Case Study: Nucleus' RevOps Rise with Revvise's CRM Expertise

Context

Nucleus Security is a Series B cybersecurity firm specializing in unified vulnerability management for leading enterprises and public institutions. Their technology automatically finds and fixes weak spots in a company's IT system, helping businesses protect themselves from digital threats 10 times faster than traditional methods, while also using far fewer resources.

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Their products are designed for complex organizations, offering deep functionality, integrations, and the kind of robust security measures one would expect at the Enterprise level.

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As Nucleus grew, they needed a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution that could scale with their ambitions and support their sophisticated sales process. RevVise was able to co-develop a comprehensive solution that went above and beyond Nucleus’ expectations, with seamless integrations, efficient operational workflows, and more.

The Challenge

Nucleus was operating solely out of Hubspot. While this worked initially, it began to show limitations as the company expanded, especially in their ability to customize functionality and reflect their enterprise sales process.

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This timing aligned with the arrival of Chaz MacLaughlin, who assumed the role of Chief Revenue Officer at Nucleus. With prior experience building enterprise sales organizations, he came to the team with a vision of a more robust CRM solution for Nucleus.

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To be successful, the solution would require:

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Key finance integrations and approvals
CS and Product data integrations
A significant partner network driving referrals and requiring commissions
Significant permission and security requirements with the nature of the business they operated in

Our Solution

Nucleus brought on RevVise to initially help with these new developments. Our approach of creating a solid foundation, building things once, and building them right meant that we could continue to add incremental capabilities and features instead of redoing the same work repeatedly. Through this stepwise approach, Nucleus continually enhanced its CRM functionality, adding layers of sophistication to its sales and marketing processes.

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Solution

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Outcomes Achieved

Milestone 1: Hubspot to SFDC Migration

A CRM migration is complex: it needs to strike a balance of not over-scoping the Minimum Viable Product, while building on its previous functionality, and work as efficiently as possible to prevent distractions.

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For Nucleus' migration, there were five core pillars:

Pillar 1: Data migration

RevVise wanted to ensure that Nucleus did not lose any historically reported data in the migration. We executed a comprehensive data transfer, encompassing core objects, including leads, contacts, opportunities, accounts, quotes, products, activity data and price books was required.

We also migrated data that was underutilized within Hubspot, into a more usable format within SFDC. A prime example includes developing relevant marketing signals from Hubspot to show marketing intent. As a result, existing functionality remained at minimum.

Pillar 2: Incorporate a new sales process

We didn't want to just re-create the sales process that existed in Hubspot. There was room for improvement, and customization that better supported the Enterprise sales process and the expertise of the new sales leader.

Our end-to-end lead and opportunity management included lead qualification, lead conversion, opportunity lifecycle, quoting customization and relevant validation.

Nucleus implemented a robust validation process for quoting to manage their complex offering structure. This was necessary due to their diverse range of products, variable seat licensing models, and highly customized packages for enterprise clients. The system requires approvals from sales leadership or finance at key stages and incorporates error validation to prevent inappropriate offers, ensuring accuracy and compliance throughout the sales process.

This process enabled Nucleus to run the sales process that MacLaughlin wanted, and made it easier for reps to follow the desired process, all while adhering to the appropriate checks and balances process.

Pillar 3: Rebuild the partner process

To scale a partner program, businesses need to customize their operations to fit their designed flow. In Nucleus' case, they had a high volume of referrals, coming from different types of partners.

To support this we built a custom process.

This consisted of a dedicated referral form, custom partner properties and individualized partner Salesforce campaigns. When a new referral came in, we created partner specific routing, alerts and reminder emails.

This setup allowed us to build reporting to track the lifecycle of partner referrals from form submission to ARR.

All in all it ensured that no partner lead was left behind, that they were treated with the highest level of attention that one would expect for a referral. It also gave transparency to all departments on both overall and individualized partner performance.

Pillar 4: Refine integrations and process

Three core integrations were required for three different departments. RevVise was able to introduce them seamlessly, ensuring operations remained stabilized.

