SDR Jumpstart: ROI in less than five months

PERQ, a multifamily marketing automation platform, was poised for growth. They had a strong base of customers and had released new platform capabilities with some unique differentiation for which their market niche had a known need. Yet, the company had hit a plateau in their ability to scale. With the new platform came a new pilot go to market strategy, elongating the sales. As a result, marketing leads weren’t progressing, and the pace of new opportunity creation was too slow.

Their small sales team was deeply experienced in the industry, but they weren’t structured to accommodate the increased activity they were now responsible for.  The sales team had to juggle it all – upsell current customers, identify new opportunities, manage pilots, and follow up on marketing leads of all levels of quality.

The co-founder and CEO knew introducing Sales Development Reps (SDRs) was a necessary step, but their bandwidth was limited to build and manage a new SDR team. That’s when Samantha Stone, at the Marketing Advisory Network was tapped to help.

“As a small but mighty sales team we didn’t have the luxury of getting a false start. Samantha helped us design and launch a pilot SDR program that drove immediate results. She handled everything – from creating a playbook, to evaluating vendors, coordinating with our internal operations staff and managing the day-to-day effort. We have a predictable stream of qualified meetings that turn into opportunities, and the transition to our internal team at the end of the pilot was flawless.” Andy Medley - CRO & Co-Founder, PERQ

After considering various options to staff the SDR role, PERQ opted to bring in BNZSA, an SDR agency that could meet their needs for transparent reporting and flexible staffing.

In order to get a jumpstart, Samantha provided BNZSA everything they needed to launch the program.

She worked with the PERQ marketing team to develop a highly curated list of accounts and contacts, and then jumped into training. She held three training sessions for the SDR team, including:

1.     Playbook review. In this session, the SDR team was introduced to a detailed playbook filled with buyer insights, competitive positioning and conversation starters.

2.     Next came a product demonstration, focusing on key benefits and differentiation.

3.     Lastly, Samantha worked with the sales operations team at PERQ to host an operational review to show the team step-by-step how to leverage PERQ’s Salesforce system.

Weekly check-ins and ad hoc connections made sure The SDRs stayed in lockstep when supporting the PERQ sales team. The SDR who scheduled an appointment attended the meetings they scheduled for the first month of working together as a way of transferring knowledge. After the first month, SDRs attended the beginning of the calls to make a warm hand off to the PERQ sales team. Doing so provided a better experience for the meeting guest, and ensured if anyone doesn’t show up, the SDR could follow up immediately and attempt to reschedule.

In just five months, 11 qualified opportunities were generated, and their first SDR-generated deal was won. The revenue from just that one deal covered the cost of the program, delivering a rapid ROI. Additional meetings are scheduled and expected to increase pipeline and revenue substantially in the next few months.  Throughout the pilot, meeting no shows/cancellations was kept to under 20%.

The SDR program was expanded to leverage the SDR team to follow up on a direct mail campaign against PERQ’s most strategic target accounts, leading to more than 30 accounts participating in the program.

“Working with Samantha Stone at the Marketing Advisory Network to launch the PERQ lead generation campaign has been a real pleasure.  As someone that works on many campaigns in various countries and languages, it´s critical while launching a campaign to have a clear brief and project objective.  Before I could even ask Samantha any questions at our launch meeting, she prepared a playbook that included answers to any possible questions regarding the market, target audience, scope, and lead criteria.  She left no stone unturned with her preparation.  This level of detail made my job very easy to ensure we were prepared to deliver a successful outcome for PERQ.  Samantha is very knowledgeable, and I consider her a market expert and great resource.  She was always available with any questions and quick to action on any problems that we encountered.” Craig Calico, Project Manager BNZSA