Streamline Your CRM Lead Qualification Process for Non-Profit Organizations

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good morning and welcome to our webinar on building a lead generation pipeline did you have any questions during this webinar please type them into the chat window and we'll address them at the end my name is connie palooka and I'm the VP of consulting for catalyst connection catalyst is a private nonprofit organization headquartered in Pittsburgh we provide consulting and training services to small manufacturers in southwestern Pennsylvania helping them to accelerate growth and improve productivity so 2020 this is a year that we'll all remember it's a year that's brought unprecedented challenges to manufacturers and organizations and all sectors and of all sizes to leadership teams and to workers and to entire countries as well as to the families that live there the harsh reality is that manufacturers are grappling with the uncertainty caused by COBIT 19 they're trying to understand the impact on their sales pipeline as well as how to increase the likelihood of success in this new coded environment that would likely be with us for some time to come social distancing has led to canceled trade shows and face-to-face meetings customers are being cautious with budgets they're tightening their belts because of the unforeseen turn in pact of the band pandemic the main thing now is to keep networking and pushing forward it's important to actively implement search engine optimization and pursue outreach techniques so your company is ready when things get back to a better sense of normal the issue thats top of mind for all sales teams is how will you feel gaps in sales when you begin losing customers since no one is saved for losing accounts having a healthy sales pipeline it's more important than them but the fact that everyone is getting hit could actually be an opportunity how you use this time this to your advantage is critical now's the time to be proactive to nurture relationships of existing customers it's also the time to use lead generation to help you be a resource for potential new customers give them a reason to want to work with you when the time is right the cogut crisis can make or break your brand and reputation if you ignore the topic entirely you'll come off as irrelevant and if you don't use the right messaging you have to come off as tone deaf or opportunistic talk openly and honestly about your unique approach and the value you bring to the situation in a way your prospects and customers are used to hearing become a resource by providing valued content customers and prospects think about tools assessments or previously previously published content that could be updated or possibly repurposed to address the current situation we're finding that many key decision-makers are working from home assets they're surrounded by less noise the more receptive and they're easier to reach now could be the best time to perform qualification and employment setting activities in today's environment when you're thinking about essential partners an outsource inside sales team could be invaluable not only could they help you retain current clients but they could also help you identify qualified leads for today's webinar we partnered with Crisco Ferriero vice president of consulting operations for DD IRC for the past eleven years Chris has led DJ IRCs sales and marketing services practices where he uncovers and analyzes meaningful insights for clients and helps them execute on this information to become a high-performance organization Chris develops Dvir sees lead generation program which has been delivered to more than 250 companies and it had been adopted by mep centers like catalyst around the country thanks for being with us today Chris thanks for having me Connie and hello everyone thank you for your time just a little bit of a quick background kind of gave me a great introduction but she mentioned I run our consulting operations and I've actually been an employee with with DVR C for 13 years and you know some of the interesting events of the world kind of brought us into creating this business growth practice that we're going to be talking about a new lead generation program specifically we've worked with a lot of manufacturers across the country and we've seen a lot but I think one of the things that really helped us prepare as kind of a center based out of Philadelphia and part of the PA MEP network was I grew up in a family bottling business a small small family business learned that every move every investment every action counts and it really matters not just to the owners and to the management team but to the individuals and their families that are part of the company so we've kind of I've personally taken that to heart and tried to build our culture with that kind of head set and and through it all you know I've been able to take take the my lessons learned from from the family business and plug them into consumer electronics companies like Philips worked with Dr Pepper Snapple Group for a number of years and what we've tried to do is really right-sized some best practices specifically with regards to marketing sales and branding so you know that's that's kind of our background right and when I when I wanted to take a second and look at how can we adapt this conversation this lead generation conversation to such unprecedented times then I kind of took a walk through of my my tenure working at Dvir C and trying to help manufacturers and I thought back to the financial crisis of 2008 and we were presented with such you know turbulent times and and at the time never really before seen disruptions to the goings-on but still there were manufacturers the proactive the thinkers the the hungry that were able to find opportunities pursue growth and and really weather the storm not long after that you know I thought sequestration was a total disruption to so many