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Creating a Positive Customer Experience
MarineMax was founded in 1998 to help Americans make memories on the water.
With more than 70 dealerships, they offer boaters unparalleled resources, from sales and service of luxury boats and yachts, to financing, insurance, and storage. They even run a popular series of education and social events.
As the company grew, the sales and marketing teams realized they needed a more powerful CRM to create a more responsive customer experience.
Project Manager Matt McDermott was responsible for empowering the teams to serve customers better.
He says, “We deal in luxury items, and there’s a lot of shopping around. With our old CRM, when someone submitted a lead, it could take hours to come through, and it would often go to the wrong store. In some cases, we wouldn’t respond until days later.”
Missed Connections
Being unable to route leads efficiently, the old CRM was hindering MarineMax’s ability to connect with leads and customers.
Matt says, “In South Florida, you might have six to eight stores where you could feasibly shop for a multi-million dollar boat. If we’re slow to follow-up with you, there’s a good chance you’ve already moved on.”
Another issue was that there was no way to standardize the sales experience.
Amanda Ward, MarineMax’s Director of Marketing, says, “We couldn’t monitor and hold team members accountable for how quickly they needed to follow up.”
Resistance to a tech solution
The disappointing capabilities of the old CRM added another complication: sales reps had no incentive to give up their personal, paper-driven systems and learn a new software tool.
Matt adds, ”Our old system was so antiquated and challenging that nobody used it. It took forever to load, and it didn’t have the information our reps needed.”
Although MarineMax knew that a good CRM would help reps sell more boats with less effort, the sales team worried it might be an inconvenience or an attempt to micromanage their work. To win them over, it would take an extremely user-friendly option with undeniable value for their work.
Implementing the full Hubspot CRM
MarineMax was confident that HubSpot’s full CRM would fit the bill. Since they were already using Marketing Hub for emails, they knew the interface was user-friendly, and it would be easier for the sales team to learn compared to other solutions.
Matt says, “By leveraging the full capabilities of HubSpot, we saw the opportunity to gain visibility into our customer lifecycle and improve their experience. Amalgamating our data would help us respond to customers in a more timely manner and coordinate our sales, service, and events teams to deliver a higher level of service.”
In addition to Marketing Hub, MarineMax opened up powerful cross-team functionality and customizations with Sales Hub, Service Hub, and Operations Hub.
Lightning-fast service with lead-routing
The first resounding win that MarineMax achieved was setting up a customized lead-routing workflow.
Amanda says, “We have over 70 locations, and each store sells several brands. Plus, only certain salespeople are registered to sell our multi-million dollar yachts. With HubSpot, our workflow sends leads instantly to the right store and pings the right rep so they can be served quickly.”
Matt says the workflow has been a game-changer:
“We're able to follow up with that customer or contact within the first 30 minutes, which is now our standard. That didn't exist before we were using HubSpot.”
Not only is MarineMax able to set and maintain an excellent standard across all of their stores, but they’re consistently beating it. Their current response time average is 9 minutes.
Strengthening connections
By consolidating marketing, sales, and service operations on HubSpot, MarineMax has been able to leverage rich data to build stronger connections with their customers.
Amanda says, “All of the data points that we pull into HubSpot allow us to personalize content and remarket based on a lead’s interests. For example, we use the page view insight frequently to identify when someone is interested in a certain brand based on which web pages they’ve visited in the last few days.”
Sales reps can see their leads’ activity on the MarineMax website and send them relevant, pre-built emails.
“It’s a lot more personalized and timely, which means it’s more effective for our team,” Amanda says. “It’s also a better customer experience. They get information on exactly what they’re looking at, and maybe it’s just the push they need to get in touch.”
Time-saving integrations
With HubSpot’s extensive list of integrations and endless opportunities to connect with its customized API, MarineMax has streamlined every aspect of the business.
“We’re integrated with Sakari, our SMS tool, and Intercom, which runs the chatbot on our website,” Amanda says. “We also have an integration with Eventbrite for some of our larger events that require paid registration.”
Important custom integrations allow MarineMax to connect efficiently with their boat brands.
“When they send us leads, it comes right into our HubSpot instance through the API,” Amanda says.
Sales reps were thrilled
Adoption of HubSpot has been a smashing success.
Amanda says, “It’s very intuitive. We were able to get up and running very quickly, and show the team it was going to help them close more deals and sell more efficiently.”
Matt says the mobile app was a big winner with the sales team.
“They’re not typically at their desks. They’re out showing boats and meeting people at the docks. So the fact they can do everything from their phone was a huge selling point.”
Another blockbuster feature has been sales templates.
“We’ve started to pilot the sales templates functionality, and it’s been a huge success. For one particular store, the conversion rate for SQLs that put down a deposit rose from 3.52% to 6.81%.”
Mo Struder, a sales rep from the MarineMax Clearwater store, says, “We believe the sales templates are going to be game-changers. Adoption by the team has been tremendous.”
Expert support for elevated strategy
Matt says the support team at HubSpot was integral to their success.
“They helped us plan our onboarding process, set up workflows, and understand best practices so we could structure the system in a way that makes sense for our business.”
One new procedure that MarineMax developed was giving sales reps insight on their leads’ email activity.
“Gaining visibility into which emails a lead has received, opened, or clicked on has been key. If a question comes in about a certain boat model, and the rep sends a link with more info, they can see if the lead clicked on it right away, and they know it’s a great time to call.”
With insight on their clients’ readiness in real time, MarineMax sales reps are connecting much more effectively with their customers.
Some of their brands use Salesforce, and HubSpot’s robust integration makes it a snap to receive, route, and serve those leads.
The next billion-dollar line of business
As a single source of truth for all of MarineMax’s teams, HubSpot is enabling greater cooperation than ever before.
Matt says, “We sell boats, but there are a lot of other relationships involved. Customers need parts, accessories, dockage, and fuel. Those different pieces of our business used to be disjointed, but now we can upsell and have all of that underneath one shared view.”
Recently, they’ve connected the HubSpot instance of their Finance and Insurance line to the retail sales account.
Matt says, “So if a sales rep has a customer who is looking at financing, they can share that contact with the F&I team and work together.”
Not only will this give the customer seamless service, but it will accelerate the F&I line’s growth.
“The F&I side is going to be the future. Being able to integrate them into HubSpot is huge. We keep saying it's going to be our next billion-dollar line of business.”
Outstanding customer-driven growth
In the three years since MarineMax implemented the full HubSpot CRM, their annual revenue has increased by 113%.
Although this growth happened alongside acquisitions, same-store sales also shot up by 19% in the last two years.
The most visible win that MarineMax achieved was being able to track and optimize their sales team’s response time. HubSpot’s data and automations have enabled them to connect customers to the right sales rep in a blazing-fast nine minutes.
To other large retail teams looking for a powerful CRM, Amanda absolutely recommends HubSpot.
She says, “HubSpot support and their resources make implementation so easy. And having visibility into your leads and the ability to prioritize them for your sales reps will be game-changing. It’s hands down the most effective way to sell.”
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