Save up to 44% in costs by switching to BNZSA, powered by Anteriad’s new SDR-Sales-as-a-Service model.

First, we had the pandemic. Second, we had the great resignation and quietly quitting and more recently we have seen swathes of layoffs in the Tech Industry that started in Q4 last year and has added another 170K to the disturbing tally in Q1 this year, according to Layoffs.fyi

Unfortunately, this trend looks likely to continue in 2023 as the economy worsens through inflation, the fall in dominance of the petro-dollar[2] and other geopolitical factors that are putting unprecedented strains on energy bills, supply chains and the overall cost of living.

These above factors have contributed greatly to the number of vacancies for SDRs and BDRs in company sales forces or removal of roles for companies that need to downsize. This in turn is putting a lot of pressure on incumbent teams that are picking up the extra work left by vacating colleagues. Burn out across the board, is rife.

In fact, many industry watchers have noted in the last couple of years, sales staff are facing higher levels of burnout than ever before. In part due to high pressure to reach targets in an unpredictable market, this has led to voluntary sales departures reaching 67% in recent years. This causes an additional level of uncertainty when it comes to staff retention and return on the investment when sourcing talent. 

And prospective employees and employers know this, with strong candidates currently having up to five offers from rival companies in their back pocket to strike the best deal.

But paying over the odds for a candidate that doesn’t work out after their three-month probation can be even more costly for companies and the process of recruiting a replacement could take a further few months leaving the company without revenue or resource for a potential six months or more.

According to career planning site Zappia, the average cost of a bad hire is $14,900, or 30% of the hire’s yearly salary.  

Even when a candidate looks likely to fit the bill, the overall package offered to a) beat the competition b) incentive the candidate such as points in the business, health membership, gym membership and the other hygiene factors like hybrid work- all add to the overall oncosts of that FTE. And we haven’t even mentioned the costs of software licences, IT equipment for that person to do their work.

BDR and SDR Sales-as-a-Service

For all of the above reasons, BNZSA has introduced its Revenue or SDR-Sales-as-Service Model (SDR-SaaS) to help companies to maintain healthy resourcing levels to facilitate pipeline acceleration, backfill vacancies with temporary or longer term non-full-time employees, and to manage the entire sales process and contribute to a sales number and target.

Soft launched in late 2022, SDR-SaaS model builds on BNZSA’s successful time based BDR model, where customers are billed on the time of the agent rather than a traditional cost-per-lead (CPL) basis.

Based on customer feedback, the BDR model was introduced to help our clients back fill existing teams due to unfilled vacancies or more cost-effective way to maintain staffing levels or to land and expand in new territories, thanks to BNZSA’s 26 native language speaking capabilities.

With a BDR approach, BNZSA reps either calling from BNZSA on behalf of the client or as a white label service, can tailor each conversation to the account or individual and engage prospects in a conversation about their business, growth plans, challenges, and opportunities.

Each prospect is nurtured and ‘account managed’ so that even if they are not ready for a sales conversation at the time of call, we have an open door with them with consent and can re-engage at the right time.

When sales ready prospects are identified from nurtured tracks, they are invited to a three-way meeting called a Warm HandoverTM (WHO) with our client’s sales rep. 

Based on BNZSA’s internal research, conversion rates are up to 300% higher using the WHO approach compared with a traditional BANT / appointment booking.

As well as identifying potentially sales ready opportunities, BDR agents also make an average of 80-100 calls a day; send out 15-25 daily emails and 20-30 LinkedIN interactions and can perform other tasks such as verify leads that might have been generated via social media, for example. In all 20 days a month are dedicated to the client team.

Originally, many of our clients felt that supplementing existing teams with BNZSA BDRs would be a temporary measure until the economy picked up after Covid, but due to other geopolitical factors such as the energy crisis and resulting inflation, many of our clients were not only retaining and expanding levels of BDRs they were also asking if these BDRs could play an even greater role as a fully fledged SDR resource that can not only find sales ready leads, but also close them too! We said yes and the SDR-as-a-Service model was born with all the same benefits of a BDR but also revenue to agreed targets.

Total cost of ownership of sales resources

Using recruitment site Glassdoor data as a benchmark, we compared not just the basic salaries and OTE earnings with using our BDR and SDR agents as a service, but also calculated the total cost of ownership of overall compensation with all the oncosts associated with hiring a FTE BDR and SDR. The savings we calculated were significant.

