How has your experience of working with Gungho been so far?
It’s been awesome and the true definition of partnership and collaboration. In my last sales leadership role, we did lead generation internally. Working with Gungho has been great because we were able to use your expertise to figure out who our true target market was. Early on, you helped us realise what types of organisations were appropriate and also what size and industries made sense for us. As we’ve gone through that, we’ve been able to strike the ones that don’t and now we’ve gone from a free-for-all to a defined list of appropriate accounts. So now we only focus on those and don’t call the organisations who don’t have a need for our service.
For your team initially, was finding the right prospects and accounts to speak to a challenge?
Every meeting we get is incredibly important. We can’t afford to have meetings where the company can’t warrant our solution because then we’ve wasted one of our three or four meetings that week.
For us, banks were the easiest to figure out and they have become pretty straightforward, but we also serve different industries. For example, Gungho was getting us a lot of meetings with decision-makers within asset management companies, and we quickly learned they don’t have the same struggles as banks, only a handful of them do, so we were able to cut our target list down to 20 appropriate asset managers instead of 200. Another example is Casinos which had been very hard for us to get into. Gungho got us into two and we quickly learned casinos are not our area of expertise so now we don’t target them. We’ve been able to really delineate.
You’ve also exposed us to some of the FinTech and money transfer payment firms that we didn’t think would be a fit but are. You have helped us expand our horizons. It’s been helpful on that side where we’ve been able to add in accounts and then subtract the ones that just weren’t going to be a fit.
What challenges did managing lead generation give you that you don’t have working with Gungho?
It’s easier working with an outsourced specialist. From first-hand experience of managing callers internally, you have to deal with the fact that some of those callers don’t want to be doing that job. They view it as a pathway to a promotion which means you have a revolving door that never stops. I had to do a lot more managing than I wanted to for that type of role.
Working with someone who has expertise, specifically in RegTech, which is obviously a niche industry, has been critical because at my last firm, you get a good caller and then those people always got promoted. Then the next person comes in and you have to train them and basically start over. All the time that you invest into that training process getting them to grips with everything is very time-consuming.
How has the experience been in terms of getting the Gungho team to understand Silent Eight as an organisation and the products that you provide, on an ongoing basis?
It’s been good. We just did a session a few weeks ago as a refresher. It’s great because we’ve had some of the same people with us from the beginning and they’ve learned a lot about the product and to be honest, we have too. We’ve had a lot of feedback about the product, and we’ve tightened the message to make it a little simpler. I can tell you all find the product interesting, as we do. It’s not something that everybody does and it’s not something that everyone’s heard of. We get a lot of intrigue from your staff, and I think that’s been a huge positive in them being able to sell the product confidently.
How would you describe the overall professionalism and communication of the Gungho team?
I’ve never once gotten negative feedback from the work or conversations Gungho has had on our behalf. In my past life managing internal lead generation teams that was something that would happen on occasion. A customer would say, please don’t have that person contact me, they’re harassing me, they won’t leave me alone, they’re calling every person on my team. I’ve not seen that happen once while I have worked with Gungho.
I like the way that if a meeting needs to be rescheduled or someone says, ‘not now, but in six months’, or ‘not now but next quarter’, you stay on top of it. The people Gungho are contacting on our behalf are director-level and above. If someone is a Managing Director at a Fortune 500 bank, there’s got to be a level of professionalism there for that person to take the call. You get us some very high-level people on calls. They are our ideal person to talk to, not three levels below. That’s been a plus. I like that you ask for feedback on every meeting. You truly want to know how the meeting went. I can tell the Gungho cares if the meeting happened and if is it successful. I think the professionalism overall has been very positive.
How does it feel to work with an outsourced lead generation company?
Our team and your team talk back and forth so it doesn’t feel like a vendor-customer relationship. It feels like we’re working together, and your team are really invested in getting our ideal appointments. We had it with PayPal and Google. We created this scorecard of the huge accounts that we just couldn’t break into. When you got the first PayPal meeting, we were able to celebrate with the team members who got the meeting. I always send them a note saying I know how hard that is. It took 200 calls and so much hard work but it’s such an important thing when that happens. These meetings are not easy to get. We do our own outbound marketing but it’s impossible for us just through email campaigns or LinkedIn to get a meeting. It’s brutal to get a response.
Almost every deal has started with Gungho. If we didn’t have Gungho in America, I don’t know how else we would be able to do our job apart from conferences. We only go to three or four conferences a year so right now, conferences and Gungho are our sole sources of generating leads or getting a meeting. Our work with you is imperative.
What would you say to other companies thinking of using Gungho?
I would say first and foremost you need to decide whether working with a partner or trying to do it “in house” is best for your organisation. If you decide that working with a partner is the best route, make sure you look at several options. When you find a great partner, like Gungho has been to us at Silent Eight, they stand out in the crowd. Make sure you commit fully and truly understand what each party is proposing that they can deliver. Once you get up and running, don’t lose sight of the importance of refresher trainings, strategy calls, and overall accountability, it only helps in the end.
Whether you’re a start-up or a corporation, global lead generation is what we do. Call us on +44 (0) 203 326 8150
