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Bryan Bumgardner was frustrated with three things as he was leading the Growth Marketing team at Northbeam:
(a) the way leads were getting qualified through their basic lead gen form,
(b) how these leads were distributed amongst the sales team, and
(c) the email back and forth it took to schedule a meeting.
Too much friction. Too much frenzy.
Bryan thought the small, scrappy team had reached a point where it was time to get a pipeline conversion tool. Here’s what he was hoping it would solve:
- There were lapses and gaps in their routing logic and it just did not work. This was mainly because distributing high-volume leads across sales teams based on their complicated logic was challenging. (They had to keep it fair to the reps and also ensure that the right leads were matched with the right sales teams/reps.)
- The aesthetics of their existing booking page was another crucial area that reflected their brand experience. They needed the ability to create beautiful bespoke landing pages that looked polished and organized across all areas as that’s the high level of quality their customers were expecting.
- A tool where he did not have to dictate to the sales teams how to qualify/route their leads. Especially when the sales reps and AEs are constantly shifting and taking on different categories. They wanted the ability to be flexible and to adjust quickly and fairly.
- It was essential they had all their meeting data in one place, so everyone could see what was happening and who/how the lead was moving down the pipeline. This intangible centralization of the meetings was really critical for their sales leads to track pipeline activity.
- And finally, they had to speed up their sales cycle and bring down the time taken to book a discovery call. Only then could they speed up the demo, onboarding, closing, and everything that followed.
The point was that they were looking for not just the functionality of a calendar tool but for a pipeline conversions tool with high customization possibility, where they would not have to reassign leads or potentially shuffle around calendar invites.
Here’s a glimpse into Northbeam’s demo booking process before RevenueHero:
This was clearly not working out for the Northbeam team as they were experiencing a lot of drop-offs before their prospects, mostly high-level executives, even got to the discovery call. It was only natural with the constant email back and forth.
Plus, it also created a long lag between the demo and discovery, which meant their sales cycle was now two or three weeks longer than it already was.
Bryan knew he had to find a solution soon for this fixer-upper situation. It was mission-critical he find a tool that lets prospects book meetings instantly on their website while also being able to handle their complex routing needs. Only then could they reduce their sales cycle and push their revenue up faster.
One too many solutions that were a mismatch
So they did what any other marketer would have done - evaluated and tried the well-known solutions in the market. In Bryan’s case, it was Calendly, Chili Piper, and HubSpot Meetings.
Here are the major downsides each of them had:
- Calendly’s meeting scheduler didn't have the lead routing functionality they wanted that worked well with their CRM.
- HubSpot Meetings was just not aesthetic, had limited customization options, was glitchy on their website, and made it extremely challenging to do complex lead routing.
- Chili Piper turned out to be too expensive for their small but heavily booked team. Especially because they needed complex functionality and a seamless sync with their HubSpot CRM.
With all the other tools they tried or evaluated, pricing was a major issue. It was too exorbitant for a team like them who is doing large numbers. On the other hand, affordable solutions were too simple/basic for their complex needs.
Bryan and his team needed a solution that would meet them in the middle and would also scale with them as a team. And RevenueHero sat in that sweet spot. It ticked all his boxes of functionality, customization, speed, ease of onboarding reps/AEs, and pricing.
What made it work
RevenueHero transformed the inbound demo conversion process for Northbeam and helped them 2X their inbound qualified meeting conversions. Moreover, they were able to reduce their sales cycles by multiple weeks and saw a 90% shorter implementation time.
“As we increase the complexity of our lead routing, I know that RevenueHero is going to be able to scale with us and solve those problems with us at a predictable price point. I think it's the right tool for any modern SaaS brand with a forward-thinking sales team, whose priorities, market positions, and client bases are constantly shifting. I would absolutely recommend it to anybody running any sort of sales team that's trying to be modern, focused, and very strategic in how they engage with their prospects.”
- Bryan Bumgardner, Director of Growth Marketing, Northbeam
Here are the key processes and systems that Bryan set in place along with the team at RevenueHero to streamline and simplify their demo process.
🔑 Add the instant scheduler to help prospects book a demo directly on Northbeam’s website in a way that is intuitive, easy, loads very quickly, and is optimized for both mobile and desktop.
🔑 Create qualifying and distribution rules to match Northbeam’s complex routing logic. And help instantly qualify and distribute leads to the right rep suited to talk to them.
🔑 Integrate seamlessly with their existing tech stack, especially HubSpot CRM. This enables them to get new and existing meeting activities automatically updated in their CRM as well as pull data from their CRM and use that for lead routing
🔑 Set up personal meeting links for their reps and customize settings like meeting buffers and weightage assigned to each rep.
🔑 Use the high level of personalization available in terms of having AEs’ pictures, their calendars, and specific messaging from each AE depending on the client tier. As well as having the meeting booking widget on their landing pages match their brand style and aesthetics.
For me, the biggest thing was shortening the sales cycle. And I know that you could hypothetically do that with any other calendar tool. But with RevenueHero, I can actually have a shorter sales cycle at a really high level of complexity. It's like all the logic happens at the point of signup, which means that there are no problems for my sales team. They just look at their calendars and are ready to go.
- Bryan Bumgardner, Director of Growth Marketing, Northbeam
Why the Northbeam team loves RevenueHero a whole lot more
Besides the most evident capabilities of instant qualifying, routing, and scheduling that RevenueHero offers, there are a few distinct features that can make a big difference to the inbound process. Just like it did for the team at Northbeam.
#1 Onboarding new reps to the tool
This was very critical to a team as small as Bryan’s that’s dealing with huge volumes of leads. He could quickly set up accounts for new reps/AEs in minutes and put them straight into the round-robin.
#2 Feature releases
The Northbeam was constantly on the lookout for more ways to improve and optimize its inbound process. And at times, that required capabilities that did not exist in the product. That being said, it only took a quick discussion with the RevenueHero team and before they knew it, the feature was designed, developed, and released. The pace at which features are released and the level of support they get for this is something Bryan and his team really love.
#3 Flexibility & customization
Bryan has a sales team that’s very demanding, just like any other sales team out there. They have a lot of requests where either meeting settings or routing logic needs to be changed. And it needs to be done instantly. He does not have the luxury of time or developer assistance. As an operator, no matter what strange ask he gets from the sales team, he knows he doesn’t have to do any strange logic to make it happen.
#4 Customer support
To support the Northbeam team, there is a live Slack channel with members from both teams to help answer questions immediately right from queries to feature development support. For Bryan and his growing sales team, being able to get instant responses to any queries they had was important.
According to Bryan, “The support we've had from RevenueHero has been above and beyond any SaaS tool that I've used ever in terms of the speed, the clarity, and the answers.”