First, we looked at a number of agency level jobs for account managers, that might be deployed in generating sales pipelines, we found an average salary from a number of posts for an entry level account manager role. Using the same methodology, we did the same for an enterprise sales resource at large IT software and hardware company and also for a large cloud supplier. We logged the average salary between a few companies. We also logged either the bonus or OTE commission level to the basic salary to arrive at a total for compensation compared with engaging with a BNZSA BDR or SDR.

Differents graphics about true cost of ownership of SDR

In terms of oncost assumptions:

For other hygiene considerations, we assumed that in order to attract the best candidates they would need to offer:

On top of these oncosts there are the actual equipment costs and software licences needed for the FTE to be able to perform their assigned duties such as physical IT hardware, laptops and phones and the various per seat licenses that come with accessing CRM systems and sales and data tools such as LinkedIn.

In addition to the cost savings, the SDR-SaaS representative is also tasked with a revenue number that doesn’t kick in until after three months, so not only are there significant cost savings versus hiring an FTE, the SDR that can also receive specific training by the client can also contribute to the overall number and hopefully allow the client to ride the current storm and come out stronger on the other side.

BNZSA Spotlight:

True cost of ownership of an FTE: 

  1. Compensation: Between €70-200K
  2. Equipment: circa €30K depending on equipment and licenses
  3. Benefits: from €30K including mandatory pension scheme, paid holiday and sick leave

BDR-as-a-Service:  

BNZSA BDRs work on a time-based model, where the client typically pays for 20 days a month depending on their needs. The use of BNZSA’s data services is included in the BDRs time-based fee at no extra cost. As the BDR works in a waterfall model, this allows for a deeper engagement with prospects. 

The BDR can be trained by the client in the unique selling points of the product or service, understand who an ideal customer is and can work with the client on a script to ensure brand protection and management.   

SDR Sales-as-a-Service:  

Like the BDR-as-a-service model, the SDR- As-A-Service” model provides an SDR who is effectively a full-time sales resource for the client. Essentially it is a “sales-as-a-service” offering, with a fixed fee and commission pricing structure.   

The key difference between the BDR and SDR models is that the SDR handles the entire sales cycle, generating closed sales and revenue with an agreed commission structure to create a strategic partnership.  

Total cost of ownership of BNZSA BDR or SDR:

Unlike the case of an FTE, by using BDR or SDR “Sales-as-a-Service”, companies can eliminate the costs associated with equipment and benefits for sales staff and minimise the risk of a “bad hire”, generating up 44% more ROI.

Additional reporting by Sinéad Conboy.

[1] Costs compared to a Full Time, Employee (FTE)

[2] Until recently oil was priced and bought exclusively in US dollars having a positive effect to that currency and subsequent economy.

Identify, engage and close key accounts with BNZSA's Opportunity Finder

It’s a no brainer that sales teams are always going to look for ways to maximise their MQL and SQLs to closed won conversion rates. And as we face further economic uncertainty, it is even more vital for sales and marketing teams to ensure today’s budgets that are heavily scrutinised are invested wisely to secure a solid ROI.  

Despite being a key component for sales pipelines for many years, lead generation is often not as efficient as it could be, leading to a lot of waste. Companies handle leads from multiple agencies which are not accurately qualified. This results in up to 98.5% of pipeline being rejected by sales because it’s not a tangible opportunity.

Optimising your pipeline generation and activation requires applying various strategies along the sales funnel in order to fully engage and convert prospects to opportunities effectively.

This can be hard to get right at every step. It requires sales and marketing teams to firstly be aligned, to have access to quality data, relevant contacts, effective content, and actionable insights. It also often means combining data from various sources.  

Sales and marketing teams are often inundated with all the latest technologies, platforms, and services to facilitate and automate lead generation. Technographic and firmographic segmentation provides top of the funnel insights, but this data is often disjointed or lacks clear insights to aid conversion into actual opportunities. While this data can be valuable, it lacks context and opportunity defining detail.

One key issue is that “lead” is an all-encompassing term that can include everything from a simple opt-in to a Sales Qualified Lead, but using the term lead itself does not necessarily tell you whether it is likely to close or not.

There is a clear gap in the market for a solution that provides insights for an efficient whole funnel solution which maximises pipeline generation, transforming leads to opportunities. To make this a reality, it is necessary to combine data, digital and human interaction to identify credible and qualified opportunities.

BNZSA’s Opportunity Finder

Opportunity Finder by BNZSA is a fully integrated solution, combining some of the most advanced lead generation tools. It is designed to increase sales and marketing effectiveness as we noticed a gap in the market for an end-to-end lead generation engine that converts to closed revenue delivering quantifiable ROI.

