Custom Truck One Source began as a family gas station and tow service in 1996. They have since evolved from a 3-bay shop in Missouri with 12 employees into an industrial icon with more than 2,200 employees and 36 locations.
Similar to other manufacturers, Custom Truck One Source previously relied on conventional selling strategies like in-person customer visits. But now, with thousands of customers across the U.S. and Canada, knocking on doors isn’t a sustainable growth strategy.
To keep pace with their impressive growth, Custom Truck One Source’s go-to-market team embraces technology like 6sense to modernize their marketing and selling techniques.
The Challenge: Capitalizing on In-Market Demand
Because they previously relied on in-person selling tactics, Custom Truck One Source didn’t have the tools to turn website visitors into paying customers. After assessing website traffic, Custom Truck One Source’s revenue team learned they had between 45,000 and 60,000 unique website visitors per month that could be potential customers.
Initially, the marketing team began sending any website lead to the sales team, but this created a misalignment because not all website leads are created equally.
“There was a disconnect between marketing and sales where many marketing leads that did get passed through were ignored because the leads would come in with incomplete information submitted by prospects. Sales Representatives were feeling overwhelmed as they were managing current customers and also having to qualify incoming prospects,” says Walker Smith, Manager of Sales Development at Custom Truck One Source.
“Sales reps were feeling overwhelmed with a bunch of leads that would come through the website with little to no context on what the prospects were looking for,” Walker adds.
The marketing team knew they needed to promote only the most qualified leads to sales, ones that were showing signals of being in the decision-making process.
So, Custom Truck One Source implemented 6sense to modernize their go-to-market approach while improving marketing and sales collaboration.
The Solution: Modernizing Growth Techniques with 6sense
Custom Truck One Source initially rolled out 6sense in 2020. As soon as they began using 6sense, they began to uncover insights and signals from website visitors indicating they were in-market for their products or services.
Walker says the lead generation team at Custom Truck uses 6sense intent data to create reports for sales representatives that include information on which accounts they should engage with and what type of equipment the accounts are interested in.
“We build reports showing contacts only in the decision and purchase stage. So if my team reaches out to 100 of them, we’ll get around 15 deals quoted by the end of that push,” Walker says. “6sense intent data makes selling like shooting fish in a barrel.”
He adds that knowing how often someone searches specific units and how familiar they are with Custom Truck One Source is a game-changer for sellers.
“It’s insane how accurate the data can be. It’s such a leg up on the competition to know what your customers are looking for and when to tailor your outreach to each customer.”
After three years of fine-tuning their go-to-market strategy with 6sense, Walker and his team then decided to begin using 6sense Conversational Email, an AI-powered tool that makes it easy to scale personalized email conversations with thousands of buyers.
Deepening the Impact with Conversational Email
“In just three weeks, Conversational Email has generated 107 qualified contacts, saved us 530 hours of work, and brought in almost $6 million in pipeline,” Walker says.
Custom Truck One Source launched four Conversational Email campaigns targeting people in management-level roles in April 2023:
- Cross-selling: Engaging customers who previously purchased from Custom Truck One Source to gauge interest in buying another complementary vehicle.
- Post-event: Following up with people who attended equipment expositions and expressed interest at the Custom Truck One Source booth.
- Closed-lost revival: Re-engaging accounts that did not close after an extended period has passed.
- High-intent account conversion: Sending automated messages to customers in the decision and purchase stage.
Walker says their closed-lost revival performs best out of the four actively running campaigns, with 66% of contacts opening emails.
Custom Truck One Source’s lead generation team consists of five people, with a goal to hit 50 calls per day. Walker says the most significant impact of Conversational Email has been expanding the number of people contacted daily.
“The amount of work Conversational Email does in a day would take someone on my team a week to do. It’s like having five more SDRs working simultaneously,” Walker says.
The Results: Consistent Growth Across Channels
Custom Truck One Source continues to see remarkable growth with 6sense. Leveraging 6sense to uncover previously hidden buyers has resulted in millions of dollars in sales from new business and revenue from existing customers.
And, in just five weeks after launching their Conversational Email pilot, Custom Truck One Source saw the following results:
- 132 qualified contacts
- $6 million in opportunity and pipeline
- 738 hours of work saved
- $1 million in closed business
“The way 6sense has helped us is almost not even quantifiable because it’s made us more confident going into each conversation with customers,” Walker says.