of our manufacturing clients that were supplying DoD and various military contracts and you know just coming out of some of the rough seas from from the Great Recession we got hit with sequestration and then you know it was almost like a double whammy for some of our manufacturers when when the oil exploration and excavation of minerals and and precious metals and so on really hit bottom right around 2015-2016 it seemed like there was just this really horrible journey for many small and mid sized manufacturers getting hit with one thing after another but again there were still a select few if not many amongst the the SMM small and medium-sized manufacturers across the country that were committed to enduring and growing and chasing after their vision in their dreams so you know that that brought us into this this really spectacular period you know after after we came out of the Great Recession we did see a period of time for manufacturing growth and there was a lot going on and people were feeling good about the future and where American manufacturing was gone until you know the Coleman crisis hit and it's been even more disruptive than any of the the previous disruptions that we've encountered and imagined so what do we do well the first thing I'll recommend as part of this kind of journey through our are building a lead generation pipeline is you know don't give up don't give up hope don't give up on your vision don't give up believing you and build a better business and make it a sustainable enterprise moving forward we can't lose hope in that direction as I grew up in a household where I always heard smooth sea never made a skilled sailor and throughout my career I've kind of looked to that statement as as my true north and every disruption is a new opportunity so today we can use our time together to look at how we can turn some of these really tremendous disruptions into opportunities to make ourselves and our businesses better tomorrow than they are today so I kind of took a moment and I set the stage of you know my 12 or 13 years observing what's what's been going on in the manufacturing world um but I also wanted to share with you some really interesting insights that our friends down at the Georgia Tech MEP manufacturing extension partnership have shared with with us the notion of marketing and sales challenges for small and mid-sized manufacturers is not new and it's not directly related to you know the Great Recession or or this COBIT crisis manufacturers have always struggled the small and mid-sized folks is what we struggled with how to fully utilize how to really take advantage of marketing and sales to grow their top-line to differentiate themselves when you look at all the possible all the possible concerns that a manufacturing executive could face it continually for the last since the 1990s marketing and sales has been at the top of their frustration points and I'll tell you this data is not just about you know the Fortune 100 or 500 when Georgia Tech put this research together they were looking at a really diverse pool of over 500 manufacturers that ran the gamut from you know one employee up to an international concern so I just want to point that out because you know it is it it's an unfortunate thing that there's there's been a history of struggle with a manufacturing firms ability to really take the reins when it comes to marketing differentiating their business and selling on value so let's let's kind of talk about today some of the things that we can do to improve this situation for all of us as Connie mentioned we're we're at a point now where DVI RC is working with about 20 to 22 different manufacturing extension partnership centers across the country so it's a really interesting experience for us because we get to see what's going on you know what industries across the nation are are enduring where are there some significant setbacks and what have we learned through the first few few weeks of this crisis you know where are the market opportunities and how can a typical small or mid-sized manufacturer take advantage of them so so I'm gonna walk us through some of those steps today and also share with you that it's our our concern our desire at the Dvir C to really try to be a hub for these best practices not just so we can we can kind of puff our chests out and say we're really good at helping manufacturers grow we we are so committed to trying to get every small and mid-sized manufacturer on a path to growth and making it just like any kind of continuous improvement activity we want it to be sustainable we want it to be a part of the organization's culture and I think a lot of it really starts at the top at the top of the leadership team of any smaller mid-sized company even if it's kind of a you know a single owner that's making all the decisions we really want to push this this idea of situational awareness you know in the best of times in the worst of times there will always be opportunities we can't be oblivious to them and we can't be frozen by our fears or concerns so what we really try to do when we talk with with owners and leaders manufacturers we want to get them aware of opportunities and alert to how they can take advantage of them that's not going to be enough we really want to make sure that every effort is made to be engaged and go after the opportunities that are right and relevant for the business so the process that we've we've kind of stumbled upon and really taken to heart is no different than the the core driving forces behind any continuous improvement activity PDCA plan-do-check-act it is the single best tool I can share with anyone of you to talk about managing your your lead generation pipeline your sales and marketing efforts your strategic plans you want to make sure that you have a structure in place you're able to implement and measure your performance and then of course respond or act to anything that needs to be improved upon