Strategically filling the sales gap for an energetic enterprise in project services

Business Biotics Group (BBG) delivers independent project management and consultancy services in the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors, helping clients do business safer, smarter, cleaner and more efficiently.

Heading into their third year of operation, BBG’s directors recognised that if it was to expand, BBG needed a healthy sales pipeline to support increasing overheads. For BBG to be bigger, it would need to think and act strategically. DDG was engaged to facilitate a Marketing Workshop and propose a move-forward strategy.

DDG’s Strategic Sales Director, Richard Duerden, explains. “We made a series of recommendations that included development of visual and text-based communications – brochures, elevator pitch and positioning statement. But the most critical was our strategy recommending outsourcing of BBG’s sales process.”

“Our early research showed that BBG’s Directors, Charles Ross and Paul Malouf, were direct fee-earners in the business, meaning that any time they spent away from core business diminished their chargeable hours. Charles and Paul also clearly understood that they did not have the expertise or desire to perform the sales or marketing functions themselves – they already knew that they were not good at it.”

“What they are good at is conversion of leads to sales. What they really needed was to get their feet under the table of prospective customers … then they could take it from there.”

BBG accepted the recommendations and tasked DDG with not just setting-up the inputs for the sales process (identifying and refining the initial target database of potential customers, developing the direct mail letter, preparing the mailing/communications schedule) but also with the actual execution of the sales process itself.

“BBG identified their first targets and we worked on a ‘hit-list’ of 47 companies, nationally,” said Richard. “To begin with we phoned each of the prospective companies to confirm contact details and elicit names of likely decision-makers/champions within them. We ended up with 100 names. Over the next 4-6 weeks we staged a national mail-out comprising a purpose-created letter and BBG’s sophisticated new brochure. The distribution was devised to fit in with the BBG directors’ availability to be interstate to meet with clients.”

Equipped with a sound understanding of BBG’s business operations, a DDG marketing officer followed up each letter with a personal phone call, encouraging prospects to meet with BBG to discuss their requirements.

The campaign really hit the target with two companies phoning BBG direct, purely on the basis of the letter. Another five appointments were secured during follow-up phone calls spanning Victoria, NSW, Western Australia and South Australia. For BBG, it was a big step forward – the opportunity to get face-to-face with high-potential sales prospects.

The success in this approach lies in being able to strategically fill in the gap – the divide between what needed to be done and what the directors could realistically allocate internal resources to. By outsourcing their time-hungry sales campaign, BBG were able to focus on their core business and then flip back into the sales process to put their close-to 100% conversion rate into practice.

The directors are thrilled with the results and confident about the future of their enterprise. BBG Director, Charles Ross, sums it up. “We have had excellent outcomes so far, with several strong leads generated within our first target market segment. The strategy has also helped us establish a strong client database. While we are still pursuing these leads, we are planning in the New Year to systematically target our other market segments. I can guarantee DDG will be tasked with doing that work for us.”


Testimonial:
“The best thing was that the DDG team understood our business – they very quickly grasped what we were about and what we needed. Our industry is very tricky, particularly our sales channels, so having a partner like DDG who knew what they were doing was critical.

Because of their understanding we were presented with well-developed strategies and materials that focussed on our needs. There were very few revisions required to any document drafts presented to us. The brochures they put together for us were fantastic.

DDG managed the whole relationship very professionally. We are very good at what we do – providing project services for pharmaceutical and other sterile manufacturing environments – and outsourcing our marketing and sales functions has allowed us (BBG’s Directors) to concentrate on that.

By trusting the expertise of DDG, we have been freed up to focus on what we do best, while DDG took care of the stuff we’re not expert at.”

Charles Ross, Director, Business Biotics Group