Combining data and digital engagement with human outreach, Opportunity Finder is the most effective toolbox to identify real revenue-generation opportunities that have the best possible chance to close.

It provides insights which maximises the impact of campaigns and furthers our understanding of the market and the signals BNZSA is receiving from prospects. This allows companies to supercharge go-to-market strategies and accelerate pipeline faster.

Opportunity Finder is comprised of five key pillars to make sure each lead will move through the sales funnel. Rigorous processes are put into place to efficiently engage, qualify, and most importantly convert leads to closed won opportunities.

Enrich

Build your universe by enhancing your database with as much key information as possible about your target accounts.

Find

Find the right decision makers, identifying buying committees, and strategize how to best land your messaging.

Ignite

Combining intent data with first touch - digital and telemarketing engagement - to filter and segment the audience.

Engage

Deploying the right engagement strategies across the digital and telemarketing toolbelt to connect with decision makers.

Close

Using highly skilled BDRs/SDRs and advanced digital nurture to close the deal or deliver SQLs using our Warm HandoverTM and Sales-as-a-service processes.

Opportunity Finder - A Case Study

BNZSA recently launched an Opportunity Finder for a client – an industry leading recruitment software provider. The objective of the campaign was to generate 100 qualified opportunities and 150 MQLs for the client.

Enrich:

BNZSA’s Data and Decision Science teams combined first and third-party data to enrich the database with information intent data about 4,500 companies. We added firmographics, technographics, key market insights and anything additional that might inform their buying behaviours.

Find:

BNZSA’s team of Data Researchers identified 6,000 contacts that comprised of the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) from the 4,500 companies. This included various buying influencers as well as the key decision makers.

Ignite:

BNZSA then launched a telemarketing campaign as a first touch to gather consented MQLs and Opt-ins.

Engage:

The consented contacts were passed to the digital marketing team for digital follow-up with email nurturing.

BNZSA implemented two separate email marketing strategies:
1. To nurture MQLs/Opt-ins to try convert to a scheduled meeting
2. To keep converted prospects interested by sending a meeting reminder and additional relevant content before the meeting.

As well as email nurturing, we created a microsite in the local language which acted as a key content hub to educate the prospects and push them through the funnel for conversion. BNZSA was able to drive traffic to this landing page and track the prospects’ behaviour and understand their areas of interest.

The nurtured contacts were then followed up via telephone outreach by BNZSA BDRs with the aim of booking meetings with additional prospects. Once the meeting was booked, the contact was sent custom content and meeting reminders, which lead to a higher meeting attendance rate.

Our BDRs were also able to gain additional contextual insights into purchasing cycles and buying committees through their conversations with decision makers.

Close:

The meetings that were scheduled were executed using BNZSA’s Warm HandoverTM process – a three-way call between BNZSA’s BDR, the prospect and a sales rep from the client.

Results:

Switch to a Hybrid BDR and SDR "Sales As-A Service” model for more sustainable sales pipeline and faster returns on marketing investment in 2023

By Paul Briggs, Director of Global Corporate Development 

To hire and retain the best talent in the future it will not just be about overall compensation, it will also have to address growing themes of work /life balance, remote and flexible working, and other hygiene factors.  

Ultimately, these trends may force hiring managers and chief strategy officers (CSOs) to completely rethink how they hire, manage and workplaces and employees, especially when more and more companies are looking to adopt a 4-day week for staff without reducing current pay. 

Naturally, the main concern is how to adopt to these new working trends without affecting pipeline and ultimately revenue targets, especially when analyst Forrester notes that traditional “leads-based “contributions have declined in terms of contribution to overall revenue results performance. 

But instead of hoping that short-term re-orgs, layoffs and downsizing fixed assets will solve the current and future challenges companies are facing, many industry commentators are suggesting that the companies that will ride the wave of recession and post pandemic pain points will be those that are planning to move to a distributed enterprise where not only will IT and business solutions be provided “As-A-Service,” human resources, will be too! 

Time-based models for supporting IT vendors and channel partners are increasingly being sought after as new hybrid business models evolve. By engaging with well trained and highly specialised individuals, companies can either back-fill existing vacancies, generate new high-quality opportunities or provide validation or nurturing support for existing opportunities. 

BNZSA is one such company that has evolved its business model to provide its clients time-based full-time BDRs and SDRs “ Sales as-a-service”. These resources work with clients in a number of ways for opportunity and closed won sales generation, in addition to its traditional CPL-based content syndication offering. 

