IFP Closes $500K Deal In 90 Days By Outsourcing Lead Gen

All B2B marketers want to keep the sales funnel filled with top-notch leads. But many factors — including the target industry, complexity of the sales cycle and size of the marketing and sales teams — can determine the success of a company’s lead generation efforts. As a result, many firms turn to third parties to ensure a continuous flow of prospects.

One such company is Indiana Fluid Power (IFP), a provider of fluid power, motion control and automation systems for the industrial and mobile OEM marketplace. The company tapped LeadJen to help gather new prospects and setup briefings for its sales reps. Three months into the partnership, IFP was able to close a $500,000 deal and had several other opportunities in the pipeline.

Prior to hiring LeadJen to handle its outbound marketing endeavors, IFP’s sales engineers spend the majority of their time working with customers and prospects to design systems and solve problems — due to the complexity of its solutions. In addition to IFP’s large and complex deals, the average sales cycle is six to 18 months.

Due to the specific vertical they target, IFP executives were unsure if outsourcing was right for them.

“We have a complex message and I wasn’t convinced that someone outside our company would be able to learn it quickly and deliver the results we wanted,” said Bernie Clarke, President of IFP. “These are critical systems and components so it’s not easy to convince a company to change providers.”

When the time came to begin filling the pipeline with new prospects, IFP tapped LeadJen to handle all the outbound marketing initiatives, while the internal marketing and sales teams focused on retaining current customers. Although the fluid control automation industry is a complex ecosystem, the LeadJen team was able to analyze and locate key prospects and accounts that matched the company’s ideal buyer.

“LeadJen has done an outstanding job of cultivating our relationship with potential buyers,” said Clarke. “If I had left this campaign up to our internal staff, we may have set three to four appointments in this timeframe; they just don’t have the time to devote to cold calling.”

Establishing A Process

Clearly defined lines of ownership on what internal and outsourced teams will be working on helps eliminate the possibility of stepping on toes, according to LeadJen President Jenny Vance.

Vance added: “The division either comes in the internal team handling inbound leads and the outsourced firm handling outbound or it comes with clear communication about who owns what territory, account lists, lead sources, industry targets, etc.”

Along with closing a $500,000 deal in the first three months, LeadJen set 36 appointments across 1,000 call and email attempts to 150 accounts, a 23% response rate per company and 15% response rate per person targeted.

Other results include:

• Most of the 36 appointments were set with the first phone call;
• Wednesday was the most popular day for setting up appointments; and
• Only 13% responded with “no interest.”

 

Technological integration also eased communication between both parties, aligning both internal and outsourced teams to maximize productivity. “Technology integration also helps create visibility to activity happening by both teams,” Vance added. “These solutions can help teams leverage prospecting functionality while still giving real-time visibility into call activity by lead/account.”

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