Reframing Your Prospecting Approach

We speak with hundreds of prospects every month who are looking to purchase a champion tracking software and most of them get one thing wrong- the definition of success!

(A side note: Some people believe only the buyer knows the best, but I don't agree with that entirely. As the people who spend more time than anyone actively thinking about this problem and the future of such a solution, it's our job to educate the buyers on how you think about value from Boomerang.)

Before we get to what I consider the right answer, what are some of the more obvious but "less correct" ones.

1. Volume of leads generated: I'm sure some of you are wondering... but isn't that the primary value?! Yes, it is the most tangible and attributable component of the value prop, but without treating the leads right, volume of leads won't mean much business impact. Simply trying to get more leads or generate more leads isn't enough.

2. Pipeline generated: No, not this either. Although it's absolutely more important than just the number of leads. Generating pipeline is crucial, but it's not the whole story.

3. Revenue from job change leads: This is the metric we at Boomerang aspire to deliver for our customers because it forces us to resist the temptations to throw the leads over the fence and walk away. However, even this is not the most important one among value propositions.

What is the correct answer to the "definition of success" then? Here's what the most strategic buyers of Boomerang are focusing on-

🥁'Building the System'! 🥁

These revenue leaders look at the goal of the Boomerang initiative to be creating the institutional muscle (system) to consistently and predictably create an efficient pipeline channel from existing customer base. Think about the maturity of other channels like content marketing, outbound etc. Bringing the Customer-led Growth channel to a similar level of maturity is the eventual (shared) goal and it'll take many iterations. Job change tracking is the first step in that direction.

With this mindset, they look at the metrics like number of monthly job change leads, pipeline and revenue from job change leads etc to be indicators that help them continually fine tune the system using levers like identifying the right people to track, finding the right sales play design etc.

This is where our head is at too (and that is absolutely not an attempt to shy away from taking ownership of those other metrics). We're heavily inspired by what Hubspot did with Inbound/ Content Marketing in the last decade or two, making it part of mainstream marketing. Similarly we believe that in the next 2-5 years, your existing customer base will contribute more than 10-20% of pipeline and hopefully at least 20-25% of revenue.

We've made multiple early investments with this vision in mind:

1. End to end lead flow automation and No-UI product experience to significantly improve adoption and sales engagement.
2. Co-developing the messaging with our customers to factor in the best of our best practices with what works for them.
3. Investments into Data and AI to learn from our customers and bring in a network effect into the product.
4. Partner ecosystem consisting of implementation experts as well as sales leaders as consultants for best practices and driving behaviors.

If you're a fast growing company looking to 2x your revenue, I'm sure you don't want to increase your CAC also by 2x! If you resonate with this context, here's what I want you to think about-

1. Do you have a good product and enjoy customer love? (Avg NPS and organic G2 reviews are good proxies)
2. If yes, do you think you can set your sales team a goal of creating at least 3-5 opps in the next quarter from past customers changing jobs?
3. If yes, identify a smart project owner and partner with a solution (Boomerang, duh! 😉) to run multiple experiments to get to that outcome.
4. Once that's successful, scale what's working while continuing to run other experiments, and try to double the number of opps every quarter or so.

With this systematic approach, we help our customers not just with transactional value but build a robust system such that they can turn their customer data into a predictable source of pipeline quarter after quarter! This data-driven sales strategy can help you acquire new customers while also focusing on repeat business and customer remarketing.

If you're interested in learning more about our approach and evaluating if it will work for you, drop me a note and I'll be happy to brainstorm ideas. Remember, the key to success isn't just about using sales prospecting tools or b2b lead generation tools. It's about building relationships, understanding your customer profiles, and implementing a comprehensive customer relationship marketing strategy that turns your best customers into a source of ongoing growth.