How Steel Fabrication Company Transformed Sales with Sales Cloud Implementation QuickStart

Larson Steel Products is a family-owned and operated structural steel fabrication company headquartered in Joliet, Illinois, serving customers across the United States and Canada. Founded by Mark Larson after more than 20 years in the steel industry, the company works alongside his wife Sarah and their three sons, combining over 50 years of industry experience with a customer-first approach.

Operating from a 12,000-square-foot fabrication facility, Larson Steel provides steel sales, cutting, fabrication, welding, painting, tube bending, and custom manufacturing services. The company primarily supports the structural steel, conveyor, and logistics industries, with its fabricated products used in warehouses and distribution facilities for organizations such as Amazon, FedEx, and UPS across North America.

Unlike manufacturers selling standardized products, Larson Steel operates as a project-based fabrication business. Every order is tailored to customer specifications, requiring custom quoting, pricing, and order management rather than selecting products from a predefined catalog. As the business expanded, the company needed a CRM capable of supporting these highly customized sales processes while creating a scalable foundation for future growth.

Their second location is a 40,000 sq. ft. facility in Bedford Park that features a state-of-the-art paint area, ranking among the TOP 5 largest paint and powder coating processors in the nation. Since its founding in 2022, Larson Steel has grown rapidly from 6 to 39 employees.

Larson Steel proudly offers American-made steel sales supported by a full-service fabrication workshop, providing cutting, painting, tube bending, and CNC machining. They specialize in custom platforms, stairs, ladders, and railings—delivering durable, tailored solutions with certified quality materials.

Larson Steel had reached a point where spreadsheets, email, paper records, and manual processes could no longer support its growing business. The company needed to organize customer information, quotes, opportunities, and orders while preserving the flexibility required for custom manufacturing.

Another challenge was representing custom fabricated products inside Salesforce. Because Larson Steel doesn't sell from a traditional parts catalog, the company needed to build a CRM that could accommodate unique products, custom pricing, and service-oriented sales processes.

Having previously participated in a Salesforce rollout at another company, Larson Steel's Salesforce Administrator understood both the value of the platform and the risks of implementing it incorrectly. Rather than repeating common implementation mistakes, the company decided to start with Salesforce Sales Cloud Quick Start and establish the right foundation from day one.

Twistellar partnered with Larson Steel Products to implement Salesforce Sales Cloud through its Sales Cloud Quick Start package, providing the company with a scalable CRM foundation tailored to its custom manufacturing business.

Rather than applying a one-size-fits-all sales process, the implementation focused on adapting Salesforce to Larson Steel's project-based sales model. Since the company manufactures custom structural steel rather than selling standardized products, the solution was designed to support unique customer requirements, custom quotes, and flexible order management while leveraging Salesforce's standard capabilities.

Working closely with Larson Steel's internal team, Twistellar helped configure core Sales Cloud functionality, including Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, Quotes, Products, and Price Books, while introducing reporting capabilities and best practices for CRM administration. Throughout the project, the team emphasized knowledge transfer, enabling Larson Steel's Salesforce Administrator to confidently manage and expand the platform after the initial basic implementation.

Objectives: Modernize sales operations for a custom structural steel manufacturer by centralizing customer information, reducing manual quoting, improving sales visibility, and supporting highly customized manufacturing workflows.

Deliverables: Salesforce Sales Cloud implementation, configuration of core CRM objects, product catalog and Price Book setup for custom fabrication, quote management, sales reporting, user enablement, administrator training, and a scalable CRM foundation for future manufacturing system integrations.

Through its Salesforce Sales Cloud implementation, Larson Steel Products established a scalable CRM foundation tailored to its custom manufacturing business. By replacing spreadsheet- and email-driven sales processes with a centralized Salesforce environment, the company gained a more structured approach to managing customer relationships, opportunities, quotes, and orders while preserving the flexibility required for custom steel fabrication.

One of the most significant outcomes of the implementation was demonstrating how Salesforce's standard Products and Price Books could support a highly customized manufacturing model. Despite producing made-to-order structural steel components, Larson Steel was able to create its first structured product catalog and pricing framework—something the company had not established during its first four years of operation.

The implementation also streamlined quote creation and laid the groundwork for standardized sales reporting and order management. Even during the testing phase, the team observed measurable time savings, with quote generation taking minutes instead of hours, allowing employees to focus on higher-value activities.

Beyond immediate operational improvements, the project established a scalable Salesforce environment that Larson Steel can continue to develop internally while supporting future integrations with ERP and MRP systems as the business expands.