For pricing management and optimization platform, Vendavo, poor timing on lead follow-ups resulted in money lost.
“Leads would come in, and they would just sit there for days and weeks or were ignored completely,” Steve Hastert, Director of Marketing at Vendavo, explains.
Those leads no longer go ignored, thanks to 6sense Conversational Email, an AI-powered tool that makes it easy to scale personalized email conversations with thousands of buyers.
Vendavo participated in 6sense’s Conversational Email beta in summer 2022. Within just a few weeks, Conversational Email helped a lean sales team engage thousands of contacts and increase average meetings booked by 10%.
Let’s dive deeper into the challenges facing Vendavo’s sales team and how 6sense helps rookie sales team members close more deals.
The Challenge: Making a Big Impact with a Lean SDR team
Like many growing businesses, Vendavo has a small team of sales development representatives (SDRs): five in the U.S. and three in Europe, each with a tenure of around five months. When it comes to engaging prospects, this short tenure can put the SDRs at a disadvantage, explains Rich Fong, Vendavo’s Senior Manager of Sales Development.
“Learning our product is not easy,” he explains.. “It’s software, and it’s a lot to learn. It is hard for SDRs to get on board quickly, come up with messaging, and get in front of all the leads.”
Vendavo’s ideal customer profile includes manufacturers and distributors that generate more than $1 billion annually. Thousands of companies are within Vendavo’s total addressable market (TAM), which means each SDR has hundreds of contacts.
“An SDR can’t do the research and personalization for everyone engaging with us,” Rich says. “Conversational Email helped us bridge that execution gap.”
The Solution: AI-Powered Assistant, ‘Lisa’
6sense Conversational Email is an AI-powered personalization tool that streamlines conversations between sales reps and contacts by automatically writing emails and responding to replies at scale. Conversational Email treats every opportunity with high-quality engagement by replying to emails at any time, looping in necessary people, and understanding out-of-office messaging.
Conversational Email has now become a staple in Vendavo’s go-to-market strategy.
“It started as a solution to just generate emails. But now, Conversational Email AI assistants are fully executing campaigns and following up with leads that our SDRs didn’t have the bandwidth to go after,” Rich says.
Vendavo website visitors who download content such as data sheets and ebooks are placed into an MQL dashboard visible to SDRs. Then the Conversational Email takes over.
After a seven day waiting period, an AI-assistant named ‘Lisa’ will outreach using Conversational Email. Companies using Conversational Email select the name of the AI-assistant, which handles everything from initial outreach to scheduling follow-ups.
Rich also mentioned that all SDRs are part of the 6QA (6sense Qualified Account) process, which enables revenue teams to align on when in-market accounts are ready to convert into an opportunity. This enhances their Conversational Email strategy because SDRs can prioritize which accounts to engage via email.
The Results
When it comes to the overall impact, Rich and Steve are on the same page.
“The most impactful thing is reaching out to those folks we had talked to and then moved on from. Getting those back in the sales process has been the biggest win,” Steve says. Rich adds, “It’s given us more clarity on what’s hot or not regarding accounts. I also liken it to a compass. It directionally helps us find those hot or not accounts. Our sellers can see it. Our SDRs can see it. Our marketers can see it.”
In just six weeks, the AI assistant delivered the same results as three human SDRs, totaling:
- 24 qualified contacts
- Nine meetings booked
- Two opportunities
Results grew significantly, and in 2022 overall, the AI Assistant ‘Lisa’ delivered for Vendavo 66 qualified contacts, 19 meetings booked, and 10 opportunities totaling $3.3M SaaS pipeline.
“Looking forward to the future, I feel excited about additional campaigns we can run with Conversational Email, potential 6QA accounts, event leads, or areas we might need help on,” Rich says.
