Fueling sales for a veterinarian dictation startup: 87 appointments and 8 deals in 8 months

Challenges

Talkatoo is a startup, so it faces common challenges that every IT startup in B2B market has to deal with sooner or later. Let’s consider each of them in detail.

1. Looking for a very narrow audience. It may seem that reaching out to doctors and veterinarians in vast North America is a piece of cake. But in reality, your research circle narrows to approximately a hundred thousand people. It does sound catching because the potential seems really huge. However, lead generation for such businesses becomes a good old search for a needle in the haystack. Thus, the sales process requires a thoughtful approach and professional skill-set.
2. Small in-house team. Like any other startup, Talkatoo started small but needs continuous revenue growth to stay afloat. They did a good job, and the company was developing as it should. But the primary goal of the team of 25 people was to deliver new updates to their product improving its features. The promotion they did on their own was rather crawling, so they admitted they lack a seasoned B2B sales and lead research team, so they turned to Belkins for lead gen services.
3. Busy decision-makers who are hard to reach out to. A regular day for someone who’s saving lives of fluffy patients can hardly be called simple. They are busy with medical routines like receiving patients and spend too much time on reports and organizing documents. So, selling a desktop dictation solution directly to them to spare them from time-consuming paperwork was challenging because they were too busy… with paperwork! The circle is closed!

Our Solution

The team of Belkins was incredibly enthusiastic about the partnership with Talkatoo. They initially came up with ideas about outreach, ICPs, and email templates. Besides, working closely with a client who was fully open to communication was very inspiring.

Our lead research and outreach tactics underwent certain transformations during the partnership with Talkatoo. Such changes are integral to our work, so we fine-tune each method according to the circumstances gaining priceless experience.

Below are the solutions Belkins applied to acquire high-quality appointments for the startup.

Changing the target personas

According to Talkatoo’s strategy at that time, we had to stick only to veterinarian clinics in the U.S. or, more precisely, in 29 states. Later, we expanded our research to Canadian vets as well.

First and foremost, we needed to figure out the right personas to communicate with. Obviously, if we’re selling a dictation tool for doctors, they should be on our prospects lists as the direct potential users of Talkatoo. But they were much busier than we thought – the appointments with vets didn’t appear in the client’s calendar as planned though they were interested in the software. So Belkins SDRs decided to “enter from a back door” and messaged the administrative staff of medical facilities.

When we started targeting managing titles at vet clinics, the number of appointments got off the ground. These were those high-quality leads Talkatoo was looking for. One of the ingredients of our excellent performance was the following step.

Tailoring simple yet effective templates

There is one great approach to crafting email templates Belkins’s SDRs love to use. They call it “lower-to-higher,” also known as a variation of a third-party connection. The matter is simple: knowing that a decision-maker is too hard to reach, SDRs mention this fact in cold emails to assistants or administrators. In this case, the opening can look like this:

Main Challenges We Faced

It was indeed a delightful collaboration: the market wasn’t unknown to us, the company’s product was simple, and we could quickly figure out which adjustments to make to our target personas. Nevertheless, we would like to stress a couple of moments we find essential for harmonious cooperation.

1. Winning the client’s trust. The starting point of working with any client is building communication bit by bit with their people of contact and related teammates. No matter how high your rating on Clutch is or how many laudatory testimonials you show to win a new partner. Their trust is something you need to earn. Talkatoo’s contacts were always open and ready to assist Belkins, but it seemed they weren’t enthusiastic enough initially. Still, a few months after we launched the lead generation process, Talkatoo acquired its first new customers, which positively affected our relationships. They started helping us more often, and we came up with even more terrific ideas working closely together. Talkatoo was convinced about our expertise and service quality, which encouraged us to go above and beyond.
2. Email templates approval. When we started targeting Canadian clinics, Talkatoo wanted to use only their own email templates. Such a situation could be a potential source of conflict, but not to Belkins. We were fully open to the client’s ideas and ready to try. With joint effort, we tested them for 2 weeks, defined their pros and cons, made edits, and brought them to perfection. Talkatoo acquired more qualified sales leads, which later evolved into productive appointments and closed deals.

Results

Belkins and Talkatoo’s partnership turned out incredibly beneficial. The fine-tuned approach of Belkins’s team allowed the client to achieve these terrific results:

• 7-10 qualified business appointments per month instead of the contracted 5 monthly meetings;
• Talkatoo managed to close 8 deals starting from month 3.

Key takeaways

1. It takes hard work to earn clients’ trust. Even if you are a rockstar in your industry, you must prove your status each time you sign a new contract. It’s absolutely fine when a new client tries out how competent you are. The matter is what exactly you do for each particular project to succeed. We at Belkins always focus on results because our partners’ success means our reputation. We enjoy building trusting relationships with everyone and acknowledge it requires much effort, so we are ready to do more to deserve this.
2. Tactics change is normal – embrace it. There’s no need to be afraid of changes to your initial lead generation method. Belkins team is always ready for such adjustments. Our expertise and flexibility allow us to switch between approaches swiftly and with no adverse outcome.
3. Discuss. Communicate. Unite. Each of our projects proves the simple truth – discuss even the details that seem insignificant as it is vital for your success. Working hand in hand, the result can be obtained.

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