How Revenue Ops helped a drone services company find qualified contractors across the country without spending hours searching through records.

A Nationwide Network, but No Easy Way to Find the Right Operator

We worked with a company that had an interesting business model. They provided drone services to customers across the United States, but rather than employing drone operators in every market, they worked with independent contractors.

Those contractors were located all over the country, and they didn’t all have the same equipment. One operator might have a drone suited for aerial photography, while another had equipment better suited for inspections or surveying.

When a customer submitted a request through the company’s website, someone on the team had to figure out who could actually do the job.

That meant answering a few questions. Where was the project? Which operators were nearby? Did they have the right drone? And once the team found a few possible matches, how would they get the opportunity in front of those contractors?

The company had contractor information in Salesforce, but searching through that information wasn’t particularly efficient when geography was such an important part of the decision.

A list of contractors could tell you who was in the system. It wasn’t nearly as helpful when you needed to find someone with a specific piece of equipment within driving distance of a project.

That’s where Salesforce Maps came into the picture.

Starting with the Location, Not the Contractor List

The first thing we wanted to change was how the team searched for operators.

Previously, the process depended heavily on looking through contractor information and figuring out which operators might be close enough to handle a request.

With Salesforce Maps, we were able to turn that around.

When a request came in, the team could start with the customer’s location. They could enter an address, define a search radius, and see which contractors were in that area.

We also configured other ways to search because not every request was tied to a single address. Sometimes it made more sense to draw a boundary around a region. Other times, the team wanted to look at operators within particular ZIP codes, cities, or territories.

Having those options was useful. A project in a major metropolitan area might require a relatively tight search, while a request in a rural location could mean looking across a much larger area to find someone qualified.

The map gave the team a much better starting point. Instead of figuring out where every potential contractor was located, they could see who was relevant to the area they were working with.

Of course, being nearby didn’t necessarily mean someone could do the job.

The Equipment Problem

One of the more important parts of this project was how we handled the drones themselves.

The client wasn’t simply looking for the closest contractor. Different requests called for different equipment, and an operator who was perfect for one project might not be suitable for another.

We modeled the equipment in Salesforce using records related to the contractors. This allowed us to maintain information about the drones associated with each operator without trying to squeeze everything into a handful of fields on the contractor record.

That distinction mattered.

A contractor could have more than one drone, and those drones could have different capabilities. Keeping the equipment in related records made the information easier to maintain and gave us more flexibility when filtering potential matches.

We used Salesforce Maps filtering along with Salesforce reports and list views to help the team narrow the results based on the requirements of a particular request.

For example, the team could look for operators in a particular geographic area and then focus on those who had the equipment needed for the job.

We also accounted for other matching criteria where appropriate.

The idea was to narrow the list to people worth contacting, rather than produce a list of everyone who happened to live nearby.

Getting from a Website Request to a Contractor List

Finding potential operators on a map solved an important problem, but there was still work to do.

The company received requests through its website. Once those requests arrived in Salesforce, the team needed to turn the information into a list of contractors to contact.

We used Salesforce Flow and custom automation to help with that process.

The request provided the project location and equipment requirements. Those details were used to support contractor matching and segmentation, with Salesforce reports and list views giving the team a way to review the results.

We also kept the matching process tied to the customer request, so the team could manage the operators being considered for each job.

That was particularly helpful when multiple requests were coming in around the same time. The team needed to know which contractors were being considered for which projects, rather than work from a general list of operators.

We didn’t want to automate away the team’s ability to make decisions, either. There were situations where someone needed to review the options, adjust the geographic search, or consider additional qualifications.

Salesforce Maps gave them that flexibility, while Flow handled the repetitive work around organizing and preparing the contractor information.

Making the Outreach Worth Opening

The next question was how to contact the contractors.

Sending every request to the entire network wouldn’t have made much sense. Someone operating in one part of the country probably didn’t need to hear about every opportunity hundreds or thousands of miles away.

And even if they were close enough, the project might require equipment they didn’t have, or the project date might fall on one they’ve booked for another job already.

We used the segmentation data in Salesforce to support targeted outreach through the client’s marketing automation platform.

The team could build a group of contractors based on the request, then send the opportunity to operators who were more likely to be interested and qualified.

This was a better experience for both sides.

The company spent less time preparing and managing broad outreach lists. Contractors received opportunities that were more relevant to their location and equipment.

It also gave the business a better chance of getting useful responses instead of sending messages to people who were never likely to take the job.

Keeping the Process in Salesforce

Once the outreach went out, the team still had to manage the request.

They needed to see which contractors had responded, determine who might be able to take the work, and keep track of the request as it moved toward fulfillment.

We used Salesforce to maintain that information alongside the customer request.

This meant the team could work from the same system they were already using to manage contractors and equipment, rather than moving between different spreadsheets or trying to piece together the status from email conversations.

It also made it easier to see where things stood when someone else needed to pick up a request.

What the Client Got Out of It

The most immediate benefit was that finding contractors became a much more manageable task.

Instead of manually searching through a nationwide network, the team could start with the project location, identify operators in the area, and narrow the results based on equipment and other requirements.

The client saved time identifying potential contractors and reduced the administrative work involved in preparing outreach.

They also saw faster request fulfillment and better contractor response rates, since opportunities were going to more relevant groups of operators.

We don’t have the validated figures available for publication, so I wouldn’t put a percentage against those improvements. But the operational difference was meaningful.

The company had a process that worked across its contractor network without requiring the team to start from scratch every time a new request came in.

Why We Liked This Use Case

What made this project interesting to us was that it wasn’t a typical Salesforce Maps implementation.

Most people associate Maps with sales representatives, territories, and route planning. That’s understandable, but it overlooks some of the other problems that geographic data can help solve.

In this case, the client wasn’t trying to optimize sales visits. They were trying to match a customer who needed a service with an independent contractor who had the right equipment and was located in the right area.

Maps gave us the geographic component. The Salesforce data model gave us the equipment relationships. Flow helped organize the matching process, and marketing automation helped get the opportunities in front of the right contractors.

The individual pieces weren’t particularly unusual. It was how we connected them that made the solution useful.

That’s often the case with Salesforce projects. The challenge isn’t necessarily finding another feature to turn on. It’s understanding the decisions people are making every day and figuring out how the system can make those decisions easier.

For this client, that meant making it easier to answer one question:

Who can we contact to get this job done?

And giving the team a much better way to answer it.

About Revenue Ops

Revenue Ops is a Salesforce consulting partner helping companies get more value from their CRM, data, and automation investments. We focus on understanding how businesses operate and building solutions that make their day-to-day work easier.