Leads tool guinea pigs
Discussion
Hi all,
Over the past few months my company (a web development agency) has built an internal prospecting web application which we have imaginatively called our 'leads tool'. As you might expect the aim of the tool is to make the process of finding and contacting the 'right' people at the 'right' companies quicker and more efficient. The tool is email marketing focused at the moment, although it does have phone info in it, but these tend just to be generic 'main company switchboard' numbers so are probably of limited use. We've been using it in house for a little while and have managed to find new business through it.
It strikes me that if we've been able to use it to good effect then other businesses could too. It's probably the fantasy of every web development company to build a 'product' so they can scale up without having to scale headcount, I know I definitely find working on these kind of products more interesting than day-to-day client work!
I think that the tool is very functional at the moment, so I'd be keen to get the feedback of a couple of 'guinea pig' users. As the tool has been built with just our own company in mind so far we'd set up a version for other companies by cloning the current server and flushing the data in it and replacing it with new targeted company data. This isn't a massive amount of work, but it does take time. I guess what I'd be looking for is a 'quid pro quo' that you'd get free use of the leads tool, along with free data, and our support in getting up and running, and in return you'd actually use the leads tool for a sustained period of time and give us honest feedback on it.
With the tool the average person can send about 10-20 emails per hour. This may not sound like a lot but unlike firing off massive email lists you can hone in on companies by sector (SIC code), turnover, geographic location etc, and you're finding and contacting the specific person you think is likely to be the decision maker for your business proposition (i.e. MD, marketing director, sales director etc), rather than just whatever random person a bulk leads list has on it.
The trial would probably suit an SME where you have spare resource to do some data entry work, as the leads tool reduces the decision making and email writing work of sales staff a lot. If you have a premium LinkedIn account (e.g. sales navigator) this also helps a lot.
As an example my brother owns a recruitment agency in Swansea. He was looking to open up a new sector of accountancy for his business. Within a couple of hours he had established a list of 120 accountant businesses in Swansea postcodes, contacted the 25 largest by turnover, seen 6 of these emails receive tracking hits and had one positive email response. He's a big proponent of phone based sales so he followed up a lot of the emails with calls, but he found the tool useful for quickly building specific prospect lists and doing some softening up of prospects via email.
Anyway if anyone is interested in giving it a go then let me know and we'll go from there.
Billy
Over the past few months my company (a web development agency) has built an internal prospecting web application which we have imaginatively called our 'leads tool'. As you might expect the aim of the tool is to make the process of finding and contacting the 'right' people at the 'right' companies quicker and more efficient. The tool is email marketing focused at the moment, although it does have phone info in it, but these tend just to be generic 'main company switchboard' numbers so are probably of limited use. We've been using it in house for a little while and have managed to find new business through it.
It strikes me that if we've been able to use it to good effect then other businesses could too. It's probably the fantasy of every web development company to build a 'product' so they can scale up without having to scale headcount, I know I definitely find working on these kind of products more interesting than day-to-day client work!
I think that the tool is very functional at the moment, so I'd be keen to get the feedback of a couple of 'guinea pig' users. As the tool has been built with just our own company in mind so far we'd set up a version for other companies by cloning the current server and flushing the data in it and replacing it with new targeted company data. This isn't a massive amount of work, but it does take time. I guess what I'd be looking for is a 'quid pro quo' that you'd get free use of the leads tool, along with free data, and our support in getting up and running, and in return you'd actually use the leads tool for a sustained period of time and give us honest feedback on it.
With the tool the average person can send about 10-20 emails per hour. This may not sound like a lot but unlike firing off massive email lists you can hone in on companies by sector (SIC code), turnover, geographic location etc, and you're finding and contacting the specific person you think is likely to be the decision maker for your business proposition (i.e. MD, marketing director, sales director etc), rather than just whatever random person a bulk leads list has on it.
