“All Roads Lead to Salesforce”: Inside Happy Inspector’s Secrets to Success
An Interview with Happy Inspector CEO Jindou Lee
By Brett Bocci
I have an immense amount of respect for the team at Happy Inspector. In just a few short years, Happy Inspector has become the go-to inspector app for over 9,000 property managers. And — as a result of this rapid success — their sales organization experienced common growing pains and desperately needed to revamp their process.
Enter Salesforce. As an account executive at Salesforce, I had the opportunity to work directly with Jindou Lee, the CEO, and the entire Happy Inspector team. They are some of the most intelligent and business-savvy people I’ve worked with. I think what makes them this way is their curiosity and openness to learning. Throughout all of our correspondence, they were always asking questions, always looking for that edge or new point of view to approaching their business. Whether in conversations with myself, other employees at Salesforce, or customers at events we would attend together, they were always pushing us, asking questions and getting information and value out of every interaction. At Salesforce, we’re taught to always be curious, to always soak up as much information as possible, and I think it’s based on the success of our customers like Happy Inspector and their outlook on business and life.
Recently, I was lucky enough to catch up with Jindou and ask him a few questions about the challenges of working at a rapidly growing company, the coaching principles they’re using to supercharge their sales organization, and results they’ve seen since deploying Salesforce. His answers give insight into the hurdles many growing organizations face, and how we might address them in a way that effectively improves sales performance.
1. What gave you the idea for Happy Inspector? Where did it come from? Can you tell us about the early days — and the opportunities as well as challenges you faced from the start?
Happy Inspector started off in Australia and stemmed from a problem I was facing myself. After exiting a few of the companies I started, I began to invest in real estate and soon my portfolio spanned across the US, Australia and UK. One issue I faced was that the property managers that managed my properties on my behalf were conducting their inspection reports on pen and paper. Photos were taken with a digital camera and in some cases faxed to me! I felt there had to be a better way, so I designed a few screenshots for the iPad and presented to 20 property management companies that were local. Out of the 20, 19 of them were so eager to use our (nonexistent) app that they paid us for our vapor ware! Long story short, we launched the app, had more customers using us, and we decided to leave the comfort of our family and friends in Australia and move to US of A to chase the dream.
2. Can you talk about what you were doing before you started with Salesforce and how you first came to us? Were there any specific trigger events? You know, life was a living hell, the roof was on fire….the usual stuff!
Before Salesforce, we played around with other CRMs such as Nimble and SugarCRM. We wanted a way to manage our contacts and business contacts. Everything was great in the early days, but when we started to grow our customer and contact base, things started to fall apart. The software we were using at the time was too slow, lacked necessary integrations, and did not have the workflows and rules engine we needed. We also used multiple spreadsheets to house different contacts; it was terribly messy and not scalable.
3. Tell us about the decision to bring Salesforce into Happy Inspector. Why us?
Salesforce was always on our roadmap, but the cost was prohibitive — or so we thought. We needed a way for our whole organization to see all activity of our sales, marketing, and support team. We also needed to house all our customer contacts and information. Our Chief Revenue Officer (then Advisor) Sukhi Singh said, “Don’t waste your time, just bite the bullet and get started with Salesforce!” We then got started with our Salesforce journey. From Sukhi’s perspective, he had worked with Salesforce in a number of startups and large companies, and he had seen the power that Salesforce brings to a sales organization.
4. What positive changes have you seen in your company from Salesforce? Can you share any ROI statistics or other measurable events? Was there an “aha” moment when you said to yourself, “This is REALLY paying off!”
Salesforce has been a game-changer for the business. Before, I was a sceptic, but I’m now a total advocate for Salesforce, and when I speak to other entrepreneurs who need to implement a CRM, I tell them they need Salesforce if they are serious about growing sales.
Over the last 12 months alone, we’ve grown our business by 350%. I’m also able to have a bird’s-eye view of how Sales, Marketing, Support and Customer Success are performing on a daily/weekly/monthly cycle. The biggest “aha” moment was when we started to implement other products. All roads lead back to Salesforce. One thing that resonated with me is:
Salesforce is like an operating system, where you can add other software on top of it to make it useful. Salesforce is an O/S. The true power of the platform is when you can purchase other modules to make it super useful!
5. Business owners, particularly for smaller businesses, often have to wear multiple hats. How do you think Salesforce helps you do that?
Salesforce helps me to have a 360-degree view of the business and everyone’s activity at any given moment. This gives me time to focus on other things and keep focus on the big picture.
6. What do you think is the coolest thing about Salesforce?
There are two things I love about Salesforce: first, that it’s flexible! Very, very flexible. Essentially, if you can dream it, you can build it. And it works.
The second thing I love is that it’s a great company for us to draw inspiration and model our own company on, from marketing and pricing to sales and implementation. All of these departments in Salesforce are a well-oiled engine, and I aspire for us to get there.
7. What are the keys to your company’s successful growth?
It’s always about the people: finding the right people, creating the right environment for them to thrive, helping them to be more successful.
8. What is the one piece of advice that you want to share with executives of other small businesses?
Focus on the customer and help them succeed.
Brett Bocci is an account executive at Salesforce.