BDR-as-a-service: Time based Model 

By engaging with a BNZSA BDR in a time-based model, clients only pay for the time of that BDR which is usually 20 days a month. The BDR can either use client data such as Target Account Lists to prospect from. These lists can be validated and enriched by BNZSA’s Decision Science and Data science teams or BNZSA’s own mixture of 1st party, 3rd party and intent data to create custom databases and audience segments.  

The use of BNZSA’s data services is included in the BDRs time-based fee at no extra cost. As the BDR works in a waterfall model, this allows for a deeper engagement with prospects. As well as producing 12-15 Warm HandoversTM per month, a BDRs also has approximately 5-15 interactions with decision makers on a daily basis generating: 

Without recruitment fees to hire, or ongoing costs such as holiday and sick pay, the BDR can be trained by the client in the unique selling points of the product or service, understand who an ideal customer is and can work with the client on a script to ensure brand protection and management.  

In some cases, the BDR can also use a client’s email address and call on behalf of the client. With regular reporting and calls, the progress and pipeline of the BDR can be managed by the client and can complement existing internal teams rather than compete with them.  

As well as backfilling resources and generating opportunities, BDRs can also be utilised to validate and recycle opportunities that have been generated by social media or digital content syndication activity.  These opportunities may have either stalled or have been discarded because there is either too much volume or not enough time/resources to nurture the prospects into a more sales ready status. 

As BNZSA’s BDRs have native speaking support for 26 languages, companies that are looking to land and expand in new territories can also avail of instant support in these regions, which is also attractive for companies that are looking to IPO.  

As BDRs can be throttled up or throttled back, clients can add additional resources or scale back depending on clients’ requirements, leaving internal and channel teams to concentrate on existing customer needs as well as finding new ones. 

SDR-”Sales-As-A-Service" model 

Similar to the BDR-as-a-service model, BNZSA has recently introduced a hybrid SDR- As-A-Service" model, where the SDR is effectively a full-time sales resource for the client. Essentially it is a “sales-as-a-service” offering, with a fixed fee and commission pricing structure.  

Like the BDR model, the client only pays for the days the SDR works, has a client email, and calls on behalf of the client. However, the key difference between the two is that the SDR handles the entire sales cycle and is responsible for generating closed sales and revenue where the client agrees a commission structure to create a strategic partnership.  

Like an FTE sales resource, the SDR handles PO, payments and all details required to enter a contract. Between the client and BNZSA, the SDR is incentivised for bigger value, high volume sales and facilitates a deeper nurture of the opportunity through the whole funnel. As well as access to BNZSA’s data and decision science team, the SDR fixed fee also includes additional sales support and resources such as sales managers and project managers.  

Like an FTE sales resource, BNZSA’s SDR will, in concert with the client’s own model, earn commission on closed won sales, but unlike many internal FTEs not in the first three months of engagement if there are no closed won sales. And due to BNZSA’s industrialised internal training programmes, there is a shorter ramp up time to get SDRs up to speed and closing sales, but like the above BDR model, there are not the extra costs in recruitment fees, training, holiday pay, sick pay, pensions, technology, software licence fees or tax.  

And like the BDR model, BNZSA’s SDRs can support 26 languages with native speakers that allows clients to instantly ramp up in new territories, achieve a lower cost of sale and see quick, sustainable, and measurable ROI to investment.  

In short, BNZSA wants to offer its clients a strategic partnership that works because its client’s success is BNZSA’s success. 

BNZSA’s Lead Recyclr: Re-engage sales pipeline and focus on high value opportunities

The challenge faced by sales teams when trying to optimise resources to maximise pipeline 

According to our clients, on average only 1.5% of leads will eventually close, meaning 98.5% of leads are rejected by sales teams at some point along the sales pipeline. But what can cause a lead to drop from the pipeline? Leads can be lost from a sales funnel for a variety of reasons such as:

Although these leads drop out of the pipeline, it does not mean that they are a lost sales opportunity. In most cases, they simply need more nurture throughout the pipeline. Not only will this nurture allow sales teams to identify when a lead is sales ready, it will also provide a deeper understanding of why the lead was closed in the first instance, as well as key insights into buying committees and purchasing cycles which can be used to tailor their future outreach.  

However, BDRs and sales teams often do not have the resources that allow them to nurture or regularly revisit discarded leads to re-engage with them. In-house sales teams are already facing a mounting level of burnout and adding the task of re-engaging with previously discarded leads to workloads will only further amplify this pressure.

