When Kendra Bolton sold her software startup and began helping her fiancee run his Toronto window cleaning company, she never imagined how hard growing a service business would be.

“You know, scheduling thousands of clients can be an absolute nightmare,” says Kendra, “In the beginning, Shine Window was mostly Dan’s, and I worked on the tech side. But after I sold my company and got more involved, I realized that this is really difficult to scale as a service business. That's when we started looking at different software to see if we could reduce our costs related to day-to-day operations.”

“Now we use 6 or 7 different software," she explains, "Salesmsg is the most recent solution we’ve found. And I’d say it's the most important one for us at this point. We use it to reach out to customers and schedule jobs because people don't like talking on the phone anymore. Just being able to text customers at scale is absolutely amazing!”

“Two years ago, we were doing about $750,000 a year. Now, our window and deck cleaning companies are doing about $3,000,000 in annual revenue. So we’ve scaled drastically! What’s funny is we haven't even touched Salesmsg when it comes to sales communications. I know that’s also going to have a huge impact on our growth,” Kendra says smilingly.

“We mostly use Salesmsg to reach out to customers and schedule jobs because people don’t like to talk on the phone anymore. Just being able to text customers at scale is absolutely amazing!”  
Kendra Bolton, Co-Founder - Shine Window

Searching for the right solution

In a recent interview, Salemsg’s Justin Zimmerman had a chance to ask Kendra about the other solutions she and Dan considered when trying to solve their scheduling problem and why Salesmsg ultimately won out.

“We looked at several options. I think the average person is looking for something out of the box, and that’s what’s great about Salesmsg, she explains: “Its set up is ridiculously easy compared to most software!”

“With most software, you're paying for setup and all kind of stuff, and you don't actually get what you want. Plus, it takes a month to do it. It's ridiculous. I prefer out-of-the-box.”

“That’s why Salesmsg was number one for me,” recalls Kendra, “I don't want to talk to anybody. I just want it to work. So that's what I liked about it. The process was straightforward.”

Solving the scheduling problem

Curious about how Shine is using Salesmsg to scale and improve customer service, Justin asked what the company’s tech stack and workflow currently look like.

“We use Pipedrive as our CRM. It’s great for what we need it for,” explains Kendra, “Every other company I've worked for, we've used Salesforce, but to be honest, Salesforce is too robust. And it's just not right for what we do at Shine.”

“Basically, we go through all of our data every week and send out a couple of hundred texts saying, “Hey, here's when you're job is scheduled for.” As soon as they respond, we send out all the info those customers need. What’s cool is we do it all through Salesmsg, so we don't have to call unless somebody doesn't have a cell phone for texting,” she says.

Pipedrive > Zapier > Monday > Salesmsg

Digging deeper into Shine's stack and workflow, Justin asked, “So, you do your contact management in Pipedrive and use Zapier to get that information into Monday for project management. Then, any actions taken in Monday trigger actions in Salesmsg. Right?

“Yeah. That’s right,” confirmed Kendra, “That's how Salesmsg is marketed, but I was dying to find a solution that would let us connect with customers and schedule them without there being technical issues. Also, I wanted a platform that would easily connect to our CRM without having to pay thousands to have a developer set things up through an API connection.”

“I wanted a platform that would easily connect to my CRM without having to pay thousands to have a developer set things up through an API connection.”
Kendra Bolton, Co-Founder - Shine Window

Managing multiple text conversations

When Shine was just getting started in the early days, they used Dan's mobile phone number to communicate with customers. However, as the business grew, things quickly started getting confusing.

For example, Dan was receiving random texts from new and unknown numbers. And he had no idea whether they were customers or not.

When a company is small, the owners can usually get away with using their personal phones to text message customers. However, when the business passes a certain threshold, they find themselves looking for a scalable solution like Salesmsg.

Kendra remembers when Shine’s team juggled text conversations with dozens of customers at the same time. As she puts it, “On several occasions, we had 35 or even 50 clients to follow up within 24-hours. It was a disaster in terms of scheduling. Of course, having too many customers is a good problem to have, but things got really messy.”

“Now, all our clients use a scheduling number, and we manage everything through Salesmsg. Also, having the option to mark text messages as read or unread has been a game-changer. Not being able to mark texts is annoying, so when I realized Salesmsg could do that, I'm like, WOW... I'm managing our text conversations online!

With Salesmsg’s simple dashboard, companies like Shine Window can send, receive, and manage text message conversations online or on the go. Two-way texting helps businesses connect with their customers faster via a mobile app or using local and landline numbers.

“Now, all our clients use a scheduling number, and moving forward; we can manage everything through Salesmsg. Also, having the option to mark text messages as read or unread has been a game-changer.”
Kendra Bolton, Co-Founder - Shine Window

Looking forward to faster sales growth

Great! Now we’ve seen how a service business like Toronto-based Shine Window uses Salesmsg to connect with clients while managing day-to-day scheduling and project management.  

Kendra and Dan are pleased with the results they see so far. After all, in just 2 years, Shine has grown from $750k to over 3 million in annual revenue. And they haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s possible when it comes to using text messaging for one-to-one and one-to-many sales communications.  

As Kendra puts it, “I know that’s also going to have a huge impact on our growth.” That's why here at Salesmsg, we’re excited to see what a results-driven company like Shine will do with our platform in the coming months and years.

With the ability to send, receive, and manage text conversations online or on the go, Shine can engage sales leads and customers faster with two-way texting. Combine that with text broadcasting, and they can send personalized messages to multiple contacts simultaneously.

In other words, we foresee a promising future for Kendra, Dan, and their team at Shine. We’ll keep you updated on their progress, along with the innovative ways they use Salemsg to drive more growth at their company.

Not using Salesmsg yet? Sign up here for a 14-day trial and be on your way to engaging with your customers faster than ever before.

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This story was written and published in collaboration with StoryOps