Our internal team naturally adopted Phone Ready Leads® given the results, and we are now getting a great payback as of year 2.
– François Proulx, VP of Commercial Operations
Hortau, an irrigation management system that helps growers keep their plants healthy and use their inputs more efficiently, implemented Phone Ready Leads® to increase their conversations, but got more than they expected.
The Problem
In 2020, during the pandemic, Hortau was looking to adjust its prospecting strategies and implemented a sales cadencing tool. It was clear that a lot of effort was being spent using bad/low intent data. VP of Commercial Operations, François Proulx, said, “We wanted to improve our outbound calling efforts by making sure our reps had the best data and insights as possible. We felt there was just a lot of waste of time, energy, and money while attempting to call people who simply do not pick up the phone.”
They tried outsourced services to schedule meetings, but ultimately felt they were just moving the problem somewhere else, which set them up to fail at their efforts. They also tried validating leads internally, but did not have enough resources available to do the work nor did they have a productive way to validate leads.
The Solution
After years of reading content from Phone Ready Lead’s® CEO, Ryan Reisert, François felt they needed help to implement the best practices that Ryan shared. Not only to validate leads, but outbound prospecting in general and the Phone Ready Leads® approach seemed simple, efficient, and results-driven so it made sense to test it out.
The Result
Results after 6 months: After using Phone Ready Leads® for 6 months, Hortau was about to close more deals from their inside sales than in the previous 2 fiscal years together. Their D2M ratio at that point with the way they usually would approach cold calling was 2.78%. Their D2M with Phone Ready Leads® connect validated leads was 18.75% (5 meetings scheduled + another one set on the calendar out of 32 connect validated leads they had contacted).
Results after 18 months: After using Phone Ready Leads® for 18 months, it has been an effective way for them to acquire new customers consistently. Given all the prospecting efforts they did in 2021, they had a lot of follow-ups to kick start 2022 and got ahead of their usual sales bookings and new customer acquisition. As of Q3 in 2022, François adds, “We are already 125% of last year’s results and got as many new customers as last season, despite major budget reductions. Investing in Phone Ready Leads® brings a multi-year ROI. We were totally happy with our results from year 1 (meaning our CAC using Phone Ready Leads® made sense), but this year it really drives our CAC down.”
Conclusion
François concludes, “I recommend working with Phone Ready Leads® simply because I have seen it work year-over-year. Our internal team naturally adopted Phone Ready Leads® given the results, and we are now getting a great payback as of year 2. We also use lead bucketing to make sure we do not forget any follow-ups.
Any business prospecting over the phone, looking to optimize every dollar spent in prospecting, must consider using Phone Ready Leads®. Nowadays you can’t be really successful with SDRs having a connect rate of 5%. Aim for 25% to 35% using Phone Ready Leads® and the results will come.”
Want to see how Phone Ready Leads® can help you accelerate your sales prospecting process like Hortau? Get a consultation today!