or double down on so in essence the same waste that could exist out in your shop floor can and often does exist in your in a business development pipeline so when we talk about trying to build a lead generation system or pipeline it's just as much a war on waste as any kind of CI activity and that's really one of the first steps when we look at market positioning and trying to get focused on what the goals and objectives of building your business what they are to the management team are the owners we want to have that straight line between how you can connect with a value-added prospect not the commodities buyer that's just looking for a low price so to do this just like at any lien engagement you have to have the right tools our belief is that a structured process with set goals and right tools with timelines and success measures are sustainable in any size company and we've we've used this thinking to really build out a team of marketing and sales professionals in our centre in particular the numbers over 20 employees at this point helping kind of manage the process to find the goals the objectives and them and then implement our belief is that a train and then apply approach goes a long way not just in you know the operations of a factory but also in in the corner offices and the growth strategies so today if we were to talk about all the different many ways that we could apply you know this kind of thinking towards top-line growth cut reference the web I mean it's an excellent place it's it's the you know great equalizer of manufacturers or any small businesses to kind of go out and conquer market share market research you know it's a tremendous tool in its own rights kind of validated direction or or take you on a journey to you know a new or a diverse market opportunity those tools are wonderful but today we're here to really talk about the idea of building a lead generation pipeline and what I call its first cousin market scouting just to kind of quickly touch on the to lead generation in my mind in our team's perspective is all about doubling down and replicating your existing customer relationships finding the most lucrative and sustainable relationships and replicating those typically there in industries that you know like the back of your hand you might have one or two or three key accounts they've been good you make a solid margin we want to go to get go out to the market go out to the world around us and try to replicate those find opportunities and pursue them so that's lead generation and we'll go through the steps the other the other kind of close line of thinking to this this approach for generating new leads new revenue opportunities that's a little bit broader then let's kind of penetrate deeper into our existing markets the the role of market scouting is almost identical in terms of function in how you go out and generate leads as our conventional lead generation thinking but market scouting is about you know we're really good in one particular industry but unfortunately it's stalled or it's lost 15 or 20% of its its growth where can we go given our core competencies what can we do to find new and diverse customers so it's market exploration its its revenue diversification it's really thinking about where you can take your core competencies what you do really well and bring them to new markets so as we go through the the kind of working steps our process for this I want everybody to kind of think about the - you know are we in a good position as an organization to try and replicate our key accounts or should we be thinking more broader about where we can take the skillsets and the competencies that we have and bring them to new markets as I mentioned the process is really the same and and that's a good thing because it's it's replicable and it's easy and transparent for all players within the organization understand upfront it's all about understanding your market positioning right so whether you're a contract manufacturer an OEM you want to get clarity around the goods you are bringing to market whether they're products or services you know what are you selling into whom profile the opportunities not just by you know we're in the oil and natural gas industry the profile them you know what are the types of businesses and who are the types of individuals that really see us as a valued link in the supply chain once you start to understand that you'll really start to be able to identify and prioritize the opportunities that exist in any market and really in any market condition you do that as a seller you want to start to be able to build a database of key opportunities you know the role of market segmentation is huge and I'll get into it in detail in just a little bit but you know profile your clients by their their industry classification codes whether they're Naik's or si si codes understand who in an organization you're really selling to and where you're adding value most cases most cases when we work with clients and try to build this equation we find it's the technical buyers that see value in a manufacturer's expertise their material knowledge their design knowledge their tribal knowledge making things work and bringing down a cost of a good salt so you want to prioritize the decision-makers that are looking for a partnership versus you know a nickel or a dime off of a widget sold so as as we go through this kind of this ideation phase this this market positioning phase we're going to be able to understand our unique selling points we're going to be able to create targeted messages and here is where the role of market segmentation gets really exciting and interesting because we know there's a tremendous benefit to not having a one-size-fits-all value proposition we know the more you can take your value proposition you already unique selling points and tailor them so that they add comfort and confidence to that decision maker who's going out on a limb and choosing