To cope with the volume of prospects that need to be processed, sales and marketing teams at vendors often outsource this work to third-party agencies. However, to limit potential brand damage and to help ensure prospects are nurtured up in the right way, picking a specialist agency is a crucial part of the process. To be efficiently nurtured in order to be converted, prospects must be followed up by highly trained and qualified BDRs who intimately understand the problems faced by the prospect and how to appropriately align them with the client’s product or service.   

BNZSA’s Lead Recyclr: Lead Recycling Solution

BNZSA’s Lead Recycling process is driven by its highly trained and specialist BDRs, that are presented to clients as ‘Virtual Teams’. Clients provide BNZSA with a database of leads which have been deemed a lost opportunity at different stages of the pipeline – these leads are then picked up by BNZSA’s BDRs with the express objective of re-engaging the prospect, nurturing them, and pushing them through the sales funnel until they are eventually sales ready.

The leads are analysed using our Decision Science Practice and our InTNT intent data activator, that uses intent data and analytics to determine which leads are more likely to be in market at that time. This will allow the leads to be prioritised for follow up by our agents.

Agents will work to connect with each prospect over the phone, which allow them to determine what obstacles the prospect encountered originally and why they were not considered a viable opportunity at the time. For example, there was an established interest but not in the timeframe required to be qualified as a sales accepted lead (SAL)

By re-engaging the lead, BNZSA BDRs will be able to bring the lead back into the pipeline. Although not all will be sales ready, the nature of BNZSA’s approach, the quality conversations its BDRs have with IT decision makers will help to enrich the database and provide quality insights into buying cycles and buying committees.

Also, by allowing a specialist agency such as BNZSA to concentrate on reviving, nurturing and enriching top of the funnel leads to more ready for follow up with a product specialist or more sales accepted lead, existing client BDR teams can concentrate on opportunities that are perhaps more complex, lucrative and more importantly closer to converting to closed won.

Results:

On average we are able to re-engage and bring 56% of recycled leads back into the funnel. This engagement allows our clients to gain insight into the needs of their prospects and identify why these leads were originally considered a lost opportunity.

Of these re-engaged leads, we are typically able to convert 10-15% of them from a closed opportunity to a sales ready lead, increasing pipeline substantially and re-claiming a vast amount of revenue which otherwise would have been lost.  

Additionally, the conversations held between our BDRs and Decision Makers means we can provide deeper and more comprehensive insights into approximately 60% of the contacts which were not converted. These conversations allow our BDRs to enrich our client’s database with crucial information concerning intent buying signals, continued interest in product or service, need for product or service and buying committees.  

BNZSA’s Lead Recyclr – A Case Study

BNZSA recently completed a lead qualification campaign in the US market for an existing blue chip IT client.

Originally, we had undertaken a lead generation campaign for the same client, producing MQLs and organising telephone appointments for follow up. These leads were then transferred to another third-party agency for follow up.

However, the second agency were not thorough enough in their follow up leading to many of the opportunities we had identified were closed negative. This equated to a lost pipeline worth millions of dollars in revenue for our client.  

But we were confident in the quality of our work, so we took it upon ourselves to implement BNZSA protocols to recycle and revive these leads and complete the follow up ourselves.

We received 62 leads which the second agency had closed negative to investigate why they were closed, with the aim of re-opening the opportunity and re-claiming revenue for our client.

We were able to deliver the following:

BNZSA Spotlight:

Sales teams can often be daunted by the number of old leads that they have that can be recycled, even the best sales teams will struggle to allocate resources to this this activity on top of their regular outreach to new leads. But leads are expensive and marketing budgets need to be spent efficiently.

Leads that have been prematurely closed negative, for whatever reason, can equate to millions in lost potential revenue for a company.

BNZSA’s Lead Recyclr provides the resources sales teams need to recycle old leads and re-engage sales pipeline, so they can concentrate on what they do best – closing deals. Our Virtual Teams of BDRs provide support to in-house sales teams to re-activate leads, bring them back into the funnel and re-claim lost revenue.

Our approach not only generates high quality sales ready leads, but also enriches sales pipelines with detailed insights and understanding of why leads are being closed in the first place, providing a benchmark to analyse future lead generation campaigns.

BNZSA's Lead Verifyr - make your pipeline work harder

The challenge faced by sales and marketing teams

Marketing teams work hard to produce a healthy pipeline of leads for sales teams to nurture. They commission lead gen services from a range of agencies who are able to generate simple opt-ins through to MQLs, with a typical cost of €50-60. However, with thousands of leads coming through monthly and very short timeframes to push these through the pipeline, sales teams can only touch a very small percentage of the pool.

