PlaceMakers drives sales and efficiency with Salesforce Platform and mobile-first engagement

PlaceMakers, New Zealand’s largest supplier of building materials and hardware, operates 62 stores nationwide with more than 2,100 employees. With disparate systems, manual processes, and a lack of customer insights, the business needed a unified Salesforce solution to improve efficiency, customer experience, and digital engagement across its B2B base.

SLEEQ partnered with PlaceMakers to deliver a comprehensive Salesforce transformation, creating a single customer view, standardising processes, and enabling digital engagement through Marketing Cloud and mobile-first tools.

Key goals:

• Create a single customer view across systems

• Replace manual processes with scalable Salesforce automation

• Improve customer insights for better targeting and service

• Enable digital engagement through Marketing Cloud and mobile tools

• Support sustainable growth with a modern Salesforce platform

project EXECUTION

PlaceMakers required a solution that would unify customer information, digitise engagement, and empower both trade customers and staff. SLEEQ delivered a Salesforce programme that integrated Sales, Service, and Marketing Cloud with mobile applications, enabling PlaceMakers to modernise its customer interactions and operations.

• Customer 360: Implemented Sales Cloud to provide a complete view of every customer account and interaction.

• Service digitisation: Deployed Service Cloud with live chat, knowledgebase, and email-to-case to reduce call volumes and improve service.

• Digital engagement: Introduced Marketing Cloud for campaign automation, targeted messaging, and mobile engagement.

• Mobile-first tools: Integrated Salesforce with the Trade App and mobile ordering (Skip the Counter), empowering customers to transact faster and more conveniently.

• Operational visibility: Established role-based dashboards and reporting for compliance, performance, and customer insights.

RESULTS

PlaceMakers achieved measurable business improvements that reshaped customer engagement and operational efficiency.

Highlights

• Revenue growth: 28.5% uplift in average order value within one campaign cycle

• Rapid sales impact: $1m in sales within 54 days of project go-live

• Efficiency gains: 556,000 fewer inbound and outbound calls, saving over 3,500 staff days

• Customer adoption: 80% of orders placed through “Skip the Counter,” with 7,000+ Trade App users in the first weeks

• New customer acquisition: 25% increase in new accounts in a single month

• Sustainability impact: Paper printing reduced by 48%, saving $500,000
  
  

"This Salesforce transformation has fundamentally changed how we engage our trade customers—delivering faster service, better insights, and measurable results from day one.”

- Executive Sponsor, PlaceMakers 

business impact

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud programme enabled PlaceMakers to unify customer engagement across sales, service, and marketing channels. The transformation delivered measurable sales uplift and efficiency savings, while reducing operational costs and supporting sustainability goals. 

By adopting a mobile-first engagement model, PlaceMakers rapidly drove customer adoption and created a scalable blueprint for global retailers and distributors to modernise customer engagement with Salesforce.