Renewable energy experts heat up their operations with Zoho CRM

The company

Established in 2006, Go Geothermal is a leading UK supplier of environmentally friendly heating and cooling products for commercial and domestic properties. Under the directorship of its entrepreneurial owners Tim Williams and Sean Sowden, Go Geothermal has grown exponentially, opening facilities across the North-East of England and the Midlands as the demand for its renewable energy products has soared. Grabbing the attention of the CTC AB Group, Go Geothermal was acquired by the respected Swedish manufacturer in 2021 and now has exclusive UK distribution rights to CTC AB's high-quality ground and air source heat pumps. 

The challenge

For several years Go Geothermal used a well-known brand of CRM to manage its sales processes. However, its team found the platform cumbersome and unwieldy, leading to its long-term neglect. "Across the business, the feeling was that our CRM was awful," says Tim. "People got disenfranchised with it quickly, and I wasn't pushing them to use it enough either. But the reality was that it wasn't good enough to inspire confidence in me to push it to them."

Without a user-friendly CRM platform, Go Geothermal's sales representatives reverted to spreadsheets and documents, storing their leads, opportunities, and contacts in disparate, disconnected files. This soon meant that team members couldn't manage each other's clients when they were on leave, and it was impossible for Tim and Sean to glean an overview of the health of the business. "We were living in the dark ages in terms of sales tech," acknowledges Tim.

Without a nurtured CRM system, it was also difficult for Tim to monitor the individual performance of the sales representatives (each of whom is expected to complete 2-3 appointments with new and existing customers each day) without manually checking their calendars. And to compound matters, Tim was considering employing more sales staff in 2024. But with no way of documenting the lead generation demands and output of the team, his new hires just couldn't be justified.

Pressure to digitise Go Geothermal's after-sales service was also mounting. The firm works with a network of approved heating installers across the UK, to whom its clients are passed on the completion of a sale. Tim noted that whenever customers called to discuss their installation, his agents were unable to see which partner had been assigned to the job, causing much confusion. "One of the things that was hard for us before, because we offer technical support for our products, was to dovetail the technical and sales sides of the business. They were very disjointed," he explains. He hoped that by connecting the pre- and post-sale journey using an improved CRM system, there would also be a positive effect on customer service.

Tim's struggles were exacerbated by the demands of Go Geothermal's Swedish owners. CTC AB Group asked him for detailed performance reports at the end of each month, covering its open prospects, opportunities and quotes. To fulfil their needs, Tim had to pull together figures from multiple sources, a time-consuming and sometimes error-prone task.

The solution

In 2023, Darran Burrage joined Go Geothermal as its new Commercial Director. His strong background in sales automation and technology soon meant that he was itching to overhaul the firm's sales software. "One of the things that was very instrumental for Darran was changing our CRM," says Tim.

Darran had used CRM systems from numerous vendors in previous roles and felt that Zoho CRM would be the ideal choice for Go Geothermal due to its intuitive user interface and scalability. Demonstrating how simple the system would be for the sales team to pick up and maintain, Darran immediately had Tim's buy-in. "When Zoho came into the mix, we quickly realised it could do all the things we needed," recalls Tim. "Where Zoho changed the game was that we had a willingness to use it, and we believed it was worth it for the benefits."

To roll out Zoho CRM, Go Geothermal enlisted the expertise of Ascent Business, a premium Zoho partner. Ascent migrated all of the firm's disparate data sources into the platform and built all the dashboards, pipelines, and reports it (and CTC AB) required. "Imagine a human being lying in a hospital. Having Zoho is like suddenly getting visibility of all their vital signs, and we didn't have that before," beams Tim.

With Zoho CRM on board, Tim is now able to see the activities of his sales team around the clock, monitor incoming leads ("I permanently have the prospects module open on my phone," he reveals), and visualise the full pipeline of sales opportunities with ease. Ascent even plugged in Go Geothermals' Sage accounting platform so that the team could see every quote a client had received against their account record, as well as in the main pipeline. "When we quote a customer, you can see it in the system. It's good to see the right quotes when we're in face-to-face meetings with our clients," Tim adds.  

Zoho CRM also enables Go Geothermal to track every stage of the sales journey, including the installation handover. No longer are the team blind to the aftercare experiences of their customers. This upgrade is already having a halo effect on customer Trustpilot reviews, which are glowing. "It all leads to a better service, and I can see it improving," says Tim. With Go Geothermal's commercial, training, and technical activities now aligned inside Zoho CRM, the team can pass on much richer levels of detail to each customer, regardless of who picks up the enquiry.

Reporting has been another major benefit of the Zoho implementation. "All of our reporting is now Zoho-lead," says Tim. Rather than cobbling together figures from multiple sources, Tim can now trust Zoho CRM to produce a wealth of performance reports at the press of a button. And although its Swedish owners are not internal users of the CRM, they too can see these statistics via a series of reports that are shared through automated emails. "It's all integrated, so they can see every prospect, quote, and opportunity that we've got. It's very transparent and it's global across the CTC AB corporation," explains Tim.

Excitingly, Go Geothermal has not ended its Zoho journey with the CRM. Ascent also introduced its team to Zoho Expense, a comprehensive travel and expense management platform. With a growing sales force traversing the country each day, the application has become invaluable, allowing the team to auto-scan and upload receipts on the fly. This has drastically cut down the time spent on expense reporting across the business, with Tim sharing that: "doing my expenses now takes me seven minutes, and they used to take me four hours a month. Expense sounded too good to be true, but it's actually as good as it promised to be."

Benefits and ROI

• Enhanced visibility of the business's performance, sales activity, and the after-sales customer journey.
• Improved customer satisfaction and reviews.
• Easier reporting with consistent, accurate data.
• Connectivity with Go Geothermal's Sage accounting software.
• Intuitive mobile application for on-the-go access to the CRM.
• A user-friendly CRM experience to increase widespread adoption.
• Seamless expense reporting, saving hours each month.