We’ve heard from clients that just 1.5% of this pipeline eventually closes. This means that a marketing spend worth potentially millions of euro is going to waste, simply because the sales teams don’t have the resources to follow up on everything that is delivered.

For a marketing team requesting 20,000 MQLs globally, this would be a total marketing spend of more than €1 million. If we take the 1.5% figure from above, this would equal just 300 converted leads. On that basis, the cost per conversion would be more than €3000, without taking the additional nurture cost of the work done by the sales team into account.  

But why is this happening? Due to time pressure, sales reps likely reach for the best qualified leads with reliable contact information, leaving the rest of the pipeline to one side.

This is completely understandable – our lead qualification team have found that just 15-30% of contacts could be reached on the first attempt and in fact 40-50% took 5+ attempts. Even worse, around 10% of the pipeline turns out to have incorrect phone numbers so cannot be reached at all. Busy sales teams under pressure to meet targets simply don’t have the time or resources to work these contacts.

However, this doesn’t mean that 98.5% of the pipeline is invalid. Lead gen partners have identified a universe that can be activated – the challenge is how to do this.

Our Lead Qualification Process

BNZSA’s lead qualification program picks up all leads that were rejected by sales in the first screening – our clients tell us that this can be up to 98.5% of the pipeline.

Image with percent about lead verifyr

Our Virtual Teams of highly trained BDRs have one single objective: to drive the leads to the next stage of the funnel up until they are ready for sales.

They will work to engage every single contact and organise them into categories based on their contactability and level of engagement. Where contact information is unreliable or out of date, our data team will work to enrich the database and then the agents will follow up and validate the information. Where they are missing information, they will conduct their own desk research to understand how to navigate the target companies and which contacts should be engaged.

Then the BDRs will explore the topics with the prospects in further detail in order to push them along the funnel. If appropriate, we will introduce them into our email nurture tracks to keep them activated with custom content until they are ready for further engagement. Our lead scoring mechanism means we can accelerate leads for follow up if the intent signals are strong.

If the lead is not ready, our BDRs will at least capture market insights like number of users, buying cycles, key decision makers etc.

This means that we’re able to provide more detailed insights into the pipeline that enable your team to prioritise and focus on closing the warmest leads whilst ensuring that they’ll have more coming through for the following quarters. 

The results

Typically, we are able to move around 15% of those reached on the phone along the funnel, warming them up for the next phase of engagement by the client’s sales team. This is a huge improvement on the 1.5% that are sifted through by sales, and already increases the pipeline dramatically.

Furthermore, we can add additional insight to around 60% of the contacts which means that digital teams can appropriately stream them into marketing automation tracks to receive the required nurture.

We’re also able to enrich the 5-10% of the database that sales teams flagged as uncontactable with email addresses, phone numbers or updated employment information so they can be used for future activity.

BNZSA's Lead Qualification Engine - A Case Study

We recently conducted an EMEA wide lead qualification for a client in 7 languages. Our client was receiving up to 10,000 leads per month through content syndication. We were invited to conduct some initial qualification and found the following:

We were able to help the client secure better value for money from their content syndication programme in the following ways:

Conclusion

In conclusion, BNZSA’s lead qualification engine results in better quality MQLs and SQLs which are more likely to engage and enter the sales funnel.

By discounting leads that are not immediately identifiable as a tangible opportunity, sales teams are losing a large part of their potential pipeline. Not every lead generated is immediately going to be a Sales Qualified Lead, but that doesn’t mean that they should be discounted as a revenue-generating opportunity for the future.

Not only is this a waste of potential in itself, but it also compounds since marketing often ends up paying multiple times for the same leads to be generated at a later date since they still sit within the relevant campaign targeting.

Our approach keeps leads in the system to activate them when they do have a concrete project and budget in place. Gradually warming and engaging leads to push them through the sales funnel will help you keep the pipeline active and help you close more deals.

BNZSA Maintains Hypergrowth Trajectory Recording 274 Percent Year-On-Year Revenue Uptick in Q2 and 176 Percent Growth Year-to-Date

Headcount Increased by 163 in Q2 to Enable Significant New Business Delivery and Client Enrichment

Leading European B2B IT sales and marketing agency, BNZSA, confirmed that it is in a phase of hypergrowth by delivering 274 percent year-on-year revenue growth in Q2 2021, and booking 176 percent year-to-date growth. BNZSA forecasts 300 percent annual revenue growth by year-end.

