Need-to-have product needed a better process!
Plivo is a communications platform that 70,000+ customers use to integrate SMS and voice capabilities into their applications. Founded in 2011, Plivo simplifies telecommunications by providing a CPaaS (Communications platform as a service) infrastructure capable of handling billions of messages and calls each year.
In this case study, we’ll share how Plivo scaled its inbound and outbound operations with help from InsideScale.
Diversification of the sales funnel
Offering a “need-to-have product” in the CPaaS industry, Plivo had traditionally relied on inbound leads as its main source of business.
Despite Plivo’s initial (and impressive!) success, CEO & Founder, Venky Balasubramanian, suspected that the company’s very small sales team (2 SDRs + 2 AEs) was leaving money on the table and lacked proper supervision. Venky also wanted to diversify the funnel with outbound leads in an effort to elevate average selling price.
So, Venky brought us in to build a scalable process and manage the team.
Boosting engagement with inbound leads
After assessing the situation, we confirmed that Venky’s original concerns were indeed correct. Plivo had a high number of inbound leads that were only touched once – if ever – by SDRs. To make matters worse, SDRs were cherry-picking leads and ignoring the rest, which is typical for green SDRs who lack oversight or formal processes.
We also noticed that Plivo’s Salesforce and Outreach.io instances were a bit of a mess (again, normal for an early stage team with high lead volumes). After working closely with Plivo’s Sales Operations team to overhaul lead stages, we then implemented a bulletproof follow-up process that optimized their Outreach.io triggers for inbound leads.
Implementing a 7x follow-up process for inbound leads delivered staggering results:
- Open rates skyrocketed to 80-90%.
- Reply rates averaged 70-80%.
- 30 additional meetings were booked within 30 days.
- Meeting quality increased dramatically, thanks to the new SQO criteria that we created
Now that’s pretty good for inbound, but what about outbound?
Overhauling outbound
The next phase was to dial up Plivo’s outbound efforts, but finding SMS and voice opportunities at scale isn’t easy. So, our team engineered a data enrichment process via DataFox that cracked the account data puzzle.
We also implemented an omni-channel outreach approach that leveraged a human tone and produced equally wild results:
- Opens between 60-90% at scale.
- Replies above 15% on average.
- Each SDR hit 10 or more Sales Qualified Opportunities a month.
Now, ten opportunities per SDR in one month is solid, but what’s especially wild is that nearly every opportunity was already using a competing CPaaS product. That’s right, we created a repeatable process for breaking in with competitors!
Staffing up to keep pace
Now that the engine was humming, Plivo needed help with hiring. Once again, our team at InsideScale was happy to help.
In fact, we were directly responsible for hiring ten new SDRs – including four promotions to AE, Solutions Engineer, and Team Lead. And, the Team Lead is now fully enabled to run the process via a comprehensive set of sales enablement documentation and reporting suite.
Maybe that’s why Tom White, VP of Sales and Success at Plivo, said this about us:
“Lou from InsideScale is ‘the guy’ for building your BDR team! I’ve never seen a more predictable and repeatable process than what he built for us at Plivo – and we operate in a complex space with technical buyers. His team building and leadership abilities are second to none. We now have a world-class BDR team and foundation to scale with thanks to InsideScale.”
Maximize pipeline velocity with InsideScale
From inbound to outbound and staffing, our team at InsideScale is here to help you every step of the way.
Message us at hello@insidescale.com to learn more about elevating your pipeline.
