How We Helped an Impact-Focused Marketing Consultancy Build $408,454 of Pipeline In 3 Months

We decided to help The C Collective outsource their outbound strategy, prospecting, data enrichment, analytics, reporting & sending infrastructure to hit their goals. They required our consultancy and coaching when it came to handling appointment setting internally to manage existing conversations and improving the results of their sales process to convert more deals.

1. Auditing the Business Development Processes of The C Collective

We started our work with a thorough audit of what The C Collective already had in place. We looked at the channels they had previously used, the volume they used to do, their offers, outreach angles, pipeline management, and sales process. We identified several key areas of improvement.

The most noteworthy findings were that:

• They were doing very low volume of outreach
• Cadences used had little personalization and were very long
• Messaging didn’t leverage their core differentiators
• Sales process was very direct & worked just for “in the market” leads
• Much of their work wasn’t sufficiently publicized despite being top-tier experts

2. We Crafted a 90-Day Marketing Plan

We took the results of our audit, and used them to craft a 90-day marketing plan for The C Collective. It included articulating their core differentiation, targeting strategy, messaging & channel strategy, pipeline management processes, authority building & content strategy, and sales process.

Here’s how we tackled each area:

a) Core Differentiation

By relying on our NPOT Methodology™ we zeroed in on The C Collective’s focus on the impact space, their environmental science consulting, and extensive domain network as their most important differentiators. As a result, we suggested several important changes in their targeting, messaging and channel strategy.

b) Targeting Strategy

The C Collective had an extensive network of partnerships with VCs that were active in the impact space. Once this was identified, we knew that it could be leveraged to build partnerships with more VCs in the impact space AND as a way to book more meetings with impact startups.

We decided to split the outreach focus, 20% on building more partnerships with VCs, and 80% on impact startups, while maintaining the focus on the UK & European markets. In Europe, there would also be a focus on the French-speaking markets as well. This was done to leverage the lower competitiveness in the space and the partners’ knowledge of French.

Our overall targeting strategy sought to expand The C Collective’s presence in the key markets it was uniquely positioned to compete in.

c) Messaging & Channel Strategy

While previous messaging was very long and complex, we wanted to simplify it. In a busy world, lengthy messages from strangers get tuned out. We also wanted to leverage a messaging strategy that tapped into the core differentiation of The C Collective.

We came up with two outreach angles:

1. A networking approach based on sharing relevant projects – this enabled them to advertise their strong case studies, while growing their already extensive network in the impact space.
2. A research-based approach – this involved working on a research project that would be shared with their extensive network.

For channels, the focus would be split between both LinkedIn and cold email equally – to provide for a multi-channel approach that would maximise conversions.

Once this was in place we created 2 Angles x 2 Target Audiences x 2 Channels = 8 Sequences. The 8 sequences were then translated into French to get a total of 16 sequences / campaigns that would be run over the next 3 months.

d) Pipeline Management Process

The C Collective used HubSpot extensively as their main CRM. However, HubSpot isn’t adequate when managing cold email or outreach generally. It doesn’t have warm-up features, it makes it very likely for emails to land in Promotions, or worse, in Spam, and it doesn’t integrate with LinkedIn.

So we designed a process that would transfer leads automatically into The C Collective’s HubSpot CRM once they booked a meeting. Before booking the meeting, they would be managed through other solutions.

We provided our own CRM to The C Collective for managing cold email leads. We set the entire infrastructure up, including buying separate domains to protect their main domain’s reputation, warming them up with AI-based human conversations to ensure they landed in Inbox, and giving them the tagging functionality required to adequately manage their pipeline. They would be able to manage all cold email responses from within a single inbox, even though we would have 10 email accounts to maximise deliverability.

For LinkedIn, we created a CRM solution for The C Collective that would allow prospects to be imported into it with just 1-click from their LinkedIn profile. They would be managed in this CRM, where members of The C Collective could tag them, takes notes on them, and follow their progress up to the point of booking their initial meeting.

Once meetings were booked, they’d be transferred into their HubSpot CRM, where they would be managed from that point forward. This made for a very lean pipeline management process, that was simple and easy to execute on, which was very important for Marie, who sought to simplify and reduce waste as much as possible from The C Collective’s business development processes.

e) Authority & Content Strategy

Since The C Collective had extensive case studies & consulting know-how in the space, we knew this had to be leveraged. We provided help to create a content strategy and optimize the LinkedIn profile of Marie, which was the main profile that would be used for outreach.

This enabled The C Collective to nurture their existing network much better, while building significant authority even with their new cold contacts.

f) Sales Process Design

And finally, we established a renewed, modern and consultative sales process. It was formed from at least 2 calls, and it would involve email automations that would send relevant social proof & information at the right time.

This was aimed at increasing conversion rates while modernizing the sales process. The automations ensured that the calls were never high pressure – most of the heavy lifting was done by the automations and the assets used in them, not by Marie, who would be handling the calls for The C Collective.

3. Setting Up Cold Email & LinkedIn Outreach Infrastructure

For cold email we bought multiple domains and set up a total of 10 cold email accounts. Then we began warming them up, with AI-based human-like exchanges through our warm-up pool. This was done for 2 weeks prior to launching the outreach to maximise deliverability.

LinkedIn outreach infrastructure was likewise set up, so that The C Collective would only have to worry about responding to engaged prospects. We warmed up Marie’s LinkedIn account prior to reaching out.

4. Getting Prospecting Data & Enriching It

One of the core challenges The C Collective had experienced was being able to locate impact startups and impact VCs. They had previously used some databases like Apollo, but were only able to locate a few businesses.

Our team leveraged 12+ databases and impact-specific lead sources such as magazines dedicated to sustainability. We built a custom AI scraper to analyze the lead data along with manual verification to validate it. This led to 98% accuracy in prospecting lists – we ended up identifying over 10,000 impact startups.

Once they were identified, we proceeded to quality score them.

What we mean by quality scoring is that we assign factors, for example “Location = London” a factor of 2, and location outside of London a factor of 1. This takes into account for example that London-based startups are likely to be better funded than ones outside of London.

We do the same for all other search criteria, and then add up the scores to produce a global quality score for the lead. We are able to then sort through the data in a scientific way and order the list from the best leads to the worst.

We ended up using the top 4,282 prospects in our campaigns for The C Collective.

5. Sending Out The Campaigns

Then we began sending out the campaigns at the pre-agreed volume levels of around 1,400/month combined over LinkedIn and cold email. This was uneventful, and pretty much in the first few days, the first meetings were already getting booked.

6. Debugging & Iterating

We provided The C Collective with monthly reports assessing the performance of every campaign, providing custom-data based on what they wanted to see, and recommendations to improve different aspects of the funnel. We made a series of improvements as time went on, which increased performance.

One challenge that quickly became apparent in the first month was that The C Collective struggled to take prospects interested in one of the two outreach angles used, the research project approach, into their regular sales process. As a result, our team was quick to audit what was going on together with Marie and provide a solution. The issue we identified was that while the research project was useful at identifying pain-points, those weren’t being leveraged to ask for a new meeting to explore solving them. As a result, The C Collective struggled to get these leads into their sales process.

We solved this by implementing a new process. Once pain-points were identified and the end of the call was reached, Marie would use the pain-points to inquire about the interest of those founders in solving those pain-points, and would then proceed to invite them onto another call to explore it, while booking that call during their existing time together.

This ensured that she would not get ghosted, momentum would not be lost, and the research projects could be transferred over into the main sales process. As a result, by the end of the 3 months of our project, the research angle delivered 67% more qualified meetings than the networking-based approach, including new paid projects.