The company
Rowe.rs is a startup, an online platform for sports teams to manage and distribute training programs, collect and visualize data and allow easy communication between athletes and coaches.
Based in London, UK, Rowe.rs target markets range from the USA and UK to Western Europe, Australia, and Asia.
Rowe.rs was founded in 2014. by former professional rowers, among them an Olympic Bronze Medalist winner, who recognized the need for an easy way to integrate technology and training progress.
The challenge
As most startups run out of potential customers from their private social networks, sales begin to stall or decline.
Rowe.rs needed support in market segmentation, presales activities as well as sales enablement.
Their goal was to start sales immediately without wasting time and money on setting up an in-house sales team.
Instead of spending time on recruiting, they wanted to only deal with sales and to minimize cash burn rate. So it was decided that outsourced pre-sales activities would reap the most benefits.
One of the common dilemmas many startups face is whether to invest in inbound marketing (digital marketing and advertising) or to go with an outbound strategy.
They had a product which created demand because there was nothing similar on the market.
When that is the case it’s usually better to focus your marketing budget on outbound activities.
We decided to test both channels and see which one works better.
Since this is a sales development representative case study, you can take a guess at which of the sales channels was more effective.
Find out how we came to that conclusion.
Defining the Inside sales process
You should always start your sales process by identifying the ideal customer profile and buyer personas.
When you know who exactly your customers are you are making it much easier for the sales team to close a deal.
Rowe.rs had a pretty good idea of their potential customers, because those potential customers were mostly people like themselves.
As most startups in their early, product development focused stage, they had trouble expressing their thoughts and views about the ideal customer.
They had the knowledge, and Market Republic had the skills and know-how on the inside sales process, and together we were able to identify our ideal customer profile.
The result
Were our email threads any good?
Glad you asked!
Our campaign lasted two months, during which we contacted a total of 1357 people.
Open rate peaked at 66% and averaged at 49%.
Reply rate was a staggering 23.6% which enabled 22 scheduled calls (10.4%).
This success was surprising even for us, as the industry standard is much, much lower.
However, when you have a good product and a professional to handle your presales activities you can expect great results.