The trial would probably suit an SME where you have spare resource to do some data entry work, as the leads tool reduces the decision making and email writing work of sales staff a lot. If you have a premium LinkedIn account (e.g. sales navigator) this also helps a lot.
As an example my brother owns a recruitment agency in Swansea. He was looking to open up a new sector of accountancy for his business. Within a couple of hours he had established a list of 120 accountant businesses in Swansea postcodes, contacted the 25 largest by turnover, seen 6 of these emails receive tracking hits and had one positive email response. He's a big proponent of phone based sales so he followed up a lot of the emails with calls, but he found the tool useful for quickly building specific prospect lists and doing some softening up of prospects via email.
Anyway if anyone is interested in giving it a go then let me know and we'll go from there.
Billy
).OK great will send a couple of PMs.
The initial data in the tool revolves around SIC codes (see: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/standar... which may make it difficult to pull out interior designers / architects / high end developers. There are SIC codes for "Architectural activities", "Development of building projects", "Other building completion and finishing", "Specialised design activities" but it's likely to be a mixed bag I suspect. It's possible to get a steer for which SIC codes to target based off of the SIC codes your ideal clients use by looking them up on Companies House.
Either way I'll explain more in my PM.
Billy
The initial data in the tool revolves around SIC codes (see: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/standar... which may make it difficult to pull out interior designers / architects / high end developers. There are SIC codes for "Architectural activities", "Development of building projects", "Other building completion and finishing", "Specialised design activities" but it's likely to be a mixed bag I suspect. It's possible to get a steer for which SIC codes to target based off of the SIC codes your ideal clients use by looking them up on Companies House.
Either way I'll explain more in my PM.
Billy
Hi everyone,
We're still looking for a couple more guinea pigs for our leads tool if anyone is willing to put in the time? We've created a basic marketing site for it now at https://www.zmleads.com which gives you a bit more detail as to what it is and how it works.
Ideally we're looking for companies who have sales staff as the tool is email focused so benefits from follow up calls to make conversions happen.
Billy
We're still looking for a couple more guinea pigs for our leads tool if anyone is willing to put in the time? We've created a basic marketing site for it now at https://www.zmleads.com which gives you a bit more detail as to what it is and how it works.
Ideally we're looking for companies who have sales staff as the tool is email focused so benefits from follow up calls to make conversions happen.
Billy
Thanks for the offer of volunteering - I'll send you a PM, most likely tomorrow now as the working day has escaped me again!
Also thanks for the SoPro reference. Yes our tool is quite similar to that. I guess the difference is that our tool is an open system so people send their own messages and manage their own prospecting rather than someone sending on their behalf. We've also just completed a machine learning component of the tool that suggests who to contact at a company based on your previous selections for other companies. Looking at the stats on their site I'm slightly dubious that they can achieve a 45% open rate and a 9.7% response rate, but I'll have a leaf through more of their online marketing material.
Billy
Also thanks for the SoPro reference. Yes our tool is quite similar to that. I guess the difference is that our tool is an open system so people send their own messages and manage their own prospecting rather than someone sending on their behalf. We've also just completed a machine learning component of the tool that suggests who to contact at a company based on your previous selections for other companies. Looking at the stats on their site I'm slightly dubious that they can achieve a 45% open rate and a 9.7% response rate, but I'll have a leaf through more of their online marketing material.
Billy
I would be more than happy to be a guinea pig if you still need a few more?
Having trialed Lead Forensics earlier this month and have a demo with SoPro later this week, we should be able to give you some feedback on the competition whilst it’s still fresh in our minds.
We do recruitment advertising primarily within Education, but have been working in other sectors for the past 8 months or so.
PM me if I can be of any help.
Having trialed Lead Forensics earlier this month and have a demo with SoPro later this week, we should be able to give you some feedback on the competition whilst it’s still fresh in our minds.
We do recruitment advertising primarily within Education, but have been working in other sectors for the past 8 months or so.
PM me if I can be of any help.
Gassing Station | Business | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff