Xenith Transforms Its Business on the Salesforce Platform

Torrent’s consulting experience is not to be underestimated. Just because you can execute and build things in Salesforce doesn’t mean you should be building those things… I appreciate Torrent’s honest feedback about what’s best... The whole team has been really great to work with.

Jonathon Pop | Director of Technology | Xenith

Today, Xenith is at the top of its game. The company designs and manufactures innovative football helmets, shoulder pads, and other protective gear, building itself into an industry-leading brand — one whose mission is to support the athlete’s pursuit in training, playing, and living. As Xenith’s director of technology Jonathon Pop put it, “Everything is athlete-centric for us.”

 

To reach this point, however, the company had to be willing to take some major risks. In 2015, Xenith moved its operations from Massachusetts to Detroit, Michigan, and in 2017 completely overhauled its business model, transitioning away from its B2B distribution approach. “We decided we were going to take our destiny into our own hands and become a direct-to-consumer seller,” Pop said.

Business Challenge

 

With such massive change came the need for new people, new processes — and new technologies. As Xenith prepared to shift away from its distributor base and to onboard a direct sales team, the first step was to overhaul the company’s existing Salesforce instance. New reps were going to need a sales pipeline and a better view of their customers. As a result of selling through intermediaries, Pop explained, “we really had no idea who was wearing our products.”

 

Once these baseline needs were met, the focus would need to turn to equipping sales reps with a powerful quoting tool — one capable of quickly translating nearly infinite product permutations into 1). Easy-to-read documents for customers and 2). Accurate bills of materials for the manufacturing team. “If you look at a football helmet, it really doesn’t look all that complex,” Pop said. “But when you break it down into the number of different ways you can build it, there are more than two billion combinations.”

Technology/processes did not fit new business model

Lack of data visibility

Complex quoting requirements

Solution

 

To accomplish these goals, Xenith engaged with Torrent Consulting, and the two teams quickly got to work. First, they collaborated on a Sales Cloud optimization designed to align Xenith’s CRM with their new business processes. From there, they implemented a Salesforce CPQ solution that makes configuring quotes as easy as clicking on the appropriate customer preferences (what color, which face mask, etc.).

 

After completing these projects, Xenith decided to retain Torrent Consulting for a managed services contract. Without a dedicated Salesforce admin, the company recognized it would need help from a team that knew their platform well. “Having somebody that understands our business was a big part of what played into working with Torrent [for managed services],” Pop said. “Everyone that we’ve worked with so far [at Torrent] probably knows our business as well as most of the people in our business.”  

Salesforce optimization

CPQ

Managed services

Results

Greater data visibility

Sales team has doubled in size

Increased revenue

Thanks to Xenith’s newly optimized platform and custom quoting solution, sales reps have better visibility into their customers and better ways to serve them. And because Salesforce and its accompanying processes allow for repeatable experiences and faster onboarding, the company has been able to expand its sales team rapidly. The results? The total number of reps has doubled from 12 to 25 — and collectively they’ve more than made up for the revenue lost during the company’s transition period.

 

Going forward, Xenith and Torrent will work together to run even more of Xenith’s business through the Salesforce platform, starting with its payment process. For Pop, it’s an important relationship, one that will help his company reach more athletes across the country. “I believe this is the age of partnerships,” he said. “We have to find those right partners who will help us scale to the size of business we want to be, because we won’t be able to do everything in house at the pace we want to do it. And Torrent is that kind of partner.”

You might be interested in:

Driving Efficient Workflows Into an Optimized Salesforce Org with Managed Services Guidance

READ MORE