Since acquiring customers through the method of hiring more salespeople was lacking the speed and scalability required for hyper growth, Salesforce turned to outbound lead generation with the main goal of consistently closing large numbers of big deals in a relatively short amount of time and with limited resources.
In order to achieve that, Salesforce turned to Aaron Ross who, together with his team, created a low cost, scalable and expandable sales process dubbed Cold Calling 2.0. What they did was to create a flow of downward referrals from C-level management to the end user. They first emailed C-level executives within companies, kindly asking them to connect them with the right person (one who could find value in the product) in their organisation for a first conversation. The team of Aaron Ross was responsible for creating these opportunities with the decision makers. They handed over the opportunities to Salesforce’s account executives who then closed the deals.
In short, the whole outbound lead generation process relied on sending well-written mass emails and follow-ups to high-level executives, get the right referrals and then convert the latter from sales leads into clients.
Key takeaway
When it comes to sales, out-of-the-box approaches are the winning ones. For a startup or a company that’s just taking off, resources are always limited so hiring more salespeople to close deals in a short time-frame will soon prove unsustainable. Sales staff need to be trained about the product and the process which requires time and, of course, salaries. The approach that Aaron Ross deployed significantly cut down the amount of time required to train a sales staff by allowing them to deal with more opportunities in a shorter amount of time. In order to get an inimitable advantage in sales, what you need is a bold and creative approach and a tool that would empower your existing sales team to deliver faster, higher qualified leads. If that means reaching out to hundreds of C-level executives out there just to get directed to the right people, so be it!
Before moving on to the next case study, I would like to say that although the downward referral tactic proved to be invaluable for Salesforce and hundreds of companies afterwards, it now suffers from being overused. In sales, it pays to do something others are not yet doing.