Relationship-based selling helps Ceros get 20X ROI

The business

Founded in 2012, Ceros helps marketers and designers create and publish exceptional interactive content using their powerful design platform.

Ceros enables customers to do it all without writing a single line of code.

The challenge

We spoke with Andrew Holman, Director of Sales Development at Ceros.

As a fast-growing software company that keeps creativity at the heart of all it does, Ceros needed to get creative with demand generation when the world flipped on its head in early 2020 due to the pandemic.

“Like most companies, we had to cancel all of our in-person events, which made up a third of our pipeline. We began looking for new paths to prospect and engage potential buyers. Kevin Croxton, our CRO slacked me ‘hey, remember those guys at UserGems? I think we should give them a call.’

Ceros was one of the earliest adopters of UserGems and had evaluated the product the previous year.

“We invest heavily in tech and resources to source high-quality leads for the sales team. We recognized an opportunity to support our efforts by tracking and engaging Ceros users and champions when they join a new company,” he explains.

The solution

Ceros’ inside sales team kicked it off with the UserGems contact tracking solution, which enabled them to track all relevant contacts for job changes automatically within a few days.

By combining relationship data and buyer trigger events with UserGems, Andrew and his team instantly saw the value of finding warmer paths into their target accounts.

“We’re seeing that from a cold outreach perspective, we can take a tailored approach to these [UserGems] leads. We can do in-depth research on what the previous relationship looked like, and it puts us in a better position because our outreaches aren’t so cold anymore.”

“Having the ability to know that this prospect is familiar with us from a previous correspondence puts us at such an advantage over other sales reps out there trying to sell to them.”

Andrew Holman, Director of Sales Development, Ceros.

Lastly, it’s equally important to have information about the end-users (designers) and the decision-makers (marketing leaders) in their sales motion. So Ceros brings product usage data into sales data to identify power-user contacts for UserGems to monitor for job changes, and not just their decision-makers.

The results

Ceros saw quicker response with their outreach and realized a 20X ROI in closed-won revenue in the first quarter of using UserGems to track buyer job changes. Plus, Ceros also leveraged UserGems data to craft highly personalized sales cadences.

“From where we sit right now, we are getting more than enough value out of working with UserGems,” Andrew explains.

What's next?

The Ceros marketing team caught wind of UserGems and created an automated drip campaign to nurture these leads until they’re ready to buy.

“Our marketing team is now helping us automate our outreach and engagement by including a direct mail gifting campaign to our highest-quality prospects. Essentially, it’s a congratulation on the new job, here’s a nice bottle of wine or something else,” Andrew says.

“If someone reaches out to you when you’re two months into a new job, even if you love the product, it’s probably not top of mind. There are a lot of objections we have to overcome like, ‘reach back out to me in six weeks. Having a nurture drip campaign when [a previous customer started a new job] ensures we stay top of mind [when they’re ready to buy again],” he continues.

"UserGems has been an integral part of our sales development strategy since our partnership began. We're excited to turbo boost this outreach program with both sales and marketing efforts to give our buyers a more engaging buying experience."

Alex Kelly, Director of Digital Marketing, Ceros.

Advice for other revenue teams looking to track job changes

For teams looking to leverage buyer trigger events, Andrew advises they put in some initial work upfront to make sure the data they are accumulating is accurate and clean.

“The ability for you to see value with UserGems is dependent on your datasets. Once you get it wrong, there’s really nothing the product can do to fix that. So, the value that we are deriving starts with us,” Andrew says.

Good point Andrew! We recommend tracking your most valuable contacts which could be your champions and power users.

“It’s important to have a set strategy in place for what the outreach is going to look like, what the frequency is going to look like, and what the methods of communication are going to look like. And then equip the sales reps to handle the objections they are going to hear. And finally, a drip campaign for the prospects you don’t engage off the bat,” he continues.

Book a demo to learn how you generate more pipeline with UserGems.