How Forcepoint saved 9,000 rep hours and rethought strategy

Overview

Forcepoint simplifies security for global businesses and governments - helping organizations prevent data theft and loss across a remote, distributed workforce. Their own sales org looks a lot like the problem they solve for customers: 400 people working remotely, with leadership trying to understand what's happening in the field without being able to see it directly. The core challenge was visibility: who are reps meeting with, how are they spending their time, and what is actually going on in the deals?

[testimonial]

[list#base]

Before Backstory

• No reliable visibility into rep activity across a 400-person remote sales org
• Manual data entry left activity capture incomplete and inconsistent
• Contact database full of gaps - no record of every person who engaged with the company
• Leadership chasing individual reps and managers for deal status updates
• QBRs consuming hours of rep prep time pulling data from multiple tools

[/list]

[tag#Use case 01]

Automated activity capture and contact intelligence

Getting a complete record of every engagement - without asking reps to log it

Backstory automatically captured every customer-facing activity across the org and matched it to the correct account and opportunity in Salesforce - no rep effort required. The contact database grew by nearly 32,000 net new contacts, equivalent to over $242,000 in contact acquisition costs. Forcepoint now has a record of every person who has ever engaged with the company.

[testimonial]

[list#brand]

AFTER BACKSTORY

• 9,000 rep hours saved on manual data entry - approximately $785,000 in salary expense
• 32,000 net new contacts added to the marketable database automatically
• Complete activity record across emails, meetings, and calls for every rep in the org
• Marketing armed with accurate, current contact and engagement data for targeted campaigns

[/list]

[tag#Use case 02]

Executive visibility and pipeline management

Replacing deal-chasing with dashboards leadership actually uses

Forcepoint built customized Engagement Dashboards in Backstory - executive views showing real-time sales performance across customer touches, pipeline conversions, and account health. QBRs were transformed - instead of reps spending hours pulling data from different tools, all the relevant performance data was already in a single Backstory view.

[list#img]

AFTER BACKSTORY

• Executive dashboards showing real-time pipeline health without chasing reps for updates
• Frontline managers coaching from rep-specific dashboards, not instinct
• QBR prep eliminated - all previous quarter performance data in a single Backstory view
• QBRs converted from data-gathering exercises into strategic planning sessions

[/list]

[tag#Use case 03]

Data-driven strategy and territory decisions

Using what the data revealed to make calls that changed how the whole org operated

The data showed that the difference in sales cycle length between a mid-market and enterprise deal was just 40 days. The difference in revenue was nearly 16x. Forcepoint shifted focus toward large enterprise. A second insight exposed a territory design problem - not a rep performance issue. Territories were restructured and performance improved.

[list#accent]

AFTER BACKSTORY

• Data revealed 40-day cycle difference between mid-market and enterprise - 16x revenue gap
• Strategy shifted to large enterprise - team prioritizes deals with the highest revenue potential
• Inside sales engagement patterns exposed a territory design flaw, not a rep performance issue
• Territories restructured based on data - rep performance improved across the function

[/list]

What Forcepoint achieved

Forcepoint came in with a visibility problem and solved it. But solving visibility unlocked something more valuable: the ability to ask questions the org had never been able to answer before. 9,000 hours saved. $785,000 in salary expense recovered. 32,000 net new contacts in the database. QBRs that actually run as strategy sessions.

[testimonial]