification aspect motivates the sales team into aiming for higher goals."

Results: Plecto supported the cultural lift in PL & Partners by establishing transparency, sharing performance, and the companies most important KPIs.

“In short, Plecto has added transparency to the company, and the tool has brought the departments closer together. Culture wise, implementing Plecto has given us quite a lift. When you don’t have transparency, you risk creating silos in your company, but with Plecto, we have been able to share important insights with the whole team to ensure important knowledge sharing.”

PL & Partners experienced that transparency brings the departments closer, which has changed the culture for the better. But Plecto has also had a significant influence on performance:

“We are fortunate that our position in the market gives us a lot of inbound sales. But it’s been difficult to measure. After implementing Plecto, the average order value has been more stable – not fluctuated as much because we now have a measuring point. I’ve always believed that what gets measured gets improved. We’ve seen that in sales where we improved the conversion rate on the inbound sales after implementing Plecto. This year we’ve focused on improving our net promoter score. In the future, we’re looking forward to exploring how Plecto can give us transparency to that aspect. I believe that being transparent on customer satisfaction is the best way to lead the employees to do better.”

When you meet Nicklas, you are in no doubt that he is definitely not the kind of leader who leads with micromanagement, and Plecto has helped him open up the organization and share insights.

“As leaders, we should share the data insights with our employees. Instead of us telling our team members what to do, it’s much effective to open up the organization and share insights to important KPI’s for the employees to create their own competition and take responsibility. Knowing exactly what they aim for is a motivating factor for the team, and Plecto is a great help on this.”

PL & Partners has experienced how visualization can bring excellent output to the company when it’s presented in a product that is easily accessible and adaptable. Nicklas is in no doubt, that, if implemented correctly, Plecto can be your most essential tool.

“As a company owner, you need to invest in the implementation of Plecto into the company culture. If you have that recipe, Plecto is the best tool you’ll ever have. If implemented correctly, Plecto will give you transparency, bring the departments closer together, spark the motivation, and remove silo work.”