How SBR Consulting turned forward visibility of their pipeline into a 44% increase in deal velocity

SBR Consulting is a specialist global consultancy focusing on growth and revenue acceleration. They work with over 800 clients to transform, enable and increase the effectiveness of their revenue org. SBR’s sales leaders use Ebsta to prioritize their pipeline to close more deals and retain more customers

Using Ebsta’s Revenue Intelligence Platform, SBR has:

• Improved velocity by 44%
• Improved win rates by 27%
• Captured 4,817 missing contacts (+25% increase)
• Improved expansion win rates by 30%
• Reduced expansion sales cycle 35%

 

The Problem

Before Ebsta, SBR lacked visibility of their deals and contacts inside their CRM. Details of their pipeline and how it was progressing were scarce. Insight into their contacts and relationships was limited.

As a result, they prioritized deals and engaged contacts with little insight into whether those were the right deals and relationships to be working.

When sales were working on new business deals, the effectiveness of multi-threading was limited because they needed more visibility of all the decision-makers at target accounts. Similarly, account managers had no visibility when customer relationships began to go cold – making it increasingly difficult to spot churn risk.

Because of the uncertainty, the accuracy of the forecast would fluctuate as decisions were made with a gut feeling instead of confidence.

 

The Hypothesis

Alan Morton, Manager Director and the SBR team needed visibility to begin making better decisions. Securing this starts with capturing all contacts and activity inside the CRM.

Once in place, they need to measure the health of the relationship with their key accounts, prospects, and customers. For this, relationship scoring provides a straightforward way to deliver instant visibility of their activity’s effectiveness – enabling them to spot risk early.

Lastly, to improve confidence (and therefore accuracy) in the forecast, SBR requires complete visibility into how their pipeline and forecast are changing. Giving their sales leaders forward visibility of what is coming down the pipeline allows them to spot what deals and accounts are at risk – enabling them to take proactive action.

 

The Solution

1. Capture all contacts and activity – turning the CRM into a single source of truth

The first step to deliver forward visibility is automatically capturing all contacts and activity in the CRM. Doing so ensures sales and customer success teams have visibility of all stakeholders involved at an account and all activity including those contacts.

2. Build stronger relationships with key accounts, customers, and contacts

SBR then want to improve the multi-threading of target accounts they are working on. Relationship scoring plays a key role here. Measuring the strength of the relationship with a target account or contact allows Alan and his team to keep their finger on the pulse of that multi-threaded approach.

“Whether we are talking about growing accounts or retaining accounts, from the retention side, we know how quickly clients can go from having a loyal customer to an ex-customer because key relationships have not been nurtured and developed in the way they should have been. One thing we know will help ensure focus is making sure those relationships are being captured and there is visibility so we can drive accountability with the people who are running those accounts to be regularly engaging. Not just when it comes up to renewal time – but also nurturing relationships throughout who are going to have an influence to either grow or stay with us as an organisation” said Alan.

With this insight inside the CRM, SBR can design sales plays and prioritize their time with every key decision-maker. In addition, their account managers can identify when relationships with key customers are waning and must be re-engaged.

3. See how pipeline and the forecast are changing over time

The final component of forward visibility is anticipating risk in the pipeline and prioritizing their time on the deals most likely to close.

Equipped with this reporting out of the box, SBR’s sales leaders can quickly identify deals and accounts at risk in their pipeline and take action early. Their pipeline reviews are no longer based on opinion – instead, they can lean on reports that show the opportunities trending downwards.

They can also spot deals and accounts at risk using insights based on their historical performance. For example, they can now see which deals have stalled, lack the necessary number of stakeholders involved, or have no meetings booked in the future.

So rather than spending their time understanding what is happening, they now focus on how to get the opportunity or account back on track.

Finally, SBR also presents these reports to the board to demonstrate how they are progressing towards quota, and they instantly have access to the insight to examine how they are pacing.

“On a daily basis I am looking at things like pipeline change, how’s the forecast. On a team basis, we have a weekly call where we are looking at pipeline. To do this we pull Ebsta up and look at the change, which are the key deals, which are trending up and down. On a monthly basis, we’ll do a deeper dive to pull out insights to present back to the board which show what has been happening” said Alan.

 

The Impact

Making better decisions across the customer lifecycle allowed SBR to be proactive in its decision-making rather than reactive.

Within 6 months, they were able to increase their win rates from 33% to 42% helping sales velocity to increase 44%.

Importantly, it also helped their account managers build better customer relationships increasing expansion win rates by 30% and reducing expansion sales cycle 35%.