you over maybe an existing supplier that's going to set you up for success so we really want to try to build custom messaging and instead of trying to do a shotgun based approach towards a marketing campaign it's really to your advantage to look at the rifle the rifle shot you know the person-to-person connections how can you save someone's day how can you be someone's white knight that's that's the kind of thinking that we see really differentiate just okay campaign to a very high-performing campaign and as we're able to kind of think through this process and build our plan of attack we want to put structure around that and that's where the the role of you know what are our key performance indicators how are we going to new know if we're doing really good mediocre or have a lot of room for improvement that's that's what we want to drive at the earliest stages of our planning so that when we go through our plan do check out cycles we know we're going to either be on track or we need to make some make some ground up and that's that in most cases that the ultimate proof is how qualified are the leads coming in are we in the wheelhouse are we pretty close but we need to tweak or are we just you know miles apart that's that's kind of thinking behind this process so you know the the first step really in in building your plan is is thinking about you know what's on our two-year horizon for growth where do we want to go do we want to think about that market penetration or market diversification or maybe a little bit of both and you know any answer is okay we just want you to put your heart and soul into the thinking since there are tools to kind of help stimulate your thought process one of one of our tried-and-true tools that we've infused in virtually every one of these conversations is it about market penetration or diversification there's a tool called the ansoff matrix it's such a great way of thinking about your strategy for growth do you want to sell deeper into your existing markets do you want to try to find new homes new markets for your existing strategy for your existing competencies maybe maybe look at a new offering to your existing customers that's that's a little bit of a new spin for some but you know it's certainly a very doable strategy you want to try to work on a product development strategy where you're adding maybe more value-added features into your existing relationships going for an upsell and then from time to time but the truth be told not very often in the small mid-sized manufacturers we see businesses that want to take a new idea a brand new idea going to a brand new market that's that's a little on the high-risk high-reward side for many of the folks that we work with so we don't see it that often but but truth be told there's so much wonderful potential to be found in trying to go after that market penetration or diversification that the left-hand side of this quadrant chart that's a great first step and what I would encourage everyone to really think about so kind of playing on this idea of what's our vision what's our process what are our KPIs we also like to send SMART goals up and project charters every every project we take on every lead generation pipeline that we're looking to build is set up with specific measurable attainable relevant and time-based goals I don't need to deconstruct the whole thinking here but one of the things again for over a decade's worth of experience that I'll tell you is that businesses tend to struggle in some cases with what's attainable you want to make sure that your growth goal is doable you want to make sure that it's not too pie in the hot pie in the sky or not too much of a low bar you want it to be right in that sweet spot so you can get your people motivated and your process in place to actual actually you know succeed and win the results so you know double-digit growth can be a good thing depending on the economic conditions but you know if you're looking at anything north of a 20 digit increase in sales over a pretty short you know 18 24 months time for him there's got to be some some real key factors into that that would be feeding that type of growth so make sure that it's kind of attainable and and relevant to the business and then as you set those goals those SMART goals we happen to frame them into what we call project charter know what are what are what's our true north what are we looking to accomplish in this effort so that we can feed it into that plan do check act cycle and make sure that we are certainly on track to where we want to go and you know we understand where where we might be coming across and headwinds or some some good opportunities when we take this approach we know we can help any business punch above their fighting weight and we can help them succeed and really build a sustainable culture of growth and growth thinking so as I mentioned a couple times by now this is really a process setting your revenue targets making sure they're realistic they're achievable attainable you know what's our goal try to put a little bit of focus on it you know maybe make it make yourselves break out you know where are we looking to grow our revenue streams by product line area or or revenue stream our value stream set goals by team members you know if you have a couple folks out in the field give them not just revenue goals but margin goals and product line goals define your path board you know set set your TrueNorth as an organization to find the roles and responsibilities create a timeline for implementation and deployment earlier when I talked about you know us really believing this is a train and then apply process this is exactly what I'm talking about for so many smaller mid-sized manufacturers they haven't formally set revenue goals as as a team or defined their path forward create your deployment matrix so that you actually have something to manage and frankly for many many of the the businesses