Built Technologies

Closing a deal at Built Technologies is no small task—it’s a complex process that can involve 20+ players scattered across a prospective customer’s sales, operations, and admin teams. The sales team at Built needs to understand the unique relationships among these players and keep track of important facts about each individual. And understanding how all these crucial details weave together is key for moving a deal in the right direction. 

However, without a system or process in place to gain this understanding, keeping track of all this critical information was proving to be very difficult for reps.

As SVP of Revenue Riley Thomas began to scale the sales team, he knew their processes and documentation needed to become robust and thorough. “We weren’t mapping our complex accounts. We had siloed information. We had contacts in Salesforce, but we didn’t know the relationships between them or how they impacted our best path of sale,” he recalls. 

That’s when he introduced his sales team to Lucidchart. 

“We used Lucidchart and Salesforce to create one source of truth that has helped us scale our team. We built our account mapping process around Lucidchart.” 

Understanding the deal

Using Lucidchart, the sales team now builds account maps for each qualified opportunity. These maps provide a visual representation of an account and all its intricate details, providing far more understanding and clarity than Salesforce alone can. Salesforce can only tell reps so much, and it doesn’t help them visualize gaps and opportunities or identify decision makers and their decision-making criteria visually. 

By building an account map in Lucidchart, reps can outline all the key stakeholders and players involved in a deal, understand the relationships between them, and keep track of which prospects are blockers, champions, or promoters. They can also document the current technology in place, record who has already been talked to, and identify who needs to be contacted next. Account maps act as both personal gameplans and visual checklists. 

“If reps map out their deal, they are more likely to question why they won’t win rather than why they will. In a complex sale, it’s a constant battle to always be qualifying. Building these account maps challenges reps to look at a deal and determine if they truly have everything needed to win,” says Riley. 

“It enables them to be more concerned about their deals than they were before—and concerned is good,” adds Jonathan Weber, Business Development Representative at Built. 
 

Integrating with Salesforce 

Built takes advantage of Lucidchart’s integration with Salesforce, which makes it simple for reps to get started building these account maps. By clicking a button in Salesforce, they can import all their Salesforce contacts into Lucidchart. And with Lucidchart’s bi-directional sync, any updates made to Salesforce are immediately reflected in Lucidchart and vice versa. Instead of going back and forth between applications, Lucidchart houses all the data they need to better understand their accounts and plan next steps. 

“The bi-directional sync with Salesforce has been a game changer for our reps. It’s made them so much more efficient. Yes, it still takes time for the reps to build their account maps, but we call that paying tuition—the reps learn from the process and are clearly able to see the gaps they need to fill,” explains Jonathan Weber, a member of the business development team at Built. 

Selling as a team

But it’s not just the reps who benefit from account maps. Sometimes reps need additional support for a deal to keep moving forward, which is why account maps have become the centerpiece for the company’s QBRs. 

“These QBRs are expensive—with so many executives and division heads present, we can’t be wasting minutes. Our CEO is not in the weeds of these deals every day, and that means he’s never going to be at 100% up to date. When reps just talk about a deal, we waste time. But when they show their account map, the CEO can get to 75% understanding within 30 seconds of seeing the diagram. That makes this tool well worth it for us,” Riley explains. 

Lucidchart is the source of truth guiding these QBR discussions. Everyone is able to see all the puzzle pieces and which ones are missing, and the team is able to determine how other departments can help take a deal to the finish line. These account maps allow selling to be a true team sport at Built. Riley explains: 

“For me, personally, Lucidchart allows me to gain visibility into something that was once convoluted and opaque. It allows me to see a level deeper. I’m managing 150 deals at any given time, yet with Lucidchart, I can jump in and immediately pick out the missing economic buyer needed to close the deal." 

Reps and leadership work together to have an entire account plan documented on these visuals—they include a 4-week action plan, next steps, and a close date. Built uses the MEDDIC sales methodology, and they’ve customized their account maps to align with this technology. Now they are able to keep all their MEDDIC information within the account map that syncs back to Salesforce. As a result, anyone can quickly gain a snapshot of the deal and understand its value, the forecasted close date, and the agreed upon next steps for the rep—regardless of how familiar they are with the deal previously.  

And this extra level of visibility has helped Built gain better insight into their pipeline for large, complex deals. Riley says:

“There are few tools that I have seen provide so much value. With Lucidchart, I can get midway through a deal and see things I couldn’t see before, which alerts me to the fact that the deal is missing something. Preventing just one deal from going badly makes a difference for our business, which makes Lucidchart a very valuable tool for us." 

Passing the baton

Due to their success-based model, implementation time is crucial for Built—if implementation drags out for multiple months, the company’s P&L is going to feel it. Riley knew they needed to cut down on implementation time, and he also knew that the only way to do so was to ensure smooth and efficient baton passes between sales and implementation teams. 

Because account maps are centrally owned and managed in Salesforce, the implementation team has immediate access to the Lucidchart visuals. Consequently, before a client even signs, the team is working to understand that client and their currrent situation. Riley explains:

“By granting them access to the visuals beforehand, the team can already be going at 25 mph rather than sitting with the emergency brake on when a deal closes. We are anticipating that this process will significantly shorten the implementation cycle and ensure the team really knows the client from the get-go."

The implementation team builds upon the client’s existing account map to document new interactions. As a result, they are able to hand off the most up-to-date information to the client success team. Client success enters the scene with a full understanding of the client’s organization and present circumstances.

Presenting value to clients

 While these account maps are obviously a big focus at Built, they aren’t the only visuals you’ll find in their Lucidchart folder. Sales engineers also rely on the product to create current and future state workflows to present to the client. Built prides itself on creating exact solutions for customers, and Lucidchart helps them develop and present those solutions effectively.

In order to help the client best understand why they need Built’s solution, the sales engineering team has the client build out their current workflows using sticky notes on a whiteboard. The manual exercise helps them feel the pain of their existing process. At the same time, a sales engineer is digitizing this same workflow in Lucidchart. They’re able to immediately verify its accuracy so they can begin building out the proposed future state diagram to present to the client. The workflows include swimlanes to indicate who is doing what in the process. 

“People are wowed by our use of Lucidchart. Digitizing the workflow in a consumable format provides a wow factor. By making it visual, the client can easily see the time they’ll save with our solution,” Riley explains. 

The complexity of the sale at Built hasn’t decreased, but the ability to successfully navigate that complexity has definitely increased. Lucidchart has equipped Built with the resources, knowledge, and understanding they need to demonstrate value, work more efficiently, mitigate risks, and shorten their sales cycles.