Working Your Lead Database for Maximum IMPACT

Tom DiScipio is a partner and the chief strategy officer for IMPACT Branding & Design. In his role as CSO, DiScipio handles all new business, but he didn’t start out that way.

I had a chance to hangout with Tom and the IMPACT team a few weeks ago at their first annual Brewing Sales & Marketing Success event. They CRUSHED it! You would never have guessed it was their first time pulling off such a great show. 

During the event, Tom delivered a killer presentation on the sales process at IMPACT. I loved it so much I wanted to bring it to you guys here on the podcast. Sit back, take notes, and enjoy! 

Background

DiScipio was IMPACT’s first hire, working as a humble designer. After some time spent making logos and working on websites, he began to accrue more responsibilities, hire employees under him, and even manage some clients.

Then came the conversation that changed everything which, as DiScipio recalls it, went something like this: “Bob came to me and he’s like ‘Tom, can you do sales?’ and I basically said ‘I don’t know, but I’ll try.'” Now, with the help of growth strategist Kyle Bento, Tom handles everythign from the top of the funnel to its very bottom.

In this episode, DiScipio (who can be reached on Twitter or via email) sits down to explain how he and Bento use IMPACT’s database to rank prospects and track down promising leads.

Living in the Data

• IMPACT had a massive database of around 30,000 people, but they weren’t getting much mileage out of it, so DiScipio hired a Business Development Rep (Bento) to change that.
• Bento’s purpose is to look through the database, sort it in a way that makes sense, and set up conversations between DiScipio and the most promising leads.
• Mining the database in this way has doubled bottom-of-the-funnel leads.
• Bento uses a point system to segment that database and identify the most desirable prospects.
• Prospects are checked against IMPACT’s ideal client and sorted by revenue, industry, and behavior. 
• The top of the funnel captures a small amount of information, and prospects can receive 10 points for downloading a top-of-the-funnel offer.
• The middle of the funnel captures more information and awards 20 or 30 points to prospects to visit pages that indicate the prospect is in the consideration stage.
• Once a prospect reaches 50 points, they are considered to have attained a “sales qualified lead score,” at which point Bento decides whether to set up a conversation between DiScipio and the prospect.
• Bento also considers time last seen in evaluating interest, since prospects who have visited the site more recently will have it fresher in their minds. 
• IMPACT uses HubSpot‘s marketing automation, CRM, and sales tools throughout their exploratory process and hope to soon adopt the HubSpot integrated proposal tool PandaDoc.
• IMPACT is also introducing a new blog redesign package as a low-cost, low-commitment option for clients.
• The blog redesign package grew out of IMPACT’s own internal blog redesign and now IMPACT hopes to pass that value on to its clients.
• DiScipio says the package is meant to serve as a “tripwire,” a small engagement that will hopefully lead the new clients it attracts to larger engagements down the road.