Part I in a Series of Customer Case Studies
My name is David Monfort and I am the Director of Customer Strategy at Direct Marketing Partners (DMP). My job is to help clients strengthen their sales funnels. My job is to help clients strengthen their sales funnels. Smart strategy and extremely thorough processes/execution are the reasons for DMP’s successful twenty-eight (28) years in the marketing services business. Equally important is our understanding that there is no such thing as a cookie-cutter approach to lead sales pipeline generation. If there is one thing that I have learned in my 7 years with DMP, it is that every client has unique sets of challenges generating leads and converting them into sales opportunities. Therefore, we boost sales pipelines by tailoring our solutions to each individual client’s circumstances.
As an illustration of our approach, I want to share one of our client’s journey to success.
This client, who is in the cyber security industry, has a great SaaS product with some solid differentiators from its competition.
Company’s Challenges
However, we observed that the biggest problem it faced was name recognition and lack of experience in how to market to new clients. This company had a respectable marketing budget which was spent in digital advertising, holding regular educational webinars and presenting at live and cyber events throughout the year – a seemingly solid, but low pipeline producing strategy.
Once we were engaged and began to dive into the available data and materials, it became clear that a multi-pronged methodology was necessary to overcome the pipeline growth woes being encountered by our client.
Discoveries
We quickly realized that not only the pitch, but also the list sources, targeting and segmentation were not effective. The value proposition and call guide in use were too long, too detailed and self-focused – doing nothing to demonstrate how the offer could mitigate any possible pain points experienced by the targeted prospects. These contacts were being drawn from approximately 170 campaigns and list sources without any serious analysis of their respective productivity.
After examining these lists’ past sales conversions, we reduced the number of active sources to seventy-two (72). This enabled us to re-write a more impactful value proposition, improve the messaging focus and trim the call guide. We modified the outbound touch cadence to better leverage the most rigorous and recent data. The human touch now worked in harmony with the digital efforts. Armed with more useful contact information and better messaging, we launched a multi-touch and multi-channel outreach program that within a few weeks had turned things around. Since the introduction of these changes, we have met 100% of the lead and sales appointment setting goals month after month. It has been two years now and we are considered a vital frontline extension of our client’s quota carrying sales team and organization as a whole.
Lesson Learned
One important lesson learned is that the more information a client is willing to share, the greater our ability to become strategic.
I hope you found this short story helpful. Please feel free to share your thoughts or feedback. I would like to hear your ideas, too.
