Since VSA focuses on serving clients with particularly high-end or complex offerings, many of the industries we excel in—such as healthcare, education, and manufacturing—are notoriously challenging. From time to time, we encounter a nut that even we don’t quite know how to crack.
When this happens, it’s usually because we’re calling into markets or industries that are previously unknown territory. We bear down, grit our teeth, and thanks to the collaborative client relationships are almost always able to find a successful formula.
Often, the breakthrough comes when we focus on crafting a more specific message to a more narrowly-defined audience. Our work with one current client provides a perfect example of this.
The challenge
In this client’s industry, vendors are typically differentiated by the quality of the services they provide, not the actual type of service. This means that it’s particularly difficult to communicate the value of any individual vendor’s offerings on a quick, 30-second cold call.
After all, anyone can claim to be the best at what they do; but without specific evidence, prospects will be unlikely to believe it. From our previous work with similar companies, VSA knew how difficult communicating this client’s value was likely to be.
Furthermore, this client wanted to appeal to several, disparate markets at once, including finance, energy, and the nonprofit sector. While it was tempting to try and appeal to all of those markets with the same message, VSA knew that this approach could backfire—it could easily result in generic conversations which, in attempting to appeal to everyone, would wind up appealing to no one at all.
We wasted no time in sharing these concerns with our client. From the get-go, both teams were committed to finding a better way.
The response
VSA and this client worked together to develop separate scripts for each market we were calling into. In each case, we emphasized the client’s deep knowledge of that particular industry. We also decided to aim high and target specific, C-level executives, rather than manager or director-level Decision Makers who might be more willing to pass the buck.
When we reached these executives, we decided, we’d use peer-to-peer language that would invite them to compare notes about emerging trends in the industry. In theory, at least, this would re-emphasize our client’s specialized focus and generate more interest in taking an appointment. When launch day came, we were excited to try out this new approach. Still, we didn’t know quite what to expect.
The results
Often, it takes a few weeks’ worth of calling for any program to gain traction and start consistently producing results. VSA and our client were shocked, therefore, when our BDRs managed to surpass their weekly goal for number of appointments set within the first two days of calling.
We’ve never looked back, and to this day the program has kept right on producing. Our client is happy, our team is motivated, and it’s validating to have finally cracked the code.
Conclusion
The quality of a lead generation partnership is just as often about both partners’ willingness to dig in and solve a difficult challenge as it is about getting immediate results. Sometimes—as was the case with this client—it’s possible to achieve both.
Because both parties entered this partnership with a collaborative mindset, VSA had the opportunity to stick with a previously-challenging market and ultimately devise a way to solve it. Our client was able to provide key industry insights that made this possible—and now, they’re reaping outstanding results.
As this example shows, persistence, partnership, and a dash of creative thinking are the keys to lead gen success. If you’ve encountered any particular challenges in your market, we’d love to hear about them. They might even be issues that we can help your team overcome.