Talking to customers and seeing how they achieve their business goals thanks to Woodpecker is a rewarding feeling. This time I’ve talked to Patrick Baynes, CEO & founder of Nerdwise – a digital agency with strong focus on lead generation, and one of Woodpecker’s partners.
Patrick shared strategies that help them start, grow and scale their customers’ outbound sales efforts.
Read the interview below.
About Nerdwise
Nerdwise implements technologies and marketing systems alongside the processes and best practices to make them all work together.
They’ve successfully helped more than 500+ businesses work smarter and grow faster by removing the legwork and quickly implementing these technologies and systems.
They’re based in the US.
Who is Nerdwise? What do you guys do?
Nerdwise is a globally distributed team of marketers and customer success professionals dedicated to growing our clients’ businesses.
We are on a mission to help companies work smarter and grow faster by leveraging the latest technologies, processes and best practices.
In many ways what we do is considered digital transformation.
How did you start your company?
There’s a lot to the story, but a major turning point was when the CEO of a major energy company asked how I was able to acquire so many customers so quickly, and if we could do the same for his sales team. He’s still one of our largest customers.
How has Nerdwise developed since then?
We now offer solutions for almost every stage of the buying process, from initial outreach and lead generation to helping our clients nurture pipeline and stay engaged with their warmest prospects.
When we started it was more focused on upfront lead generation.
Who are your ideal customers?
We love working with any B2B sales team that’s still operating the hard way, cold calling and manually prospecting. It’s extremely satisfying to transform a sales organization in 6-8 weeks and watch their productivity skyrocket.
Lately, we’ve been working with a lot of IT and Cybersecurity companies, ranging anywhere from 20-200 employees. There is a huge need for their services, so we won’t pass up on the opportunity to take them to market.
What do you use Woodpecker for?
Woodpecker helps us manage prospecting and lead generation on behalf of our clients.
Let’s take a look at TechAdvisors, a mid-sized IT firm, and MSP with a 4 person sales operation.
Prior to Nerdwise, TechAdvisors relied on an SDR and Account Executive model where new prospects came from manual research and some lists from local organizational memberships.
SDRS would reach out 1:1 via email and phone, set appointments for the CEO and Account Executives. It was a working system, but not generating the levels of growth Randall East, the CEO, wanted to reach in 2021.
Within a week, Nerdwise organized and prioritized TechAdvisors go-to-market strategy including leveraging their existing database of prospects and aligning them with the markets they’ve had the most success with.
Each sales rep:
- approves their prospect lists
- approves their outreach messaging
- connects into Woodpecker via Nerdwise
- gets a fully automated prospecting system
Over a 6-week period, Nerdwise warmed up the TechAdvisors domain and email accounts with a steady ramp-up of outbound emails. The team earned enough credibility through high open and engagement rates, that now two TechAdvisors reps are automatically engaging 100+ prospects daily. They see an average open rate of 50% with an average reply rate of 15%. That’s a lot of replies.
Within 60 days, TechAdvisors scored dozens of meetings, won one big piece of business with over 1,000+ devices, and submitted two RFPs for huge projects.
Nerdwise continues to support the TechAdvisors team with a completely automated outbound marketing engine, driving qualified upfront meetings and opportunities.
How do you personalize your emails? What custom snippets do you use?
Messaging always starts with the audience. Once we know who we’re reaching, we can think about ways to customize our messaging for them.
As far as snippets, I think we mostly use First Name, Last Name, and Company.
How do you get a contact base? And how many prospects do you usually have in a campaign?
It depends on the target prospect/ideal contact. In general, we’ve found that it’s best to define your target(s) first by industry, company size, titles, and location… then decide the best source data to locate those companies.
From there, we have found human researchers with strong quality assurance steps is the most complete way to build a list.
What’s your follow-up strategy?
Following up is a critical step in getting a response and a meeting, so the value is extremely high. We do a number of things to ensure we’re following up with the most valuable prospects.
It’s always a good idea to leverage Woodpecker’s “send as reply” capabilities for email, and to dig into your analytics to identify top engaged prospects for further follow-up via LinkedIn, calling etc.
Do you A/B test? What do you A/B test?
Yes, we A/B test regularly, and perhaps, surprisingly, most of our split testing is around our clients’ go-to-market strategy.
We like to know which markets perform the best or better than others, and of course, we’ll test various calls-to-action and other content as needed to drive performance.
What are your best open and reply rates?
We have one client with literally 95% open rates and another with 45% reply rates. Our target for each client is 50% open rates and 10-20% reply rates.
How long have you been using Woodpecker?
A little over 1 year.
And why did you switch to our tool?
We like the no-frills and simple approach Woodpecker has taken. Many tools come with everything and the kitchen sink, and the last thing our clients want is another dashboard, another tool, etc.
What have you gained by using Woodpecker?
Woodpecker is the glue allowing our outbound sales process to scale up. I would guess 90% of the leads we get are enabled by Woodpecker at some level.
If you were to pick one thing that you like the most about Woodpecker, what would it be?
Our partnership with you all. The tool is great and the performance is on-point, but it’s the people behind Woodpecker and our partnership that’s been exceptional for us. We’re big fans and grateful for your partnership and support.
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