How Armstrong Craven streamlined sales and marketing processes with Salesmate
Armstrong Craven enhanced visibility into their sales pipeline, simplified reporting, and aligned sales and marketing efforts by switching from Salesforce to Salesmate.
How Armstrong Craven streamlined sales and marketing processes with Salesmate
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About Armstrong Craven
Armstrong Craven is a global leader in talent intelligence and executive search, helping organizations identify and engage top leadership and hard-to-find talent. With decades of experience and a strong focus on strategic hiring, Armstrong Craven works closely with leading companies across sectors to solve their most complex talent challenges.
Key features used
Deal management, Custom reports, Email campaigns, Sales automation, Support integration
Industry
Executive search & talent intelligence
Location
United Kingdom
Results
Streamlined operations, reduced admin load, improved cross-team alignment, and faster adoption.
Salesmate is intuitive, easy to customize, and has exceptional support. It’s everything we needed—and more.
The challenge: Complexity, cost, and a lack of usability
Before Salesmate, Armstrong Craven was using Salesforce, but it wasn’t a smooth experience. As their operations evolved and they joined the WhiteCrow Group, the team needed a CRM that matched their ambition; user-friendly, customizable, and efficient. That’s when they made the switch from Salesforce to Salesmate.
While Salesforce is powerful, the system was overly complex for Armstrong Craven’s size and needs. Key challenges included:
- Too many features, not enough clarity: Salesforce offered an overwhelming number of options, often requiring external consultants to make even small changes.
- High costs, low ROI: Despite premium license fees, support was limited. The team had to hire an in-house admin just to make day-to-day changes.
- Poor user adoption: Sales reps were inputting data out of obligation, not because it helped them work better.
- Disjointed sales-marketing collaboration: Capturing meaningful data from campaigns and using it effectively in sales conversations was challenging.
“Salesforce was powerful but overcomplicated and expensive. We weren’t using half the features, and support wasn’t easy to reach.” - Sharon Davis
The solution: Salesmate CRM - A refreshingly simple experience
With the transition to Salesmate led by their new parent company WhiteCrow, Armstrong Craven was finally able to streamline operations and empower its teams.
1. Simplified data migration and customization
Migrating years of data from Salesforce to Salesmate could have been overwhelming but it wasn’t.
- Sharon and the Salesforce admin completed the migration without needing engineers.
- Custom fields were created with ease, mapping data all the way back to 2017.
- Salesmate’s intuitive interface enabled Sharon to finalize imports and set up dashboards without a tech background.
If you’re a startup or small business, you don’t need a tech team. Salesmate is plug-and-play. - Sharon Davis
2. Improved sales and marketing alignment
Salesmate allowed the marketing team to send personalized email campaigns and nurture leads via automation. Sales reps could now:
- Instantly see who downloaded whitepapers or engaged with content.
- Use that engagement as context for follow-up conversations.
- Save time by reducing manual processes and seeing everything in one place.
“Our sales team now has complete visibility into lead activity. That’s a huge win for engagement.” - Sharon Davis
3. Empowering non-technical users
One of the biggest wins was how quickly users adapted to Salesmate:
- Sales reps can now create their own custom views, track leads, and update pipelines without help.
- Marketing has built automated journeys for tens of thousands of contacts with ease.
- Support tickets are handled quickly, no waiting weeks for help.
“Our users can now manage their own dashboards and reports. Salesmate has put power back in their hands.” - Sharon Davis
Key benefits: How Salesmate elevated Armstrong Craven’s operations
Salesmate helped Armstrong Craven simplify their complex sales and marketing workflows. The platform's intuitive design, combined with robust support and automation, empowered teams to work smarter and collaborate better.
- Faster adoption across teams: Even non-tech users quickly adapted to the system and started customizing it to fit their needs.
- Improved sales visibility: With a user-friendly interface, sales activities, deals, and lead engagement are easy to track and manage.
- Effortless marketing automation: Campaign tracking and engagement history are now accessible to both sales and marketing teams.
- Cost-effective CRM alternative: Salesmate delivered the features Armstrong Craven needed without the overhead of Salesforce.
- Exceptional support: With Salesmate, help is just a click away, fast, friendly, and solution-oriented.
Results: Simplified tech, enhanced performance
Salesmate helped Armstrong Craven:
- Seamlessly migrate legacy data: Seamlessly transferred contacts, companies, deals, and activities from Salesforce, dating back to 2017, without needing a tech expert.
- Boost team adoption: A user-friendly interface empowered both teams to easily adopt and personalize their workflows without depending on a dedicated tech team.
- Streamline workflows: Sales reps and marketers now work with shared visibility, editable list views, and customized dashboards, allowing better focus and alignment.
- Unify sales and marketing: Enabled better conversations by aligning outreach and campaign tracking.
- Responsive and helpful support: From data migration to automation setup, the Salesmate support team provided hands-on, timely assistance and making them feel more like partners than vendors.
What’s next: Expanding Salesmate use across the group
While Armstrong Craven has already seen immense value from Salesmate, the journey is far from over.
The next step is to integrate the platform across the broader WhiteCrow Group, ensuring a seamless, unified CRM experience across multiple brands and teams.
“We’ve just scratched the surface with Salesmate. As we expand, we’re excited to see how far it can take us.” - Sharon Davis