we've met with over the years they don't even have reoccurring sales and marketing team meetings or pipeline meetings so get in the habit of setting those up and reviewing performance seeing where you're at and measuring your data that's gonna help you with that plan-do-check-act line of thinking and you'll be able to track your performance not so you can you can you know scrutiny somebody that might be struggling do it so you can make this a continuous improvement process do this so you can strengthen your your players and give them the resources and support they need to thrive one of the baselines that we use when when we support manufacturers is that on a monthly basis our team and and there might be a variation of this for yours but our team when we're supporting manufacturers looks at trying to profile at least a hundred target companies when we're doing lead generation firm for clients we want to understand you know out of all the fish in the sea watch one hundred of those fish might be a good target for you then we want to meet with with the management team our stakeholders and figure out other those 100 which ones are then the top 60 prospects right so so we want to whittle this down so it's kind of an editor iterative process for lead generation out of those 60 prospects they should really aligned with your competencies your value proposition and have someone within their behind structure that would see value in what you do and over time our team is able to really start to figure it out but we want to we want to make it an interactive approach so you can kind of think about you know what's very important to me in a prospect and when we go out and we call these prospects and we we send introductory letters and emails but most importantly we call and try to make persons Merson connections we know that on average we're gonna have between four and six qualified leads come out of that outreach if we plan our list right on average we're gonna see four to six qualified opportunities come out of that that effort on a monthly basis and again tracking all roughly 300 projects that we've done over the last decade or so we've seen there's a tendency to have about a 33 percent conversion process so you know it's it's it's a very targeted approach that we believe in but we also know that this is a building process we've tracked a lot of the the KPIs in this process the one that I did not put on the slide but I'll share with you that is it's pretty important when we're doing this work we want to look at the lifetime value of the customer and what the typical year-1 investments are so they typically run anywhere from 75 to maybe 150 thousand dollars so called $125 that a client can expect from a good solid year one relationship on average but what's really important about this is the lifetime value because if you're doing their job right and we're doing our job right helping you find growth oriented prospects they're gonna be with you for three five ten years so that that return on investment has a very substantial multiple one of the things that I'll also share with you at this point the tap tap into a little deeper at a later point our presentations the role of the CRM system to help manage all this data it's all about tracking performance yes but it's very important that you have a good tool in place to help you track and measure your performance in really the flow of information so as you're in system it might seem invasive to some that haven't made that plunge yet but it certainly is an empowering tool to help you measure your important performance track your outreach efforts and really sharpen your blade when it comes to being a growth-oriented machine so we talked about the process we talked a little bit about you know what's important when you're going to market and how you want to manage you know your your your win rates the one driver that I would I would argue is incredibly important as you go out and you try to target new opportunities in the kovat economy and beyond is research research is so undervalued by so many but it gives you the inside track right by understanding what market segments you are really strong in and understanding out of those segments where the growth might exist you're going to be able to target the right ones to kind of focus your efforts on so that you're efficient where the fish are and aligned with opportunities that are going to be out there in the world today that's going to bring in efficiencies at the highest level and it's going to help you handcraft that person-to-person positioning those are unique selling points so you know when you're able to look at the market trends segments those trends so that they will align with your core competencies and build campaigns around those you're gonna have the optimal go to market strategy and here's a nice simple acronym for everybody to remember STP segments target and position your segmentation you know where's the potential given your competencies in the market around you who in those in those segmented markets should we be targeting and what do we want to say research is going to be your best friend there's all sorts of available you know proprietary and free sources that are out there we we built a database of over two hundred and seventy five thousand different decision-makers across the country but there's trade associations there's all sorts of data pools that anyone can pull from find the market trends find the the growth oriented companies or the companies you and a partner with and start to build your list start to build it again in the areas that will present opportunity we worked with a manufacturer in the central part of the state that experienced some some severe turmoil based on in their key market areas there were heavy equipment manufacturers and had some really unique welding and metal fabricating capabilities they wanted to take that and leverage it into a true market diversification path