Key Q2 milestones included:

BNZSA is one of Europe’s largest B2B marketing agencies and specialises in tele-based demand generation. It is expert in delivering qualified, sales-ready leads to many of the world’s leading technology brands, deploying campaigns globally in 16 native languages. BNZSA has more than 100 clients, which include Acer, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Intel, Juniper Networks, Oracle, Samsung and SAP.

“Coming off the back of a record-breaking 2020, we planned for 2021 to be a year of hypergrowth,” said Brahim Samhoud, BNZSA’s CEO and Founder. “By January a lot of meticulous planning had been done – in business development, client services, data, IT and HR – to ensure that we are able to effortlessly scale-up throughout the year and meet unprecedented client demand.

“The phenomenal performance in the first half of the year demonstrates the unique value BNZSA brings to the B2B IT lead generation marketplace. It also indicates that demand for enterprise hardware and software solutions is very strong globally. We are seeing businesses aggressively investing in their infrastructures to enable their teams to operate effectively from wherever, and to ramp-up their agility in responding to customer needs.”

BNZSA’s teams are able to physically qualify and route a lead within hours of it being generated to provide client-side sales reps with pipelines that have a 70 percent led-to-conversion rate.

“BNZSA is built on four core values – people, highest quality, extra mile and changing the industry,” Brahim added. “Firstly, our business is all about people and the relationships we build with clients and their prospects. We’re obsessed with the quality of the information we hold, how we use it and the insights it brings to client programmes – as well as the quality service we deliver daily. Going the extra mile is not a nice to have, it’s how we operate. Bring all of this together and we’re changing the industry by default.”

Arnaud Burel, Channel & Distribution Manager France/North Africa at leading wireless edge solutions provider, Cradlepoint, concluded, “What’s really different about BNZSA is that they don’t just deliver leads, they deliver meetings – and meetings that convert. That is truly unique. It means that my team is able to focus on nurturing the great relationship that BNZSA’s agents have already developed. It shortens the sales cycle and enriches opportunities.”

BNZSA in Numbers

About BNZSA

BNZSA is a leading EMEA marketing agency specialising in tele-based demand generation with a team of more than 300 who are experts in delivering qualified, sales-ready leads. It was established in 2013 and has grown rapidly over eight years. The company is based in Madrid, Spain, and has offices in the UK, France and Morocco. It invests heavily in its agents who are all native language speakers and deliver client campaigns in 16 languages globally. In addition to the uniquely human and personal dimension of the company, BNZSA is a leader in the application of technology to underpin its value proposition. It built its own bespoke CRM platform, and is a pioneer in the use of AI, NLP and ML technologies.

Game Changing Warm Handover Delivers a 70 Percent Lead-to-Conversion Rate to Drive Sales Success for B2B Tech Clients

BNZSA’s Agents Host 20,000 Warm Handover Calls a Year to Deliver $1.5 Billion Pipeline Opportunities for Clients

Madrid, Spain, 24 June 2021 – BNZSA delivers a ‘Warm Handover’ process – unique in the market – that creates a lead-to-conversion rate of up to 70 percent.

In order to ensure this outstanding level of client success, BNZSA’s agents host more than 20,000 three-way calls a year to personally introduce client sales reps to qualified prospects.

BNZSA specialises in tele-based demand generation with a team of more than 250 who are experts in delivering sales-ready leads to many of the world’s leading technology brands deploying campaigns globally in 16 native languages. BNZSA has more than 100 clients, which include many of the leading global IT vendors including Acer, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Intel, Juniper Networks, Oracle, Samsung and SAP.

“The warm handover is a value-add like no other in the industry,” said Brahim Samhoud, CEO of BNZSA. “It ensures that client sales reps and their prospects are a long way down the path to a deal before they ever meet one another. In researching and engaging with prospects, our agents make many calls into client companies over time. Our teams map buying committees, develop personal relationships, understanding and trust with budget holders, decision makers and influencers. We only host three-way meetings between clients and prospects when we have a complete picture of the sales opportunity – which delivers conversion rates unprecedented in the industry.”

The warm handover was established to overcome a number of common issues that remain endemic in the industry today – that even the warmest leads can be difficult to convert. In designing the warm handover, BNZSA addressed a number of pain points:

Harry Beijersbergen, ICT and Channel Marketing Expert said, “Expensive sales staff must spend as much time cultivating relationships with their prospects and customers. The long road to getting in front of prospects consumes too much valuable time. BNZSA shortens the sales cycle by helping reps to be fully prepared with prospects, where mutual expectations and benefits are clearly understood from day one.”

