It’s official. The world is altering. Buyer wants are shifting. And today, the “quantity over worth” method to prospecting simply doesn’t work for increasing corporations and gross sales groups. As a substitute of scaling successfully, they wind up with an increasing number of on their plates—which suggests they’ve much less and fewer time to truly do what they do greatest—connecting with their prospects.
If you’d like your gross sales workforce to experience new waves of development like skilled surfers, they don’t want extra duties or extra disconnected apps. What they want is a technique to begin prospecting smarter.
Just lately, we sat down with Doug Botchman, Director of Income Operations and Kelly Parks, Senior Income Enablement Supervisor of Ceros to speak about smarter prospecting and the way a brand new deal with buyer connection helped their gross sales workforce shut extra offers than ever. Right here’s their story.
How Ceros’ New Prospecting Technique Elevated SQLs by Over 18%
Q: What’s Ceros?
“Ceros is a cloud primarily based suite of instruments that empowers companies to make use of their current assets to create partaking digital contact factors throughout the complete buyer journey with out the necessity for improvement. (assume faster, higher, more economical),” explains Kelly.
“We’re wildly obsessed with altering the way in which content material is created on the net. Ceros believes content material creation has been constrained by expertise for too lengthy and creativity has taken a backseat. Ceros exists to unlock creativity. Our mission is to encourage creativity with liberating expertise and all the pieces from the platform itself to the corporate tradition facilities round it.”
Q: Are you able to inform us extra about Ceros’ origin story? How did all of it begin?
“Ceros began as a reprographic enterprise in 2012, remodeled into an advert company and finally remodeled into the unimaginable platform it’s in the present day.” explains Kelly.
“The corporate has been evolving at a speedy tempo for a decade. Within the final 5 years alone, we’ve greater than tripled our workers and expanded our lineup to incorporate a full suite of instruments and providers.”
Q: How did that speedy development have an effect on your gross sales workforce?
“Once we went from an organization of 100 to 250+ folks, we confronted some challenges. The technique was ‘extra, extra, extra.’ We have been attempting to gasoline development through extra tech and excessive exercise quantity and that sort of method doesn’t work eternally.” says Doug. “Paradoxically, the extra we added extra to our programs, the much less productive we turned.”
“On high of our productiveness tanking, our pipelines have been working dry of certified leads—and the gross sales workforce didn’t have key details about the results in assist personalize outreach or join successfully.” explains Kelly. “With out insights, prospecting was like enjoying darts in the dead of night. In the end, the shortage of visibility and time meant our reps weren’t in a position to join with prospects, and our prospects suffered due to it.”
Q: What was the reason for the shortage of perception, and what did you do about it?
“Our gross sales system was actually disjointed and arduous to make use of. So, as a substitute of attempting to wrestle with the instruments, our reps have been conserving their notes all in Google Docs, spreadsheets, Put up-It notes and Slack messages.” says Kelly. “Because the gross sales workforce grew, an increasing number of information was residing elsewhere and conserving monitor of it was unattainable. We ended up shedding a whole lot of context and perception into the client. We would have liked that visibility. However earlier than we might get it, we needed to get organized.”
“We positioned all of our merchandise and types beneath the identical umbrella. This gave us the power to see the complete buyer journey from one single place, no matter which pipeline(s) the client was in.,” says Doug.
“Now, as a substitute of accumulating information that finally ends up sitting – unused – in disparate instruments, we use HubSpot’s Enterprise Models. It helps us deliver information collectively and visualize what audiences are utilizing which merchandise—and the way we will successfully promote to current prospects, get them to broaden their product portfolio, and supply them with worth through related content material and personalised outreach.”
Q: What affect did that new visibility have on how your workforce engaged with prospects?
“Gaining visibility helped us uncover a whole lot of insights and alternatives to attach with high quality prospects, but when we wished to win, we would have liked to diagnose shopper ache factors and supply prospects with well timed assist.” says Doug.
“Our handbook entry course of made that an unattainable feat, so we would have liked a method to assist our Gross sales Growth Reps (SDRs) carry out speedy and contextually related outreach. To try this, we tapped into the visibility we had gained and utilized automation to create personalised content material and sequences to attach with prospects in actual time.” says Kelly.
“Now, our SDRs get real-time alerts at any time when prospects go to the web site or open an electronic mail. They’ll see what prospects are partaking with and supply them with fast, related content material primarily based on no matter they’re enthusiastic about.” explains Kelly.
“The unified view that HubSpot has given us has allowed us to actually personalize our messages utilizing necessary data from discovery calls within the personalized contact/firm report. And it doesn’t gradual the workforce down as a result of all the pieces is correct there for us to behave on. Due to it, we’re shifting leads by way of the method sooner than ever.”
Q: That appears like it could result in a whole lot of leads within the pipeline. How did the workforce stability quantity vs. worth?
“If we wished to cease filling up our pipelines with leads that weren’t value our effort and time, and begin specializing in the leads that have been most useful to us, we would have liked to construct a powerful and scalable lead administration course of.” says Doug.
“We began by customizing discovery name varieties with necessary questions and knowledge that may assist us measure the standard of every lead. Our dashboards pull in that information to assist us monitor lead potential and establish who’re most necessary prospects and prospects.
“The flexibility to seize content material and share it seamlessly offers the workforce the time and information they should not solely pinpoint high quality leads, however to construct robust, personalised connections with prospects.
“Gross sales Hub has given us the ability to optimize our prospecting course of, handle leads, and rapidly convert connections into prospects utilizing lead funnel reporting. Our deal technology for open assembly alternatives has elevated 180% during the last 5 years, which has led to a median general development of 18%-20% YOY for SQLs.”
Q: What affect has smarter prospecting made on the Ceros gross sales workforce?
“Working smarter as a substitute of tougher has led to outstanding outcomes throughout the gross sales workforce and past.” says Doug. “A better method to prospecting has allowed our reps to deal with bringing in priceless leads and reworking these connections into optimistic, long-lasting buyer relationships. As a substitute of throwing darts in the dead of night, we’ve been in a position to flip the lights on and constantly hit the mark.”
Q: What can be your recommendation to different corporations who’re scuffling with development and prospecting?
“The very best recommendation we might give is to first be sure that your advertising and marketing and gross sales groups are aligned and dealing in the direction of the identical objectives. Leverage expertise to automate duties, collect information, and achieve insights in your prospects. Depend on your CRM that can assist you make your day-to-day as environment friendly as doable.
“Innovation needs to be on the forefront of your technique. At all times be searching for methods to enhance and streamline your operations to assist with development, and result in extra seamless prospecting. Lastly, frequently measure your efficiency in opposition to your outlined objectives and modify as wanted. We’re all a piece in progress!”
