Summary

Demand Generation Case Study for HR Benefits Company – Company needed to grow its corporate customer account base by 25% and simultaneously reduce the cost of developing opportunities and closing business.   Their internal team of eight Sales Development Reps were no longer producing enough real sales opportunities to support growth.

In this demand generation case study for a HR Benefits Company you will learn how a demand generation and lead nurturing solution helped double sales and cut cost of sales by 50% in under a year.

Company Background

Collective Goods brings world-class retail experiences with incredible prices to corporate workplaces. These retail events act as an employee benefit that simultaneously allows organizations to contribute to causes they care about. Collective Goods (originally Books Are Fun) is a second-generation family-owned business. Collective Goods runs these pop-up retail events for over 55K schools and 10K corporations annually.

Challenge

Collective Goods wanted to target HR Directors and Benefits Managers with over 200 employees. Generating the deals required an average of 3 to 5 calls to convert into a proposal. Once closed an average deal resulted in $8,000 to $20,000 of annul recurring revenue.

Collective Goods had the equivalent 8 full time Sales Development Reps supporting an independent national rep force with more than 200 salespeople. Sale Development Reps were responsible for generating leads through cold calling efforts and sporadic one-time email campaigns. SDRs were then responsible for a series of calls to educate and qualify the lead before they passed to National Rep to close.

Company needed to grow its corporate customer account base by 25% and simultaneously reduce the cost of developing opportunities and closing business.

Company had a homegrown CRM, a target list of 18,000 companies with names, phone numbers but limited email addresses and no marketing automation tech.

The Solution

Within the first month Digital Demand Center’s parent company Gabriel Sales crafted a go-to-market strategy. Gabriel Sales ran a three-day video production workshop to create lead gen, lead nurturing and sales automation video content. Collective Goods digital marketers provided additional articles and website modifications.

Within the first month Gabriel Sales also addressed gaps in Collective Goods database and augmented that database with an additional 12,000 targets. Gabriel Sales implemented the full Digital Demand Center tech stack and stood up eight Salesforce seats for the Sales Development Reps.

Digital Demand Center’s full tech stack was launched and integrated into Salesforce. DDCs turnkey ongoing managed services team executed a three-part awareness campaign to the entire database over the first eight weeks transitioning into lead nurturing campaign with seven to nine unique offers a quarter.

Within three months Collective Goods Sales Development Reps were receiving a steady flow of predictively scored sales leads.

The Results

Within six months Digital Demand Center™ was producing a sustained flow of:

• 120 scored Sales Ready Leads a Month
• 2x more Sales Appointments (46 a Month)
• Produced 19 New Deals/Accounts Per Month
• Hit their 25% new corporate accounts annual growth targets

In addition, because lead nurturing produced well educated buyers (the average scored lead consumed 4-9 pieces of content and several videos) the company was able to reduce the time an investment required to produce qualified leads and deals The sales team was able to:

• Reduce the calls to conversion from 3 calls to 1 call
• Increase closing rate from 10% to 50%
• SDRs were able to close 50% of deals without needing National Rep
• Company was able to reduce Sales Development Rep headcount from 8 to 4 to reduce overall Cost of Sale Percentage by 40%

.

Additional Strategic Benefits

With a CRM and Digital Demand Center™ reporting and dashboards in place Collective Goods Chief Sales Officers and VPs of Sales had ability to target gaps in the market and the ability to focus on those markets for additional growth.

Newly hired Marketing Director was able to leverage dashboards to refine and hone messages.

Company was able to leverage a portion of SDR headcount savings to create additional content and hire an in-house videographer.

Additional Strategic Benefits

With a CRM and Digital Demand Center™ reporting and dashboards in place Collective Goods Chief Sales Officers and VPs of Sales had ability to target gaps in the market and the ability to focus on those markets for additional growth.

Newly hired Marketing Director was able to leverage dashboards to refine and hone messages.

Company was able to leverage a portion of SDR headcount savings to create additional content and hire an in-house videographer.

