Sailebots Produce Leads for City Wide

City Wide Facilities Solutions–Minnesota provides maintenance solutions, from handyman and janitorial services to parking lot repairs and snow removal, for commercial offices, logistics centers, schools, and similar facilities throughout the state.

To reduce turnover and provide more consistent results for customers, the company identifies, screens, and manages relationships with its vendors.

Managing sales for the different types of services it offers and for the different types of facilities it serves, though, was a much more daunting task. So the Burnsville, Minn.-based franchise looked for an artificial intelligence-powered solution to help support its human staff, says Tyler Olson, operating partner for the franchise. “We’re always looking for ways to help our sales teams’ efficiencies in finding and onboarding new customers.”

The franchise also wanted to add that support without growing its staff, according to Olson. “AI allows us to grow without necessarily adding more bodies. It’s something that saves time. It helps with onboarding and the other things that a bot can do. Then our salespeople, who are the closers, don’t have to spend as much time in the field prospecting and finding opportunities. They spend more time on the opportunities [AI finds]. AI is supplementing their ability to go out and just close.”

Though the idea of scaling without adding to staff wasn’t new, the franchise was pushed into finding an equitable solution last year as the difficulty in finding and hiring qualified salespeople intensified, Olson says.

After looking at a number of competing solutions, in April City Wide selected Sailes and its AI for sales technology, Sailebot, going live with the solution in May.

Installation involved a few preparatory phone calls so Sailes could configure the solution to perform the desired tasks for the franchise, Olson says. “Who did we want the bot to reach out to? Who did we not want it to reach out to? They walked us through the process over a couple of weeks. It went very smoothly.”

Though two Sailebots that the franchise has launched have been live for only a few months, the franchise has already seen several significant benefits, according to Olson. Sailes has presented the City Wide Facilities Solutions–Minnesota name and logo to 18,128 companies and has generated 51,290 outbound emails.

“That’s 51,000 times a day that somebody within an organization has seen or heard the name City Wide, whether they’ve responded to it or not,” Olson says. “Just the brand recognition is huge. We’ve had 3.56 percent positive engagement. That’s pretty darn good. The industry standard is closer to 1 percent. These are all positive leads that we can develop into sales.”

One of the two Sailebots has produced 22 solid leads that turned into sales appointments. Previous efforts yielded only eight leads per month.

“That’s really good,” Olson says. “We were told right at the beginning that the bots need to build momentum. Most of those appointments came much earlier than we had anticipated. I’m hoping that that trend continues.”

Olson adds that the bots are performing the activities of three full-time employees.

With the success City Wide has had using only a pair of Sailebots, the franchise is considering adding more bots for other tasks, Olson says. The ones currently in use are primarily for janitorial appointments. The franchise has different divisions that handle sales for different services, and additional Sailebots could help in those areas, according to Olson. “The addition of bots vs. the addition of people is one of the biggest things we would do. We could [also] get a little more granular in targeting the industry types or service types we are trying to get our foot in the door on.”

The Payoff

Since deploying the Sailes AI sales solution Sailebot, City Wide Facilities Solutions–Minnesota has seen the following results:

• one of the two Sailebots generated 22 positive leads in only a few months;
• the positive engagement rate has been 3.56 percent, much higher than the industry average of 1 percent; and
• the two bots have achieved the production equivalent of three full-time employees.