they had competencies their market was down they wanted to find something new and unique to pursue we happen to find that the armored vehicle segments align perfectly with with their core competencies was new to them and would fall right in the zone of opportunity for the business we also took the research a step further and we realized that you know given their positioning in PA there were some really significant players they could partner with and even jump out into neighboring states like New York State so you know the the outlook looked right the regionality looked good and the value equation really aligned so what we did was we we took this this struggling company and we aligned everything we could to come up with a value proposition and targeted not just the OEMs that we're looking for supply chain partners but you know the tier two and Tier three players up and down a 250 mile radius that would add value and in doing so and every you know concise period of time we were able to get them a beachhead in a brand new marketplace where they were able to really differentiate themselves from from just being a one-trick pony with with a single product line to a player that's got multiple product lines with multiple value propositions and a broader knowledge base of you know a 250 mile radius of their manufacturing plant so you know in doing so we were help we were helping them answer a very simple question what makes them irreplaceable to their customers we had this conversation we took that answer and we brought it into new mark market diversification in doing so when we have these conversations we want to not just have some some fancy you know marketing materials put together we want to craft it into a value proposition because as I mentioned earlier this this vision that we have for lead generation work is all about multiple points of contact having someone understand and learn about who you are from maybe a conventional mail or piece set through the Postal Service or or an email introduction or even Google AdWords yes it's very important to have your value proposition right but eventually and where we see a lot of tremendous value is that person-to-person contact we want to have the elevator pitch right so that you can clearly and confidently articulate your value to that prospect when you have that opportunity to meet them or talk to them over the phone or via webinar face to face so in doing so we want to make sure that everything lines up right it's not just about web marketing inbound marketing your social footprint your SEO it's also about making that person-to-person contact over the phone through through tradeshow well maybe not tradeshow so much this year but we want a good physical presence a good confidence level being able to articulate who you are and how you can add value when you're able to align both of those efforts you're going to be so far ahead of a typical competitor you'll be amazed and one of the things I threw into this to kind of help validate the the truisms about there the importance of that person-to-person contact Salesforce did a study just last year that over 92% of all business-to-business customer interactions still to this day happen over the phone it'll be interesting to see what the new numbers look like but it's easy for many businesses to kind of short short sale or shortchange the role of prospecting or doing your cold calling because a lot of people hate to do it right it's it's hard it's not it's not instinctive or intuitive for FERC for many but when you take the time to do it and when you have your value proposition dialed in the outcomes and the responses are truly amazing hidden things they'll take you further faster than you would have ever imagined so when you think about your marketing and your sales you got to think about them as a combined effort reach out connect and follow up just another anecdote from over a decade worth of doing this we have a robust team of over a dozen inside salespeople and to this day they still really encourage every effort to have some form of upfront collateral peace point of introduction it's kind of a confidence booster for them but it's also a point of reference to say you know I sent you this piece of information out in your inbox or via mail I don't know if you had to take a look at it but here's what I'm really excited to be talking to you today it's it's just a point of information I want to share with you because it helps validate the role of being connected and having this integrated approach to connecting with new prospect opportunities so I tell I touched on this a little while back but I want to bring it up again because we've gone through now the process and and kind of the rollout of how we should be connecting but I want to stress the role of a CRM or customer relationship management system and measuring our performance you know it really is a tool that that is so undervalued by a typical maybe 20 to 200 person manufacturer then I want to just put the challenge out there to kind of think about you know are you do you have a system in place that that would function as a CRM are you using it to to see what your trends look like from from you know maybe an X or si si code perspective to see how many calls it takes to engage with a senior decision-maker our data from from our Salesforce portals that every one of our clients get to experience they'll show that depending on the hierarchy depending on the level of decision maker and industry it takes between 10 to 16 calls to make one person's personal connection but without those calls the likelihood of picking up a new prospect it's it's so greatly diminished you're almost waiting for the phone to ring or someone to fill out that information for them on your site so you want to take that data you want to build your strategies around it you want to validate your you're going in the right direction and you want to use that to sustain the the concept