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Hubspot. Nucleus retained Hubspot's Marketing hub. This was integrated to SFDC to maintain data parity.
Vitally. The customer success team wanted visibility into product data; this tool was integrated to share CS data.
SAASOptics | Maxio. The finance team wanted access to Salesforce data in their primary reporting system; this tool was integrated for comprehensive data flow.

Pillar 5: Provide training and enablement

The Nucleus sales team was experienced and familiar with Salesforce. But any new process is only as good as how the team uses it. We led multiple training sessions for their internal team while also remaining just a Slack-message away as fractional support, for any day to day queries that could pop up.

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Milestone 2: Full funnel marketing attribution

Hubspot offers good, basic-level reporting, but the software did not fully account for the range of offline sources where Nucleus leads originated from (ex: in-person events, partners, etc.). With SFDC, this attribution would not natively carry through to a Closed-Won.

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To solve that issue, we built Nucleus a custom lead hierarchy, consisting of four tiers of attribution, reporting source, lead source, secondary and lead source detail.

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We also carried attribution across objects ensuring that pipeline Return on Investment (ROI) and ROI for any channel could be measured.

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Accurate first-touch attribution allowed for alignment between marketing and sales. It also provided a confident, more data-driven outlook on where to invest future marketing dollars.

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Milestone 3: Sales-Product Feedback Loop [Salesforce <> Jira]

The sales team has more external conversations than anyone else at Nucleus. They have a keen awareness of what should be prioritized on the product roadmap. However, their voice often gets lost due to the expansive amount of qualitative data that can't be systemized.

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The product team at Nucleus wanted to track deals that are Closed-Lost due to gaps in feature and/or functionality, in order to better inform their backlog. These ‘deal killers’ weren’t tracked systematically; driving a more optimized integration between Sales-Product would lead to increased roadmap alignment.

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To solve this, we built an automated integration between Salesforce and Jira:

A sales rep closes out an opportunity with the Loss-Reason set to ‘Functionality’

A ticket is generated and is added to the product team’s backlog with pertinent data

Ticket is tagged with the deal team (AE + SE) for ongoing communication and to showcase the size of the deal lost via ARR + TCV

Firmographic data, including Industry and Competition, is passed on to the buying team within the deal

The opportunity is directly linked in the ticket and visa versa, for easy navigation between the two systems

This feedback loop changed the product roadmap, building stronger communication between product and sales.

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Milestone 4: Custom Quoting

Nucleus' product and offering is highly customized to suit the needs of the complex organizations who use it. Reps would often present multiple options to clients, with different scenarios. However, it was difficult to manage more direct quotes and have real time pipeline updates. Additionally, deals were often worked on for more than one year, which made quoting more complex.

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Since pricing can make or break a deal at closing, developing an accurate quoting system was a large priority. Our team built functionality that allowed for both single and multi-year infrastructure. Specifically, we built out the ability to staircase quotes with custom pricing, per year.

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We built a connection between quotes and these opportunities, controlled via a bespoke sync button that could ensure that, whenever a rep had feedback on a multi-quote scenario, they could switch within SFDC instantly and allow for pipeline-real time measurement.

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A winning combination

Through their team integration with RevVise, Nucleus Security successfully transformed their CRM infrastructure from HubSpot to Salesforce, enabling them to scale their operations and meet the demands of enterprise-level cybersecurity sales.

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Taking the time to build a product properly, and charting each success with significant milestones, proved that what we were helping to build would provide not only a solid foundation for Nucleus, but the ability to improve it as-needed in a more efficient manner.

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The multi-phase implementation addressed critical challenges, including data migration, sales process optimization, partner management, and custom integrations.

"Working with RevVise was a game-changer for our sales operations,” says MacLaughlin. “Their team took the time to understand our complex needs and built a solution that not only met our current requirements but positioned us for future growth. The collaborative approach and their expertise made the transition smooth and incredibly valuable for Nucleus. They have been a great long term partner of several years"

Key outcomes included enhanced marketing attribution, streamlined product feedback loops, and a sophisticated quoting system tailored to Nucleus' complex offerings. The power of a well-executed CRM strategy provides support for rapid growth and future sales operations. Nucleus Security now possesses a robust, scalable CRM foundation that aligns with their business objectives and positions them for continued success in the competitive cybersecurity market.