Learn How a Laser Manufacturing Company Transformed their Sales and Marketing Operations with Sales Cloud, Salesforce CPQ, and Spiff

The Challenges

Our client, a global leader in medical laser manufacturing, was experiencing strong growth in the U.S. market while facing challenges in its European division.

With recent private equity (PE) firm funding, the company sought to optimize its sales and marketing operations, improve visibility into its lead-to-cash lifecycle, and enhance reporting to improve strategic decision-making.

The company faced growing inefficiencies in their sales operations due to outdated and disjointed systems. Their sales team had no centralized commission management tool, making it difficult to track and understand their earnings.

Without a clear, automated system, sales reps often relied on manual calculations or waited for finance teams to confirm their commissions — leading to confusion and delays.

Additionally, the company’s existing CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) system was a custom-built solution that struggled to support their complex pricing structures and approval workflows. 

These inefficiencies were not only slowing down the sales process but also impacting the company’s ability to effectively incentivize its sales team. Some of the key challenges they faced included:

Lack of Commission Visibility: Sales reps had no centralized system to track their commissions.

Inefficient Quoting Process: Their existing CPQ setup was a custom-built system that couldn't support their complex sales structure, leading to inefficiencies and errors.

Manual Compensation Management: Without a dedicated commission software, calculating and updating commissions was time-consuming and prone to errors.

Inability to Adapt to Changing Compensation Plans: Business needs frequently evolved, but the company struggled to adjust commission structures efficiently.

Lack of Marketing Automation & Lead Tracking: Manual processes made it difficult to track marketing campaign effectiveness.

Limited Visibility Into Sales Performance: Sales and marketing data were fragmented, making it hard to analyze pipeline and revenue impact.

Manual Reporting Inefficiencies: Teams spent excessive time creating reports for PE firm meetings using Excel spreadsheets.

Complex Sales Territory Management: Three distinct business divisions lacked custom territory assignments.

The Solution

Salesforce CPQ and Spiff

To streamline their sales operations and improve commission visibility, the company partnered with Kelley Austin to implement a modernized sales solution leveraging Sales Cloud, Salesforce CPQ, and Salesforce Spiff. Key elements of the solution included:

Salesforce CPQ: Optimized product bundling, pricing, and quoting improved efficiency and reduced pricing errors.

Salesforce Spiff: Provides a single platform for sales teams to track commissions, ensuring transparency and real-time visibility.

Seamless Data Synchronization: Integrated Salesforce with Infor (ERP software) to automate data updates.

Managed Services Support: Our team provided ongoing support through our Managed Services offering, enabling our client to easily adjust commission structures and sales processes as business needs evolved.

Managed Services: Streamlining Sales and Marketing Operations with Salesforce

To address additional sales and marketing challenges, the company partnered with Kelley Austin through our Managed Services offering.

With Managed Services, businesses gain consistent, ongoing support from a dedicated Salesforce expert who understands their unique business processes, systems, and goals. This approach ensures continuity and deep institutional knowledge, allowing for faster issue resolution, proactive improvements, and seamless collaboration with internal teams.

"I want to take a moment to express my sincere appreciation to the entire Kelley Austin team. Your expertise, dedication, and collaboration have been instrumental in making our CPQ rollout a success. The overwhelmingly positive feedback from our sales team speaks volumes about the quality of work you've delivered. The enthusiasm we’re hearing across the board is a testament to the well-crafted solution you've helped us build.

Your ability to pivot when unexpected challenges arose, coupled with your patience and commitment to finding the best workflow solutions, has been invaluable. This finely tuned CPQ instance will elevate our quoting process to the next level and beyond.

Congratulations on a job exceptionally well done. I truly appreciate your responsiveness, deep knowledge, and unwavering support.” 

— Director of Sales Operations

Through our Managed Services engagement, we helped our client implement and optimize Sales Cloud, automate key processes, and integrate various marketing and sales technologies. Key elements of the solutions we provided include:

Marketing Automation & Lead Tracking: Integrated Unbounce (landing pages), Eventbrite (webinars), Campaign Monitor (email sends), and Intercom (chatbot) with Sales Cloud, providing full visibility into marketing performance.

Multi-Touch Attribution Model: Developed a custom model tracking first-touch, last-touch, and linear attribution across both marketing and sales activities.

Custom Sales Territory Management: Built an automated territory model to assign records dynamically based on complex geographic rules across Fotona’s three divisions.

CPQ & Contract Automation: Implemented Salesforce CPQ, Conga Composer (quote templates), and DocuSign for streamlined quoting and contract management.

Advanced Reporting & Forecasting: Created dashboards for pipeline tracking, attribution, sales management, and executive insights, incorporating historical win rates to improve forecasting accuracy.

Order Processing Automation: Developed an interim solution to automate order submission to accounting teams in place of the delayed ERP integration.

Mobile Accessibility: Extended Salesforce functionality to mobile devices, improving ease of use for the sales team.

Customer Impact

With their new Salesforce-powered solution in place, our client saw significant improvements in their sales and marketing operations as well as commission management. As the European division seeks to replicate U.S. success, these digital transformation initiatives will serve as a blueprint for global expansion.

Sales reps now have instant access to their commission details within Salesforce, allowing them to better understand their earnings and drive performance. The improved CPQ functionality also led to faster, more accurate quoting, reducing the time spent on administrative tasks.

“We absolutely love Spiff! It's a huge value for us and a massive leap from where we are now. Having all of our plans documented and in one single place has been great. Very much worth it!”

— National Sales Manager

Additionally, the company’s leadership team gained greater flexibility to update commission structures as business needs evolved, ensuring that their compensation strategy remained aligned with company goals. The result of the partnership was a more motivated and productive sales team, increased operational efficiency, and a stronger foundation for future growth.

Key benefits of the solution include:

Enhanced Sales Transparency: Sales reps gained real-time visibility into their commissions, improving motivation and trust.

Streamlined Quoting Process: Faster, more accurate quoting reduced delays and errors — increasing sales team efficiency.

Improved Commission Accuracy: Automated calculations ensured commissions were processed correctly, eliminating disputes and administrative burdens.

Improved Visibility Across the Entire Lead-to-Cash Lifecycle: Sales and marketing teams can now track lead sources, sales pipeline, and revenue impact with real-time data.

Enhanced Forecasting: Custom dashboards and historical win rate analysis provided accurate insights for leadership and PE firm reporting.

Optimized Sales Processes: Automated sales territory assignments and order management have reduced the administrative workload.

Mobile Accessibility: Sales teams can now access critical Salesforce functionality from both desktop and mobile.

Future-Proof Sales Operations: The scalable solution built by our team allows the company to easily adapt to changing business requirements, ensuring long-term success.

By leveraging the power of Sales Cloud, Salesforce CPQ, and Spiff, our client successfully modernized its sales compensation strategy, transforming a previously disjointed and opaque process into a streamlined, transparent, and highly efficient system.

With a future-ready Salesforce ecosystem in place, our client can continue to refine their sales and marketing operations in addition to compensation strategies, ensuring long-term success and growth.