TTMC provides agile resource to extend SevOne's team, creating the foundation for a long-term trusted partnership.
Founded in 2005, SevOne has headquarters in Boston and offices in Delaware, London, Singapore and Bulgaria. SevOne provides the world’s largest CSPs, MSPs and Enterprises with the most comprehensive technology portfolio to collect, analyse and visualise network and infrastructure performance data to deliver actionable insights to compete and win in the connected world. SevOne serves organisations that are looking to complex, dynamic next-generation infrastructure such as software defined networks, orchestrated containers and cloud technologies to support their business goals.
Project background
SevOne provides the only digital infrastructure monitoring solution engineered for ‘Speed at Scale’, able to monitor the size of today’s networks. This unique offering has allowed it to grow rapidly and today it is used to monitor some of the world’s largest networks, including Verizon Wireless, Comcast, NASDAQ, CSC, Morgan Stanley, BSkyB, and Telstra Global.
As a result of the speed of growth experienced by SevOne, the business accumulated a large database of inbound enquiries that the internal team was not able to nurture due to limited bandwidth. Not only was data aging overall but new enquiries started to go stale as internal resource could not react quickly enough, with the risk of opportunities being lost. Given the potential value of the data, which spanned a number of EMEA/APJ territories, the International Marketing Manager decided to evaluate whether an outsourced agency could provide a resource to offset limited internal bandwidth. After evaluating several companies, The Telemarketing Company (TTMC), was appointed based on the team’s experience managing global campaigns and engaging with senior decision-makers within the technology sector.
Project execution
TTMC was provided with a large pot of unqualified data including a sizeable backlog of aging leads for a number of territories including UK & Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and The Netherlands. An initial briefing took place at TTMC’s premises to train the callers on the proposition, the competitive landscape, and pain points most commonly faced, to support a consultative solution selling approach. The briefing would equip callers to handle the main objections raised and tailor benefits to each prospect’s area of interest.
It quickly became clear that, in addition to lead generation, the client had a number of different requirements and needed an agile resource that could react quickly and work collaboratively as a trusted partner to fill gaps on an ad-hoc basis. A number of different priorities were identified:
- Addressing the backlog of aging leads and converting these into qualified sales opportunities.
- Supporting SevOne’s presence at Cisco Live in Barcelona, a high profile industry event.
- Nurturing and developing SevOne’s key accounts.
For these priorities, the TTMC team needed to support a large EMEA/APJ sales team and accommodate variations in regional systems and processes. Callers were given access to SevOne’s Google Calendar and links to webex/virtual conference rooms in order to schedule appointments in diaries. With varying requirements across a large sales team, a high degree of responsiveness and flexibility was needed to make sure that nothing was dropped and every opportunity fully exploited.
Given the reputation of the brand and the seniority of target decision makers - Directors and VPs of Fortune 2000 companies – a highly professional approach was critical also. For the Cisco event, for example, agents were calling a cold set of data comprising senior individuals who had previously attended the annual event. Callers needed to nurture interest, build and deepen engagement, and ultimately secure one-to-one meetings with SevOne specialists at the event.
Results
As the agency was appointed initially on a trial basis only, there was a limited number of hours available and the diverse elements of the project made it essential to balance priorities. The challenge was to maintain efficiency and performance without compromising the quality of output, and without impacting SevOne’s reputation in the industry.
TTMC’s bespoke calling platform allowed the team to proactively manage the various pots of data and differing requirements of the engagement within the limited hours available. Since the trial, a systematic approach to calling has produced over 6000 outbound calls, with approximately one Decision Maker conversation each hour. 110 results have been generated, approximately one result every five hours, including event meetings, demo webex sessions, conference calls and appointments. Profiling questions have provided additional insight to enable the sales team to more easily convert prospects to sale, to enhance the database and provide a pipeline of future opportunities to be nurtured.
Results overall have proven the value of an outsource team as an extension to SevOne’s own resource and the client and agency now have a trusted partnership on which to build.