How PEAK Technology Partners keeps deals on track with Affinity Meetings

Introduction

PEAK Technology Partners—founded in 2016—has over fifty years of banking experience and connections in the tech industry. With buyer and investor relationships with companies from FAANG giants to IBM and Adobe to deals across productivity, SaaS, and fintech, they pride themselves on creating a custom buyer experience.

When their team’s weekly meeting count nearly tripled as meetings went virtual in 2020, they feared losing that personal touch. Meeting notes left on notepads or typed up in Word documents could easily be lost, and valuable information about their clients and prospects would be as well.

PEAK Technology Partners needed a way to track the influx of data. They chose Affinity as their CRM to automatically capture contact and deal information directly from calendar invitations and email inboxes. Their team also now relies heavily on Affinity Meetings—our new Zoom app—to access relationship intelligence directly within their Zoom window.

Now the PEAK Technologies team is ready to handle a virtual and hybrid work environment.

With Affinity—and the addition of Affinity Meetings—PEAK Technology Partners has:

• Saved 5+ hours per week (per person) on entering data and notes
• Improved data retention and data cleanliness with automated data capture
• Consolidated deal and contact data management to remove silos and improve the teams access to each others’ notes

Challenge

Manual data entry and wasted Friday afternoons

Meeting new clients faster is great news for business, but it can quickly become a logistical nightmare without the right infrastructure to manage it.  

“Meetings are the lifeblood of investment banking,” said Chad Harding, Managing Partner with Peak Technology Partners “we would average 20 per week, then we jumped to 50 or 60 meetings a week, and we weren’t sure how to manage that.”

With meetings piling up, Harding’s team ran out of time in the day to take notes about their calls. Information was jotted onto paper notepads or note-taking apps, but it wasn’t being shared.

“I’d spend a full afternoon on Fridays entering that information, closing out the week, and getting started for the next week with takeaways and next steps,” Harding added. This also meant that other teammates wouldn’t have access to that data until the end of the week.

Solution

Capturing, sharing, and viewing information anywhere, anytime

To keep pace with the increase in meetings—and turn those meetings into deals—PEAK turned to Affinity.

“Affinity is more than our relationship management tool. We use it to run our business,” Harding said, “we track all of our deals, contacts we make for each deal, and our potential clients in one place.”

Consistent, easy access to their entire team’s contact and deal records has made Affinity a core part of the PEAK tech stack. Everyday workflows haven’t been undone but updated. Instead of scrubbing through notes, documents, or sticky notes, their full team can access information anywhere, anytime.

“So much so that with my home office, I have three screens: one for Zoom, one for email, and one for Affinity.” Harding said. This got even easier after their team implemented our Zoom app, Affinity Meetings.

In a hybrid work world where teams are constantly online and traveling for business meetings, Affinity Meetings gives PEAK the ability to make the most of travel screen real estate.

“When you leave your three screens at home, you can miss out on access to a lot of details. You have to choose whether you’re present or switching windows to look up information. [Affinity Meetings] allows me to present while I’m talking.”

Results

Using relationship intelligence anywhere to keep up with a new deal speed

Automated data capture, and access to that data (and the relationship intelligence pulled from it) has saved the PEAK team dozens of hours per week on entering and maintaining records. Instead, they can focus their time on taking more client meetings than ever. It also means deal and contact data is available immediately after a call, and other team members can access that information during meetings during that week rather than waiting for someone to update an account

Cleaner, more comprehensive contact records empower them to make more informed decisions. They can also access that information anywhere, anytime, from inside their Zoom app with Affinity Meetings. Now, no matter when or where a meeting happens, they can tap into a complete contact history about everyone on the call while staying engaged.

“Your deal work happens everywhere but your CRM. It’s where you record your information and where it’s available, but work involving deals and opportunities are in your inbox, on websites, and in your meetings.” Harding said.

Today, the PEAK team is confident their information is up-to-date and correct. They can easily tap into relationship intelligence to make the most of every meeting, and stay focused on their meetings—and the people in them.

‍