Company Background
Founded in 2015, PL & Partners is a digital marketing bureau headquarted in Copenhagen. Fifteen in-house agents, experts across different subfields of digital marketing, advise clients in crafting marketing strategies best suited to their needs through a variety of platforms—social media, email, content creation, Google searches, YouTube, display ads, and gamification. PL & Partners has a high-profile clientele, with some of Denmark's most prestigious and internationally-recognized firms as customers, among them Lakagehuset, Danish Crown, and Verisure.
Challenge: Need for a structured sales process and transparent system
PL & Partners has become a leading marketing agency within their field of Facebook and Instagram advertising. During the first years of the company's existence, it experienced a huge demand from the market, and employees had to handle a significant amount of organic leads. But given the company's young age, it didn't have any structure.
“During the first three years, we did not have any structure for our sales machine," says Niklas Meyer, Partner and COO at PL & Partners. "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: Plecto dashboards to encourage transparency
“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" Niklas says. "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. Thus, 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 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," Niklas says. "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 shoehorning Plecto into the company culture, 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.”
PL & Partners' main focus has always been customer satisfaction. In 2019, the team had a high emphasis on improving NPS, and every day all employees work hard to better customer satisfaction. For Nicklas, it's 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."
"From my point of view, Plecto is the best tool out there if you want highly motivated employees."
Nicklas Meyer
Partner & COO, PL & Partners
Results: Plecto helps create cultural shift
“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," Niklas says.
"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 one meets Nicklas, there's no doubt that he definitely isn't a micromanager, 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 on important KPIs for the employees to create their own competition and take responsibility," he says. "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 a company when it’s presented in a product that is easily accessible and adaptable. Nicklas doesn't 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.”
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*Disclaimer:
We are committed to data privacy. All dashboard images in this blog post have been provided by our customer, PL & Partners. Names, identification photos, and some data have been altered for security. Plecto does not access customer dashboards without written consent.