of being a growth focused entity in the end it comes down to pipeline management you know what are we doing right what are we doing wrong what can we do better tomorrow than we did today just a kind of quick connecting point to our our focus on our process for the generation I've mentioned a couple times we are so passionate about training applying and supporting this whole approach will not only work to kind of support the the vision and the marketing plan the positioning report the strategy build the list profile the decision-makers put together the campaign do the outreach call on 60 decision-makers each month but we'll also provide a Salesforce portal for every project that we take on so that you can actually see the value of measuring your outreach the value of evaluating what industries are paying off and how many contacts does it take to make a connection point we redo this for all of our clients so you can find the individual conversation notes see what people are saying get your primary research and really take the leads that we generate and have a very crystal clear level of background around what your clients what your prospective clients are looking to accomplish so we do all this we do this heavy lifting and then we also provide bi-weekly sales team meetings that we manage we facilitate and we share with every client so that you can get that comfort level with the cadence of having those sales team meetings that I mentioned very few folks make a habit of running so it's all about building this process and managing your data and showing you the power of a sales sales management CRM system and also that it's not that difficult to take and really run with when we do this and we we manage the lead generation campaigns we use the Salesforce portals to actually send leads to our clients so that they can get that awareness level up around how to use a CRM system but also have that out brief on you know this is what the lead looks like this is what the person is interested in and ultimately of course our folks are going to follow up with you know the client stakeholder to make sure you understand the lead feel good about it make sure it's in that right zone and you know we'll go as far as even scheduling a conference call or than the good old days an on-site meeting with a client so when we talk about outsourcing the marketing and sales management function I mean we live and breathe it but we also want to train you up on these best practices so you have that cadence to make it a part of your culture ultimately it comes down to the old saying you know you want to plan your work and work your plan every project that we take on has between five and six people supporting our clients planning their work working their plan making sure making sure we're on track and if we're not we want to be able to fail fast and fail cheap and all that really means is you know we're not going to let a year a quarter or even a month go by with a campaign that's underperforming we have the team we have the system and we have the process from a flow of workflow perspective in place to make sure that every list is relevant in generating success needed to generate that ROI or that you know 60 down to you know three to five leads down to a one-third conversion everything that's being constructed and we've talked about in places is is really so reliable that we're confident to be able to talk about these numbers and and present that as those really are our doctrine just a couple clicks case studies when we can answer some questions we've worked with the contract manufacturer electromechanical shop for over eight years we've helped me find over four million dollars in new sales one of which was a new client that they've been able to leverage and build a two million dollar revenue stream out of we helped them use this process this cadence the system to create a sales team where they once relied only on their engineers to sell and manage the project and design the solution we've we've changed that with build a system and ultimately we help them avoid some really costly missteps by going into the wrong industries and chasing their own opportunities another one that's really exciting for us is a client that we were helped we were helping exit basically a period of insolvency they've been a five-year strategic account for us where we we've done some marketing and regeneration work you know over the last five years we've actually helped them double their sales twice um and you know we're forecasting even in this crazy world of 2020 they're going to be upwards of a 30 million dollar business at this point in time and we've got where we were their sales a marketing team to helping them actually build a sales team and still supporting their their new business lead generation efforts and you know digital presence so you know I'll say this we we've tried to be able to right-size this this line of thinking in this process so that we can support a five person company or a 500 plus person company it's not so much about you know this is this is right for a contract manufacturer or a product manufacturer it's the process it's the workflow it's the design it's it's set up in place to help so you know as I close out I just wanna I want to kind of wrap up with something that Peter Drucker once said and it really rings true to today and how we need to look at the future the greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence it's stacked with yesterday's logic so whether you think lead generation is right or not I do believe this this line of thinking is right for everyone kind of look at tomorrow as a new beginning and try to evaluate what new opportunities or new thoughts you can bring to the table to stimulate your top-line growth make up for lost sales and you know be better six from six months from now than you are today that's all I have from a presentation standpoint I'd really welcome any questions from thanks