Eric Siu discusses how hiring a sales head from a competitor drove dramatic improvements in close rates: 23% in June, then 40% in July. The new hire tightened the pitch and execution, while the team optimized lead sources across Clutch, SEO, Meta ads, and cold outreach.
You took a sales head from a competitor. We won't name the competitor, but how'd that work out? We're starting to see some signs of agency businesses pick up, and I'll read this from a text I got from someone on my team. So this is just some stats and data. This is for our SMB division where the sales cycles are smaller. So weeks 7/08 and 7/15. So this is weeks of July 8th and July 15th, close rates inside 2 weeks, rates rose by 40% versus 23% in late June. So we're continually seeing the close rates from a lead coming in to them willing to sign to continually increase. June increased at 23%, July increased another 40%.
On top of the base number from the previous—
Not from June, but from the base number on whatever it was before June.
Got it.
But June picked up over the previous months.
Yeah.
And then July picked up again over June. They didn't share data from the last 2 weeks of July. Maybe they don't have it yet. Indicates acceleration began before August bookings, suggesting pipeline quality lifted mid-July. We— oh, week 722. I didn't actually read all the text. Oh, there's more here. Week 722, 100% of the wins came in less than 2 weeks. Week 729, same, 100% of the wins came in less than 2 weeks. Hmm. So those are— Fastest turnaround all year, even in small, small numbers. That's what I'm, I'm They're using like text language, like small n, capital N. I'm assuming that's numbers. Yeah, it's a clear step change versus early June.
That's interesting because August is usually— July, August are usually slower and it's picking up.
There are slow months. The summer months are slowest for enterprise, by far.
Which is interesting for us because it's been— it's been— I would say it's been better than average. And then it does feel like it's picking up even though it's August right now, because, right, like our Right now we're still, even though our main sales head is out on vacation, we still close. I think we closed like 1 or 2 this week.
How'd that work? You took a sales head from a competitor. We won't name the competitor, but how'd that work out?
Really good.
So they understand sales better. It's working.
Yeah. Yeah.
The pitch is tighter.
Pitch is tighter and things are moving along. And then it's always in my mind, it's always been like, you know, we get this, these leads, this gold, right? And it's like, But how come we're not closing more? And so I would say that it's been, it's been good. And now I'm like, okay, how, how do we get more?
So the sales rep that you took from a competitor, I know this for a fact, they get a lot of their leads from, I believe it's Clutch. Clutch is the site that ranks agencies. I'm pretty sure it's Clutch.
I think it's, their SEO is really good.
I'm telling you, they get a lot of leads from Clutch as well.
Yeah.
The last time we talked to a Clutch sales rep, they claimed that they were the largest spender on Clutch.
Wow. That company.
That company.
Wow. I didn't know that.
Uh-huh.
Yeah. Clutch is expensive. Clutch is great. It's expensive though.
Yeah.
I like the whole, you know, get emails and webinars.
Yeah, I look at it just, you do everything and somehow they end up coming in. Yeah.
Do you, you don't pay for Clutch, do you?
I don't know if we pay for Clutch, but I'm going to guess with no, because they require too long of a contract and we weren't willing to run it that long. We spend a decent amount on Meta. Meta does well for us.
For collecting emails or webinars?
No, for getting customers.
Oh, really? Straight up? Yeah, you do run ads. That's right. I ran that little cursor thing and it was just straight up retargeting or straight up cold?
Yeah, we do cold and we do remarketing, but we spend majority of the money on cold.
