Museum Hack doubles year-over-year revenue with Zendesk Sell

In 2013, Museum Hack founder Nick Gray went on a fateful date to New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Instead of being captivated by his companion, however, Gray was floored by the artwork he saw there—and with that, an idea began to form in the entrepreneur’s mind. Could the staid, academic tours visitors were accustomed to be transformed into more engaging encounters that would draw people who might otherwise view museums as hopelessly dusty and boring?

With that idea in mind, Gray began holding his own renegade tours—whimsical, humorous, and irreverent affairs that were a smash. Now, six years later, Museum Hack holds more than 30 tours each week of museums, and the company’s consultants also teach the institutions how to create unconventional tours on their own. From team-building events to bachelorette parties, Museum Hack’s renegade guides share little-known facts and offer exclusive experiences for both public and private groups.

As Gray’s hobby grew into a full-fledged business, the company needed help managing inbound requests for its private tours. With no formal solution or process in place to manage sales, leads came straight to the team’s inboxes, and follow-ups were hit or miss. “We made sales, but it hurts to think of how many deals may have fallen through the cracks,” says Michael Alexis, CEO of TeamBuilding and Director of Marketing at Museum Hack. “We knew that it was time to invest in a platform that would help us better manage our sales pipeline.”

After an extensive search and evaluation, Museum Hack chose Zendesk Sell. In the two years since making that choice, Sell has become the foundation of the company’s sales process—now, every lead, contact, and deal is managed in a single place. One feature that Museum Hack’s team finds the most useful is Sell’s in-platform emailing, calling, and texting. All communications are automatically logged and recorded within lead, contact, and deal cards, saving reps the trouble of manually entering these conversations, while providing managers with greater visibility and coaching opportunities.

Automated actions add more structure and process to Museum Hack’s sales cycle, as well as ensure that key data points are collected. Management can specify a task that must be completed when a specific event takes place, such as making a call within 24-hours of receiving a new lead, and reps will receive a reminder. “We have further automated our sales process by using Sell’s Zapier integrations,” said Alexis. “For example, all of our leads come through Campaign Monitor and get passed directly to Sell.”

Museum Hack also heavily utilizes Sell’s reporting capabilities, such as the sales funnel report, to check the pulse of the business and make better decisions. “The funnel report lets me know how many leads are coming in, see their progression through the sales pipeline, and identify any roadblocks,” he said. Sell reports can be easily filtered by any combination of attributes, enabling Museum Hack to uncover deep, actionable insights.

Since adopting Sell and creating a more defined and measurable sales process, Museum Hack has successfully doubled its year-over year revenue. After growing sales from $1 million to $2.2 million from 2015–2016, the company is on pace to hit $4 million in revenue in 2017.

In addition to helping Museum Hack earn money, the sales insights generated by Sell reporting have also helped the company save money. “Filtering the funnel report by lead source saved us $50,000 by showing us that all of the money we were spending on Facebook ads was not converting into sales, and would be better spent on other traffic sources,” said Alexis.

Finally, by providing a defined sales process and establishing such clear goals and expectations, Sell helps new reps ramp and get up to speed much more quickly than in the past. This has also had a positive impact on productivity. “Sell has provided us with the structure and tools we needed to be faster, more strategic, and overall more successful as a sales organization,” said Alexis.