Compared to larger organizations, small businesses have fewer people who are doing more work, less capital that needs to be stretched further, and a shorter time to show results. For startup companies, these challenges are even more pronounced. In order to succeed, startup companies need to acquire paying customers as quickly as possible. How can they quickly and effectively develop a sales pipeline and revenue stream? They could hire a large inside marketing and sales force to inundate the market and quickly develop the pipeline. Or, they could hire one or two senior salespeople and hope they are able to quickly find enough business to kick-start the company. The answer? memoryBlue.
The following case study illustrates how memoryBlue helped Orchestro, a leading global provider of demand and supply chain solutions, develop its customer and target database and build its sales pipeline rapidly and economically.
Business Challenge:
Like many companies, Orchestro needed to accomplish as much as possible and as quickly as possible, with limited personnel resources. The audience they need to reach consists of C-level executives at large firms — not the easiest people to make contact with.
Orchestro’s marketing team was able to identify the finite number of companies and job titles that made up their target list. Yet, they did not have the information needed to determine who these people were. In addition, Orchestro’s sales team was too busy traveling and trying to close business to do the necessary research to develop the pipeline. To make matters even more challenging, their marketing and sales teams consisted of a single person.
“I had a specific target market that I needed to reach as quickly and effectively as possible, and I wasn’t going to be able to do that in a traditional telemarketing scenario,” explains Scott Hughes, vice president of sales for Orchestro.
Hughes had a decision to make — risk expanding his sales and marketing staff and hope they could immediately bring in enough business to pay their salaries, or work to find another option. He chose memoryBlue.
The Solution:
memoryBlue provided Orchestro with comprehensive sales support services — including lead generation and management, market research, and lead identification, qualification, nurturing, and delivery — allowing Orchestro to concentrate their sales efforts entirely on closing business.
In partnership with its sales automation and management partner, Salesforce.com, memoryBlue developed a complete and up-to-date target market database for Orchestro to manage all their sales and marketing efforts moving forward. Based on its constant communication with Orchestro, memoryBlue crafted specific messages for these targets and developed the most effective methods to reach them, including multiple email, fax, and phone touches. In addition, memoryBlue made contact with these individuals, collected valuable data, and ultimately secured highly qualified meetings for Orchestro sales representatives.
“Once I educated memoryBlue on our business, for all intents and purposes, they became Orchestro employees,” Hughes says. “They were able to talk the Orchestro talk without referring to a canned script. As far as our contacts knew, they were speaking with Orchestro employees. Their professionalism definitely raised our level of credibility in the eyes of our contacts, which led to more qualified introductory meetings.”
The Results:
memoryBlue has been working with Orchestro for over a year and a half. In that time, memoryBlue has been responsible for generating over 60 percent of the sales leads that converted to revenue, and the engagement with Orchestro has grown from supporting a single salesperson to an entire national sales force. “The one thing that has remained constant over the years has been the professionalism and results memoryBlue has brought to the partnership,” explains Hughes. “Their staff is [comprised of] smart marketing people who really understand my business and deliver results. And, I am confident that those results will continue to come as we continue to grow.”
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