- Beyond Times Square
How Beyond Times Square integrated its CRM with Qwilr to create highly-customized proposals
Location
USA
Industry
Tourism
Company size
11-50 employees
A luxury travel service company reimagines its sales workflow to bring its unique travel experiences to life through interactive proposals, all automated via their CRM.
Key Results:
- Improved proposal acceptance rate and faster deal turnaround
Consistent and automated buyer experience - Integrated with custom CRM to speed up process
- Built a library of pre-built blocks for sales reps
- Reduction in manual errors
An average tourist visiting New York City goes to a Broadway show. Some, however, opt for a different approach—like having a private dinner with a Broadway star before watching the show. Beyond Times Square (BTSQ), a luxury travel service company founded in 2003, curates these special experiences for high-end travelers through luxury travel advisors.
Although they knew they had a unique offering, BTSQ struggled with showcasing the extraordinary tours they were creating to clients. How could this destination management company quickly create highly-customized proposals that looked stunning?
The challenge
The luxury traveler expects one-of-a-kind experiences.
“Customers have very detailed requirements you need to meet, and our people have to create new experiences just for them. If, for example, they want a detailed tour guide, you need to make it happen."
Danni Mei, Marketing Manager at Beyond Times Square
Offering such a degree of personalization brought hurdles this small company struggled to navigate. The marketing and sales teams at BTSQ spent a lot of time manually creating unique experiences for clients. Without a standardized process, every proposal’s design felt different, creating an inconsistent buyer experience.
BTSQ's multi-step process involved creating proposals in Microsoft Word, converting them to PDFs, and sharing them with the prospects. Since they were working with high-end clients, BTSQ couldn’t afford to present its services in a subpar light.
“We needed something that helped us create the kind of a proposal that reflected our luxury brand image."
Danni Mei, Marketing Manager at Beyond Times Square
Knowing that proposals had to improve, Danni began researching options. After meeting with many potential vendors, she ultimately landed on Qwilr. While she was attracted to the product, she also was drawn to the similarities between the two companies.
“Qwilr fits our company's value because we're small but ambitious, and we always want to take the initiative to improve our service. Through providing web-based proposals, Qwilr makes us different. We felt that it was the perfect choice for us.”
Danni Mei, Marketing Manager at Beyond Times Square
The solution
Beyond Times Square wanted to integrate Qwilr with its custom CRM system (developed using Quickbase), which required custom development work. Danni and her team were so convinced that Qwilr was the right choice that they were willing to wait. After months of work, Qwilr and the CRM were integrated using a custom API that Qwilr developed.
This unique process allows salespeople to quickly mix and match “premade modules” from the CRM to create highly personalized proposals. If they need to customize proposals even more, they could easily add extra details before sending it out.
“Say customers want to do a horse carriage ride in Central Park. Salespeople now just need to browse and find the product horse carriage and add it to the itinerary. It's very convenient.”
Danni Mei, Marketing Manager at Beyond Times Square
Thanks to the API integration the BTSQ sales team never needs to leave Quickbase. The entire proposal creation process takes place within the CRM, saving them time and creating a much simpler process. Once they create the proposal, Qwilr generates a link and sends it back to the CRM system, which they can then send to clients.
The results
Adding the Qwilr integration has completely transformed the sales process at Beyond Times Square, reducing the turnaround time to deliver new proposals to customers. Qwilr has empowered the sales team to create unique customized tours much faster.
Modern-looking proposals
With Qwilr, outdated and inconsistent PDF proposals became a thing of the past.
Web-based design means there are virtually no limitations. BTSQ’s proposals now include videos, gorgeous images, and GIFs. Every single proposal looks as high-end and luxurious as the services they’re selling, no matter how glamorous. Customers are frequently impressed with their new web-based proposals.
“While some people still prefer PDFs, more people, especially our high-end clients, prefer to get a custom link."
Danni Mei, Marketing Manager at Beyond Times Square
CRM system integration
Since they no longer have to worry about manually designing proposals, salespeople are able to focus on delivering stunning pitches. The vision from the inception of the Qwilr integration, being able to create beautiful proposals at scale, has materialized: a sales rep just clicks a button and the proposal appears, ready to be shared.
“Even if it's a tour that's not in our database, they can create it in Quickbase, without needing to think about the design."
Danni Mei, Marketing Manager at Beyond Times Square
Personalized proposals
Using Qwilr’s API, Beyond Times Square created an entirely new workflow that relied on pre-designed blocks. Salespeople could quickly search for particular elements and combine them to create a highly-customized tour, perfect for even the most particular clients.
Qwilr also enables the team to seamlessly upsell other products within proposal, an opportunity PDFs always prevented. Easy additions, such as adding videos about related services to the proposal, have opened up new revenue possibilities.
Their new proposals also make life easier for customers, enabling them to easily accept itineraries online. Emailing or calling a rep to finalize the purchase is now a thing of the past.
A sample proposal by Beyond Times Square
Avoid human error
“Small things like typos in proposals can be catastrophic. And back when the team used Microsoft Word, it wasn’t uncommon for proposals to have mistakes. Reps would copy and paste a paragraph and easily miss something. It didn’t look good for our luxury clients because it’s a clientele looking for seamless service with precision.”
Danni Mei, Marketing Manager at Beyond Times Square
With the Qwilr-Quickbase integration, sales reps don’t need to copy and paste descriptions or headlines since all products are hosted within the CRM. Today, they simply pick the product and Qwilr automatically adds it to the proposal, error-free.
The impact
Beyond Times Square has been using Qwilr only for a short time, but Danni has already seen an improvement in both the acceptance rate of proposals and the turnaround time.
Most importantly, Danni now feels like she’s presenting proposals she can be proud of.
“With Qwilr, I feel confident because I know that when the clients we attract come to us, they can get exactly the type of service they want. In the past, when we had used Word to share our proposals, I was not so confident.”
Danni Mei, Marketing Manager at Beyond Times Square
To learn more about how Qwilr can save your team time, improve buyer engagement, and close deals faster, we invite you to book a call with our sales team.
