Channel sales and marketing expert Giovanni Sanguily wants to "sweeten" the tools choices for IT solution providers, starting with a better customer relationship management solution designed specifically for their industry. Startup Honey LLC rolled out Honey CRM in March and is delivering its first major update in November to its fast-growing user base.
"We need a better CRM for our industry," Sanguily says, adding that Honey CRM was built by channel sales and marketing experts. "The key focus of Honey CRM was for visibility. I wanted to empower business owners by helping them see data that could help them make better decisions."
Honey CRM evolved from a tool developed by Sanguily's other company, TriDigital, a sales and marketing agency serving IT service providers he co-founded in Dallas in 2014. Used internally and with partners and clients, TriDigital's HUD, for "heads up display," showcased key data such as number of leads generated, videos viewed, email marketing performance, and more.
Partners really liked the marketing HUD and began requesting a way to interact with the data, Sanguily explains. Over the years, TriDigital "Frankensteined" it, adding in more and more features. "We started to build integration with ConnectWise, and then Autotask, and then Salesforce," until it eventually became a "quasi CRM."
After incorporating input from its IT solution provider clients and other channel experts, TriDigital spun out the new company. The core of Honey CRM is to bubble up important data and make it easily visible. "At TriDigital, we've been very fortunate to generate over 125,000 leads for the channel. And our clients have turned that into over $180 million worth of business collectively," Sanguily says. That data and knowledge base is at the heart of the Honey CRM sales and marketing platform.
Features of the software-as-a-service based product include:
- Automated prospect research
- Automated activity entries
- Lead score and temperature
- Key performance indicators and quota tracking
- Notifications and escalation
- Task management
- Sales team ranking
- Department dashboards
- Campaign drag-and-drop builder
In addition, Honey CRM offers a fresh, modern user interface. "We put a lot of love into the little things like the design of it," says Sanguily. "It's got a lot of vibrance. It's supposed to make you feel good when you're in it."
Honey CRM is available starting at $199 a month for two users and up to 2,500 contacts. Additional users are $12 per month, and each additional batch of 2,500 contacts is priced at $50 per month.
Because Honey CRM is industry focused, it doesn’t require any configuration and comes with channel-ready content. "If you were to sign up today, you can literally send out campaigns within 30 minutes, and start generating leads right away."
Sanguily adds that Honey worked closely with ConnectWise and Autotask to develop deep integration with those solutions. Honey CRM also integrates with Salesforce, and the company has plans to integrate with other platforms such as Kaseya, Microsoft Dynamics, QuoteWerks, and Quosal (now ConnectWise Sell).
Planned updates in November include a customizable email marketing campaign builder with 60 pre-made email marketing templates. Sanguily says Honey is also working with a handful of vendors to populate the Honey marketplace with their collateral and offer partners the ability to co-brand the material.
Honey CRM has about 800 users currently, most of which are from referrals and word of mouth, says Sanguily, who stresses that work is ongoing to continually enhance the CRM. "I just love the channel," he says. "I'm going to do everything I can to make it the tool they deserve. And then once I do that, I'll start to think about other things."
Hint: Following a sweet tool like Honey, partners may need a "beehive" for collaboration.
