How Comfort Systems USA Companies Are Selling More Strategically With NorthBoundary SalesManager

The Company

Comfort Systems is a leading mechanical, electrical, and plumbing service provider, comprising 45 autonomously run companies. 

The Goal 

Streamline CRM, pricing, and proposal development.

The Challenge

Siloed sales processes requiring multiple technologies resulting in communication gaps and inefficiencies.

The Solution

Advocating for the adoption of NorthBoundary SalesManager across their operating companies to create more streamlined processes and develop consistently accurate proposals. 

The Results

Over 90% of the companies with service divisions under the Comfort Systems umbrella have chosen to adopt NorthBoundary SalesManager. The software has allowed them to create consistent proposals, improve their sales productivity, better analyze their pipeline, and win more high value customers.

Q&A with Comfort Systems’ Leila Rookstool

Leila Rookstool is the Senior Sales Operations Manager at Comfort Systems. We sat down with her to find out how Comfort Systems uses NorthBoundary and what benefits they’re seeing. 

There are a lot of companies under the Comfort Systems umbrella. How many of them use NorthBoundary SalesManager?

Most! I don’t know that we’ve had a technology as widely adopted as NorthBoundary. What’s unique about our organization is that we’re very decentralized, so every company is given the autonomy to say yes or no to certain products and offerings. At the end of the day, it’s up to them. And so the fact that we’ve had this many companies adopt NorthBoundary has been a real success story for Comfort Systems.

How has NorthBoundary SalesManager streamlined the sales process? 

Before NorthBoundary, many companies were forced in the direction of adopting different technologies for different use cases such as: CRM, estimating, proposing, etc. We had all these things siloed in different technologies. NorthBoundary is giving companies more continuity, better, more streamlined processes, and stronger metrics from an estimating standpoint. 

Where do you see the most operational impact from NorthBoundary SalesManager? 

I think we see it in various places. Because we’re capturing everything about the facility during the sales stage, technicians receive better information. When they go to the field, even for a brand new customer they know the unit ID, manufacturer, model, serial number, all of that. And the overall delivery that we’re giving to our customers improves as a result. Then, when we get to renewal, everything is already in place. Everyone benefits because the cloud-based platform allows us to keep everything centrally organized.

What have been the results of using sales software with equipment-specific data?

One key component of NorthBoundary is that it equips our sales representatives to price a number of solutions, some of which we would shy away from prior to adopting the software. This has enabled us to strategically position and customize our proposals in a way that addresses a customer’s real pain. It also offers some advanced selling features that are enabling us to have a deeper financial conversation with our customer’s so we have a better understanding of their owning and operating costs.