This concludes this demand generation case study HR Benefits Company.  We invite you to view additional case studies or contact us for your initial free consultation.

Summary

In this B2B hardware manufacturer lead nurturing case study you will learn how an industry leading diagnostic tools manufacturer used lead nurturing to stay top of mind with new and existing buyers.

Company Background

The Energy Conservatory (TEC) manufactures MINNEAPOLIS brand precision diagnostic equipment and develops processes used to solve comfort, energy use, durability and air quality problems in buildings. TEC’s knowledge of building physics, reputation for innovative design, and excellent technical support have made them the leading manufacturer of performance testing tools for the building science industry.

Founded in 1980 at the Minnesota Energy Agency, their blower door was a pioneer in the energy conservation sector. Today, their blower door continues to set the standard in the industry. Since then, the company has launched multiple diagnostic tools for the industry.

Situation

TEC is the industry leader with the most established brand. 95% of the company’s sales were coming from distributors, but they were getting ready to launch an internal store to offer products directly.

Buying their solution was not an “if” but “when” decision due to state and federal regulations. Inbound leads were not an issue for the company because of the longevity of the brand, their presence at tradeshows, in trade publications and their distribution partners. When a purchase decision was ready to be made TEC was almost always in the running.

Company had built a database of 20K past and existing customers (only 35% had full contact info including email addresses) that was used very sporadically for one off announcements and occasional newsletters.

TEC had a great deal already accomplished including:

• A well established brand
• A required product
• An existing customer base

The Challenge

TEC’s remaining founder was in the process of exiting the company and empowering a new leadership team and new owners. In addition, TEC’s long time head of sales and marketing was preparing to retire. There was also new competitor moving into the market with a focus on digital marketing, and as result TEC’s external sales partners and distributors were asking for additional digital education support.

TEC was interested in Digital Demand Center to ensure:

• TEC remained top of mind with their existing and past customers
• Make it easier for new buyers to understand what product was the best fit to meet their needs
• Ongoing education to remain thought leaders in the market to support their partners and distributors
• The leadership transition did not reduce confidence in the organization/brand

The Solution

Month 1

During the first month, Digital Demand Center’s parent company Gabriel Sales crafted a digital first buyer education strategy that included an awareness campaign to remind the market why it was such a great solution, a lead nurturing campaign, an automated sales education campaign and framed an ongoing newsletter strategy.

Month 2

Gabriel Sales ran a three-day onsite video content production workshop at the company’s headquarters to create the initial content required for the campaigns. Digital Demand Center’s full tech stack was launched and integrated with multiple Salesforce seats. A video channel was launched, and all tech integrations were completed. Data appends and validation was run on their 20,000 records.

Month 3-4

A six-part awareness campaign was kicked off to 12,500 newly cleaned and validated targets. Content production was completed. Ongoing monthly newsletter was launched during month 4.

Month 5

Digital Demand Center™ kicked off lead nurturing and sales automation campaigns then entered steady state with ongoing managed services.

Results

Over time TEC’s mailable database of customers and potential buyers grew from 12K to 20K leads, almost doubling the buyers they can target with digital first education.

Digital Demand Center™ continues ongoing top of mind awareness, customer education, and pre-sales automation communication across TEC’s existing customer base and inbound lead nurturing database.

TEC is able to stay top of mind and drive ongoing engagement with over 75%, of their entire database quarterly basis, with most customers engaging with multiple pieces of digital first education on a consistent basis.​

.

Additional Strategic Benefits

The new ownership and leadership team was able to take over the business and focus on higher priority activities including launching an eCommerce platform, deepening relationships with existing channels and growing their distribution partner network.

TEC built an in-house content production team to focus on digital education for buyers, including video and multi-media production. In addition, TEC built a large on-demand library of case studies, use cases and testimonials to provide social proof to potential buyers.

This wraps up this B2B hardware manufacturer lead nurturing case study. Please visit additional customer success stories or contact us for your a free gap audit to learn more.