AuthenticID is a leader in identity verification, providing advanced solutions to prevent fraud and verify identities securely.
With a focus on innovation, AuthenticID offers AI-driven technology to ensure accurate and reliable verification processes. AuthenticID started working with Gungho in 2023 and recently we spoke to Kristine Champion, Vice President Marketing, to find out more about their experience:
We are a leading identity verification company with a long history, although we have changed our brand name over the years. About three years ago, we secured funding that allowed us to develop a marketing team. I was the first hire, and the team has now grown to five.
As an identity verification company, we have to be really careful about how we market ourselves. Historically, we didn’t say a huge amount about what we did because we didn’t want fraudsters to know too much about our product and we wanted to protect our customers. But from a growth standpoint, we needed people to know who we were and what we did. When I came on board, although I appreciated the past strategy, we had to adapt it to help people understand what we do and the value of our offering.
One reason I was drawn to your company, and the reason you were recommended to me by a Board member, is because you already had a strong understanding of the industry. This was great because I didn’t have to do a lot to get the Gungho team up to speed. When the callers came on board, it was clear you already understood the ID verification space. We went through a training process to explain the intricacies, but they got the value proposition straight away.
We didn’t have a business development function specifically focused on generating new leads. Most of our sales executives work with companies that have a minimum of $1 billion in revenue, so they’re not typically doing outbound calling. We needed specialists, that’s the main reason we came to you.
When we started working with Gungho, our strategy was changing. We had been targeting large enterprise opportunities, but we were developing a new product and wanted to target mid-market accounts. Your team was instrumental in helping us get the word out about the new product and about AuthenticID as a company, allowing us to reach a larger, but still targeted audience than we could have on our own.
We knew our ICP, but often the Gungho team members provided us with valuable insights, such as new pain points or competitive intel. That was wonderful and really helpful. Working with Gungho also enabled us to prioritise our strategic channel partners. We now have several integration partners on our list because if we can integrate with them, prospects will use our products which we wouldn’t have otherwise had on the list.
The leads were generally high quality and aligned with what we were hoping for. At the beginning of our partnership, sometimes a lead would look like a good fit from the outside, but after the initial conversation, we found they were a bit too small for us. However, as we continued working together, Gungho quickly developed a good understanding of the qualifying questions to ask to ensure a good fit. Eventually, about 90% of the leads were ideal prospects. What was also great is that our Sales Executives have their Top Target 30, and your team was instrumental in helping us line up at least half a dozen meetings within those top 30 accounts. Our sales executives were very happy!
We felt like your team was an extension of ours. You truly understood us and were very responsive. We had a couple of meetings a week – one with the marketing team and another with the sales executives, which was more of a strategy meeting. The communication was excellent, and we felt so sad when we ended the relationship because you guys had become a big part of our team. If we have campaigns coming up, we hope to partner with you again when the budget allows.
What I really appreciated was that any time a meeting was booked, your team provided a thorough write-up about what was said on the call, information on the company, and a link to the call recording. This gave us a lot of intel to plug right into our CRM, so the Sales Executives didn’t have to spend time on the research as it was already done for them.
Since partnering with Gungho, we’ve had over 100 meetings and seen a 20% increase in our opportunity pipeline. We still have opportunities we’re working on closing, but it’s important to note that our sales cycles are long, averaging 6 months to a year, which impacts the results. It takes a lot to get a prospect over the line.
The comparison is clear – from the marketing side, we’ve been constantly providing our sales executives with top-of-funnel leads, and they won’t always react to those. But if they received a booked meeting, which is middle-of-the-funnel, that lead converts more often. That’s why these meetings have been converting more than the top-of-funnel leads we traditionally gave them without having someone in a true business development role.
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