Chris we have had a few questions come in and just a reminder that if you have any questions please type them into the chat window so first Chris what's your opinion in terms of developing new or additional sales channels to expand the footprint in a current market i I think it all comes down to your value equation and what I mean by that if you see an opportunity in a new market that aligns with with your competencies as an organization you know that you have the right manufacturing engineering strengths sales strengths to be able to pursue those new opportunities there's no reason in the world that you should be holding back but if you lack things like certifications you know engineering strength technical competencies if you lack those but you've just gotten passionate about a new opportunity you're not ready to jump in headfirst so there's a lot of value in an internal assessment of you know can we really support the demands of this new industry and if we can absolutely pursue it just make sure you have a custom-fit value proposition for okay another question is do you see what you've been discussing do you see this as a way to replace trade show lead generation I absolutely think it's it's right now one of the best things you can do while there's so much disruption to trade shows I think trade shows they you know when we think back to all the disruptions we've gone through like the Great Recession and then some of the bottoms falling out of specific markets there was such a drop-off of trade show attendance that this kind of effort certainly picked up when things got a little healthier there was kind of a little bit of a resurgence for a couple of years and this was certainly supplementary to the trade show but now you know all the clients that we're talking to and and engaging with they have no plans to go to a trade show and if they do it's a virtual thing so this is a perfect supplement if not a direct replacement to those those efforts and we've had a question can you tell us the price range for the type of services you've been describing I mean it really it really is a sweeping price range we can we can talk one-on-one through through catalyst and anyone that's interested be like I said we're doing this kind of work with clients range from five person pretty sophisticated startups to 500 person you know 20 20 sales rep Channel type of businesses so it's it's not really fair to say you know it's going to be between x and y i really would love to know a little bit more about you know the environment that we're operating within but it's it's certainly designed to be incredibly affordable so that any size company can can engage you mentioned developing messaging during the project if you do you ever revise the messaging if you find that it doesn't seem to be resonated absolutely absolutely i mean the the whole PDCA thinking is all about revision revision revision every conversation that we have with a stakeholder makes us so much smarter and better poised to sharpen the blade so all the notes that we capture are in salesforce so it kind of validates it's truly is primary market research we use that primary market research and those leads and those conversations to revise the the value proposition and then every quarter because I'll say most of our clients stick with us for a long time given the value and the success every quarter we have planning meetings to kind of shuffle up the value proposition or the target outreach so yes change is constant but change as a as a mode of improvement is constant okay okay how soon can your clients expect to achieve ROI it varies by industry you know if I if I can say I can say this are the first four weeks of a project is it's all about putting the plan together building the list and getting ready to implement by the fifth week we're prospecting you know by the the second month you can start to see that that maybe three to five leads coming in there might be some you know turning of the dials to get them but if you think about those three to five leads coming in by like let's say the second month of a project then I would say you know what's your typical conversion rate some industries we know have 12 to 16 months sales cycles some you know they want to they want it out the door as quickly as they can they can get it so I I don't feel confident really answering that question but I guarantee the leads that we generate will align or maybe be slightly better than the typical sales cycles that our clients have okay how do you determine if a prospect is aligned with the client's value proposition well I would say really it comes down to you know how engaged is the person on the other end of the line if frankly if they say oh I have absolutely no need for that then then maybe the prospects not aligned or the value propositions off or the list is bad the other thing that I'll throw out there's a lot of times when we get an interesting an interested prospect on the phone we'll know they're really interested by by them asking so what's what's your website and our staff is trained to be able to navigate the website and kind of be a virtual tour guide of it but if the website value proposition is off we're gonna let the client know as soon as possible that there's there's a little bit of lack of synergy and we're not just going to say you should fix it we're going to we're going to provide some insights as to you know what could be improved or changed so it is something we take true to heart and we work on understanding in real time well Chris thank you so much if any further questions come to mind for those that are on the call please feel free to contact us here at catalyst connection and we'll work with Chris and the Dvir scene to get the answers to that you need a catalyst connection will support the process as much as needed and I'd like to thank everyone and have a great rest of your day Chris thanks again so much Thank You Connie boom is everything