ClickCease

Case Study: Exceeding Industry Standards for a Software Company

Dec 1, 2020 | Appointment Setting, Call Center, Cold Calling

Group of four around a table in a meeting

The following Q&A is taken from a client review VSA Prospecting received on Clutch: 

Project Summary

VSA handled cold-calling and market research for a utilities management software provider, working through 10,000 points of contact around North America and making three calls per number. 

“They bring a great attitude to the project and are always eager and excited about what they do.” 

Background

Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m part of a group that provides software for utility companies. 

Opportunity/Challenge

What challenge were you trying to address with VSA?
I pulled together a list of approximately 17,000 different services in the US, and we performed an analysis of our competition based on that data. We knew the utilities, but we needed help actually calling them and asking what kind of system they were using, so we hired VSA to go through about 10,000 of those numbers. 

Solution 

What was the scope of their involvement?
They were given the list of people we needed called and given specific questions we needed to be answered. We instructed them to make three attempts per company before marking them as unable to reach, and they worked their way through the entire list in that way. 

What is the team composition?
The project started out with two members of their team and expanded to about eight in order to get all of the calls finished by our deadline at the end of the year. 

How did you come to work with VSA?
Other members of our company had worked with their team before, so they came highly recommended. 

How much have you invested with them?
We spent a little over $70,000 in total with them. 

What is the status of this engagement?
The work lasted from about September-December 2019. 

Results & Feedback 

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 
We haven’t completely finished the analysis yet, but their team was able to reach 43 percent of the companies we gave them in their first run through the names. The industry standard is between 15-25 percent, so we were very pleased with that result. I’ve suggested on our side that we have them continue calling the companies we haven’t reached, but the company is still deciding whether we’re going to put more effort into that. 

Before their work, we had very little data about the market saturation of our competitors. We could tell how much of the market we had, but we couldn’t tell how much anybody else had, so the information they’ve provided us with has been very useful. 

We anticipate that it will help us to grow revenue and increase efficiency in the future by identifying markets where we have more opportunities for growth and where we should spend our efforts. 

How did VSA perform from a project management standpoint?
We have a weekly meeting where we go over the results from that week and can address any issues the team has come across, as well as examine the cumulative results of the responses we’ve gotten. 

On occasions where they did encounter people looking for a software provider or clients who couldn’t wait until the end of the week, they sent those to us right away to have somebody follow up with them. 

What did you find most impressive about them?
Making phone calls is really never a fun thing, but their team seems to really have fun with it. They bring a great attitude to the project and are always eager and excited about what they do. 

Are there any areas they could improve?
I can’t think of anything I wish they would have improved. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?
I would suggest that you get the script in place in a way that both of your teams feel good about, and then let them do their job because they are really good at what they do.