“For sales reps to be productive, they must be focused,” added Johan Olberdling, leading international Sales and Marketing Consultant. “The BNZSA warm handover ensures that reps’ time is best spent speaking to qualified leads, and not wasting their time on prospecting. It helps them to do their job faster and better – which is to close deals.”

BNZSA in Numbers

About BNZSA

BNZSA is a leading EMEA marketing agency specialising in tele-based demand generation with a team of more than 250 who are experts in delivering qualified, sales-ready leads. It was established in 2013 and has grown rapidly over eight years. BNZSA is privately-owned, has never relied on third-party funding, and has been profitable since day one. The company is based in Madrid, Spain, and has offices in the UK, France and Morocco. It invests heavily in its agents who are all native language speakers and deliver client campaigns in 16 languages globally. In addition to the uniquely human and personal dimension of the company, BNZSA is a leader in the application of technology to underpin its value proposition. It built its own bespoke CRM platform, and is a pioneer in the use of AI, NLP and ML technologies.

Contact

Clive Savage, Vice President, Communications, BNZSA, clive@bnzsa.com, +44 (0)203 7394982, +44 (0)7951 328740

Intent Data: Its Value to Sales, Channel, Marketing and Business Development Teams

By Saurabh Rastogi, Chief Product Officer, BNZSA

Intent data, ideally enriched with technographic, firmographic and trigger insight, has widespread applications across the broad demand generation machine. Earlier this year, BNZSA launched our Intent Activation Engine to ensure that we and our clients can fully leverage these insights.

Here I look at how Sales, Channel, Business Development and Marketing teams can improve their effectiveness and enhance business results by leveraging rich intent insights. This is based on my experience leading data and predictive intelligence programmes at Oracle across EMEA as well as with a number of BNZSA clients.

Sales                  

Many sales reps have changing or evolving territories assigned to accounts they might be initially unfamiliar with.

A rep with, say, 40 accounts typically focuses heavily on two to four accounts to make their targets. The rest can be largely unknown or ignored.

Intent insight can act as a filter on all 40 accounts on an on-going basis and proactively identify the best account opportunities at any point in time. Reps can then leverage the broader sales support machine – business development, marketing, partners etc. – to nurture and develop these accounts until they are ready to progress to the opportunity stage. This leads to responsible and effective territory management which drives improved sales productivity.

Reps can also set up programmatic intent alerts on key accounts so they are on top of the evolving requirements within these accounts.

As proof, an Oracle rep told me, “I’m more successful now because I prioritise and focus on the accounts in my territory that I know are at the right stage of need and maturity. I know what to position and who to talk to”.

Channel

The Channel problem is the sales problem amplified. ISVs/vendors and partner organisations tend to be small with a relatively unsophisticated level of demand generation. They also have relatively large market segments to cover. Demand generation is largely sales-driven and advanced segmentation is usually not on offer. Intent filtered Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) accounts, with topics to discuss – augmented by rich firmographic and technographic data – makes the channel much more effective. Reps working the channel can now be laser focussed on a limited number of accounts for the best conversion. This data can be either sourced directly or indirectly provided through the larger product organisation.

Business Development

All of the out-bound campaigns executed by business development groups need quality account lists as a starting point. Historically this has been primarily firmographic data, which has contributed to campaign inefficiencies and indifferent results. For various out-bound campaigns at Oracle, I saw an uplift of three to five times when campaign lists were selected using intent. More leads were generated, lead-to-opportunity and opportunity-to-close conversion rates were better, deal size was larger and the time to close was shorter. All campaigns can be supported programmatically so that data driven account selection becomes the business norm.

Marketing and Advertising

For advertising the use case is quite direct by deploying intent signals for specific topics to target accounts digitally or on social media. This can be done programmatically, so digital targeting always leverages dynamic intent data.

For marketing, intent-based segmentation can help to identify the best accounts for event and webinar engagements and focussing on engaging these across the business, rather than to cast a wider net with inferior results. Account Based Marketing (ABM) can leverage intent insights on focussed key accounts to develop ABM plans, prioritise accounts and allocate budget. For the first time, marketing can bring data-based insights to Key Account leaders and have an account-specific viewpoint rather than rely entirely on inputs from sales.

Intent insights can also be used to inform topics for content development which can be used for campaigns, website, SOMO and sales outreach.

In summary, intent data enables all elements of the marketing and sales process to effectively align internally, to focus effort where and when it is best applied to deliver measurably improved results.