NetHunt is a Ukrainian CRM for sales and marketing teams targeting small businesses (>250 seat team). Its primary market has been the US for six years, leveraging major inbound marketing channels like SEO and content marketing. 
In 2022, NetHunt ventured into the Ukrainian market, aiming to establish a strong local presence.

Scaling without sacrificing process quality and revenue was a struggle for NetHunt. They needed an expert well-versed in B2B sales and the CRM industry who could add outbound lead generation to an already successfully performing inbound lead gen channel and adjust sales team performance to higher leads volume + increase team's efficiency.

Here're more details on the challenge that the team had:

1. Inefficient Organizational Structure

The company lacked dedicated roles for managing the client lifecycle. The same people handled sales, support, and customer success, which led to overlapping roles and ineffective processes and results.

2. Customer Success Challenges

3. Absence of additional revenue streams beyond inbound

Alex was chosen for his extensive experience in B2B sales, his systematic approach to optimizing processes, and deep understanding of the CRM domain. His proven track record in launching and scaling sales operations made him the perfect candidate for advising NetHunt.

Here's a quick look at Alex's background:

Before starting cooperation, Alex and the NetHunt team set four targets that would allow them to evaluate the effectiveness of the implemented changes and the obtained results.

Target 1: Optimize an organizational structure

Despite the NetHunt team achieving commendable results, they had an inefficient structure with overlapping responsibilities. It would affect further process transformations, so Alex prioritized this task.
After a series of meetings with a team and comparing existing processes with industry standards, Alex unbundled the processes and roles. He managed to build a structure that let each team focus on a specific client lifecycle stage.
Optimizing the organizational structure unlocked further improvements at each stage. 

Target 2: Improve an inbound sales process

The primary goal was to increase the number of SQLs. To achieve this, changes had to be implemented in three stages.

2.1 To filter the inbound leads and focus on the most promising MQLs.

To do it, Alex and the team first identified existing client profiles that match the ICP. Next, they created a set of characteristics and criteria to identify prospective leads. This involved expanding the lead registration form to gather more comprehensive data about each lead. Subsequently, they developed a scoring system for MQLs, which was then implemented in the CRM system.
This allowed the NetHunt team to focus on the most relevant leads, ensuring a personalized approach for their potential customers.

2.2 To improve the lead qualification process

After lead filtering, the team, along with Alex, started reviewing the existing pipeline and formulated the process of working with MQLs, which was implemented after several iterations.This involved identifying the correct stages in the sales funnel pipeline, defining what should happen at each stage, determining which data must be recorded in the system, and under what conditions a deal moves from one stage to another.
The next step was consolidating all leads through a centralized qualification by a newly dedicated SDR role.
Finally, Alex outlined the process for qualifying MQLs to SQLs using the BANT methodology and trained the SDR on this approach.
A more efficient qualification process let Account Executives focus only on higher-converting leads and showing them personalized demos.

2.3 To increase the MQL-SQL conversion rate by structuring the process

Alex and the team set up the updated sales processes within the CRM. The second task was to develop the best practices for working with opportunities at each sales pipeline stage.To consolidate the process, Alex conducted a sales workshop with the team: "What to do at each stage of the funnel: objectives, questions, rituals, metrics, and KPIs."

Here's a quick look at the activities covered in the workshop:

Additionally, Alex helped to identify key metrics essential for tracking overall and at each funnel stage.
One such metric is the Win Rate. Given Alex's deep industry knowledge, he was familiar with the benchmarks. Using these as a guide, the team successfully pinpointed the reasons for low performance and formulated a set of improvements.
As a result, the team ensured that all promising leads were centrally processed through the SDR, who then did everything possible to progress the lead to a meeting.
This approach led to a significant improvement, increasing the MQL to SQL conversion rate to 50% and the Win Rate to 60%.

Target 3: Systematize the customer success function

The next goal was to increase the retention rate by improving the Customer Success process.
At that time, the company's Customer Success function was fulfilling a customer satisfaction role rather than a revenue-generating machine. The first step was to start shaping a culture of Customer Success as a revenue engine within the company. To achieve this, the company allocated a dedicated customer success manager. Each CSM received a specific list of clients to work with regularly. This approach aimed to deepen the manager's engagement with each client's business, enabling them to understand specific needs, identify problems, and proactively address them.

Next, Alex helped to establish a client engagement process:

They also defined a list of metrics to monitor the effectiveness of the Customer Success function and each CSM's performance. 

Net revenue retention (NRR) formula

Target 4: Launch an outbound sales process

NetHunt CRM had ventured into cold email outreach multiple times but without success. The primary challenge was to launch a campaign that would resonate with their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and yield tangible results. The goal was to make cold email outreach a viable lead-generation channel.
Initially, Alex and the team focused on defining the ICP and segmenting the target audience. This ensured that our outreach was tailored and relevant.
Next, Alex conducted marketing research to identify key pain points that NetHunt's features could address the ICP. Based on the research, the team formulated Unique Selling Points that would form the backbone of their outreach content.
With Alex's expertise, the team drafted email templates that were engaging and resonated with the audience's needs and challenges.
Then, utilizing the robust capabilities of NetHunt CRM, they set up automated email flows, ensuring efficiency and scalability in their outreach efforts. They also set up a dashboard with metrics and KPIs to track the progress and success of campaigns at each stage.
After a series of tests (4,000 contacts, Open Rate — of up to 71.7%, and Response Rate — of up to 8.1%), the company identified the most performing region that yielded excellent, scalable results.
Also, the series of campaigns brought insights that prompted a significant pivot in product development to better meet the needs of the target audience.