Lanes Group is the largest privately owned drainage and wastewater utility specialist in the UK, employing over 2,200 staff in 25 depots and a range of utility hubs across the country. They specialise in reactive and contractual drainage maintenance and related surveying and excavation works, as well as delivering appropriate CPD training to the industry and its vertical markets. ReveGro has established itself as a loyal partner of several years, following the launch of a successful lead generation campaign across various underperforming group depots. In addition, we helped Lanes consolidate their national sales pipeline database and offered a reliable remote sales service.
Objective
The brief’s objective was to generate quality appointments for Lanes’ sales teams, ensuring they met their monthly targets. Managing the sales pipeline on their behalf meant engaging with influencers and key decision makers at the relevant touch points within the sales cycle in order to convert opportunities and create new business. The turnkey solution we offered not only delivered quality sales meetings, but also created lasting internal value for the business by posing and answering some inconvenient, but crucial questions. Whenever change is needed due to lacklustre performance, the biggest challenge for companies is to identify and address training and motivation gaps for their teams. ReveGro’s role facilitated this process by enabling some pivotal process changes that brought lasting results for our client.
Approach
Since Lane’s services are split between consultations and project executions, ReveGro’s approach had to be both flexible and very focused. With various phases to the sales’ lifecycle depending on the projects and vertical integration of Lane’s stakeholders, delivering fully-qualified appointments required skilful pre-campaign ‘profiling’ of target audiences. Lane’s vastly varying order values meant employment of different engagement approaches, from transactional, i.e. for training or reactive drainage maintenance services, to complex large-scale developments involving a number of sub-contractors. As project completion necessitated conformity to a range of procurement and planning procedures, the sales activity demanded a varied skill set with sector knowledge.
Lessons learned
The first priority we identified was finessing Lanes’ messaging to better resonate with their customers’ needs. Service fatigue was an important factor we reported to our client and together, we worked on creating a more personal approach based upon our findings, with a specific focus on quality values as a core strength of our client. This enabled us to gradually change perceptions in the market. Another key aspect of the relationship has been added value creation in order to supply ‘best’ opportunities with increased efficiency, cost of sales reduction and improved ROI. It was initially challenging to gain feedback from the various depots regarding the fresh leads generated, but ReveGro worked in conjunction with the management teams on a local and regional level to develop a suitable feedback procedure and thus ensure a robust real time data management process. This has enabled us to provide a follow-up or re-engagement service for quotation development, supporting Lanes in closing business.
Results
- £1.6m of lead value generated.
- Fully managed UK sales database asset.
- Updated, future proof and fit for purpose data.
- All leads imported into the client’s own CRM system in real time by ReveGro to maximise management post-appointment by the client and minimise client admin time.
As full competency has been achieved (i.e. comprehensive objection handling, closing techniques and product knowledge were fully honed), nearly 6000 leads have been generated by ReveGro, of which 25% are face-to-face qualified appointments. The remainder represent the various phases of the sales prospecting pipeline from direct quotations to presentations or quotations, depending upon the project identified. The relationship has demanded a holistic approach to telemarketing and lead management, including an inbound service.
The creation of a consolidated data stream and effectively managing and interpreting core data with full time QA resource to ensure best practise has well been worth the resource invested by ReveGro to campaign manage the contract. Given the scale of the contract, bespoke campaign reporting to meet Board reporting requirements was required, but that has gained us further trust and a deeper understanding of Lanes’ objectives. As the client’s ‘eyes and ears’, ReveGro continues to provide key marketing intelligence on market trends and customer buying cycles to aid Lanes’ internal marketing efforts.
