The Challenge

One of the greatest challenges for any technology product and services company in the B2B marketplace is ensuring that your sales team is not only focused on reaching clients that are interested in your products and services, but also knowing which customers are at the “premium” stage of the purchase cycle.

What exactly is the premium stage? At Harte Hanks, we define it as the point where potential customers have been fully qualified and have the authority, budget, and desire to purchase your product and services.

In the B2B information technology space, that frequently means a customer who is ready to modernize their old systems and operations. Our client specializes in digital transformations, providing solutions for their customers beyond cloud-only needs.

So how do you identify and qualify premium stage customers? More importantly, how do you do it for a global technology company whose products and services were previously flying under a different brand banner?

Our Insights

At Harte Hanks, we knew that to have an impact with this multi-national IT services management provider, we needed to deploy a global technology sales support and demand generation team that understood how to best identify and qualify their premium stage customers.

In addition, we realized that while our client was respected for their services and products, this team would be a critical element in the communication strategy to establish their new brand identity with these customers.

Our Approach

After reviewing all the key touchpoints of contact that the client had with potential customers ­— which ranged from webinars to emails to newsletters, website visits and digital searches — combined with social research, our global tech team created a comprehensive series of “purchase qualifiers” that separated the store “browsers” from the “buyers” to enhance the value of leads provided to sales.

Our team streamlined lead generation for the client at a global level, providing consistent, replicable processes in all regions. They also developed a centralized measurement system to track results from all regions to understand discrepancies, standardize processes, and drive continuous improvement. However, these processes also applied regional and country-specific knowledge to progress the leads through the pipeline.

The team, which could speak over a dozen languages and included technical specialists, began interacting with potential customers using the targeted touchpoint and contact data, supporting worldwide regions and time zones.

This interaction provided agents with critical information they needed before engaging with the client’s sales team. It also provided a tremendous opportunity to reinforce the client’s new corporate brand identity, as well as their proven track record in the technology infrastructure industry.

The Results

In less than nine months, this strategic outreach enabled the client to significantly streamline its customer feedback loop, further accelerating the overall engagement for their sales team with highly qualified potential new business opportunities.

Based on these engagements, our team was able to identify dozens of these “premium stage” customers quickly and cost-efficiently for the client.

When it came to finding the right customers who were ready to buy their product, our team delivered the results that matter to any client who wants to grow their business.

Nearly $4MM

In new sales revenue in less than a year