10 Years, 10 Milestones
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April 2021 marks 10 years in business for durhamlane. That means 10 years of enhancing sales performance for clients across multiple industries, both in the UK and worldwide.
But that’s not all.
Sales may be our foundation, however there are a ton of additional elements that have contributed to our rapid growth and continued success, from team building events to innovative services driven by thought leadership.
With this in mind, here are 10 landmark events to mark a decade of durhamlane:
1. Our First Signing
March 2011 saw the signing of NaREC (The National Centre for Renewable Energy) by Co-Founders Lee Durham and Richard Lane–one month before durhamlane was officially launched!
The project initially involved a bespoke Sales Training & Coaching programming, built upon our unique ‘Selling at a Higher Level’ methodology. So impressed were NaREC with our principles and approach that we were later enlisted to run an accelerated lead generation campaign on their behalf.
2. Talent Scouting
In 2012, we added a third service, Sales Recruitment, on top of our Sales Outsourcing and Sales Training offerings. This move was made after we identified a need among many organisations to build high-performing sales teams in-house.
This recruitment arm was initially launched as a separate brand to the main durhamlane name. However, this was quickly brought under the durhamlane umbrella after it became clear that recruitment was simply another avenue for driving sales performance, which has always been our key focus.
Since then, we have moved towards a primary focus on generating demand, driving salesand accelerating revenue growth through Outsourced Sales & Marketing.
3.New Homes, Northern Roots
From humble beginnings in a small office based next to St James’Park (the home of Newcastle United), durhamlane moved to a bigger building in Jesmond after three years in business. Having seen further acceleration in our growth and success, we’ve resided in Wallsend since 2018. Despite a tumultuous local economy, we’re proud to have remained true to our North East roots and have continued to create jobs for local, national and international professionals alike.
Our current home includes a large staff kitchen and gaming area, and multiple hangout rooms. There’s even a sound-proof recording studio (the office was previously GalaxyRadio’s regional HQ) where we host the durhamlane podcast, and the infamous durhamlane Blues Explosion have been known to rehearse.
We also underwent rigorous cloud-based digital transformation when moving to our current home. This paid off in a big way when lockdown hit, as it enabled us to rapidly implement a highly functional remote-working setup– this, in turn, led to us ending the calendar year on a record high.
4. The Evolution of DGS
Having started as a pure sales organisation, we’ve evolved over the years into a fully aligned sales & marketing services provider. September 2019 marked another step forward in this evolution, with the launch of ‘DGS’ (Demand Generation Services).
The first of many successful DGS projects was a new market entry campaign for Dutch telecommunications giant, KPN. This involved the creation (and translation) of content for the French, Italian and German IoT markets. The content was then used to generate quality MQLs, which were converted to SQL by our multilingual sales team. You can find out more by reading the full case study.
5. Team Building Events
Team building is something we take very seriously, which is ironic considering our days out are always a lot of fun. There have been so many iconic durhamlane team events held over the years that it’s impossible to pick any single one as a standout. So, instead, we’re giving them all a collective nod.
Sadly, our people were unable to enjoy the same level of social celebration in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic. But we didn’t let lockdown stop us entirely, and instead had some friendly competition in the form of the Virgin Pulse fitness challenge. Our people divided into teams and, collectively, amassed over 26.5 million steps!
6.Top #10Best Companies Award
Our company culture is another thing we’re immensely proud of, and so we were delighted when our positive working environment was officially acknowledged by Best Companies.
In late 2019, durhamlane was named among the eighth best company to work forin the North East. Achieving this required a Best Company Index score of at least 696.5 – this was measured through a range of criteria, including personal growth, wellbeing and leadership.
In 2021, we’re aiming to reach even greater heights by being named among the top 100 best companies to work for in the whole UK. Watch this space!
7. Multilingual Expansion
In recent years, we’ve helped more and more leading organisations break into new territories with demand and lead generation campaigns. This has been made possible by the expansion of our multilingual capabilities, and our professional team now comprises enthusiastic salespeople and marketers from all over Europe and beyond.
As we continue to grow, durhamlane is fast becoming the top choice for ambitious businesses looking to land and expand in new markets – something we’re extremely proud of!
8.The Full Works
durhamlane began as a front-end sales specialist, with a focus on opening doors into target industries/organisations and generating high-quality leads for our clients.
In recent years, however, our offering has expanded to encompass the full sales cycle. Though we still offer the same front-end focus, our clients now know they can rely on us to drive demand and nurture leads from that critical first point of engagement, all the way through to close.
9. Breaking into the US
After much success in the UK, we made the move in 2018 to expand into the US market.
Initially focusing on high-growth tech companies, it wasn’t long before our international client base was rivalling our number of UK customers. By combining our own proven sales methodology with additional investment in the RevGenSummit to further build relationships, we were able to win projects with the likes of Sodexo, AdvisorStream and Allego, the latter of whom recently acquired our friends at Refract.
10. Going Digital
When the Covid-19 pandemic became a widespread problem in early 2020, businesses around the world were forced to close their offices, and many workers found themselves on furlough or made redundant.
Fortunately, through much perseverance and rapid transformation,durhamlane were able to remain operational. And so, in an effort to give something back to the sales community, we decided to digitise our ‘Selling at a Higher Level’ training programme and offer it free of charge– thus the digital durhamlane Sales Academy was born!
Over the course of several months, we had hundreds of sign-ups from sales professionals all over the world, many of whom were able to upskill themselves while out of work.
We’re eager to achieve many more great things over the next 10 years and beyond by continually innovating and evolving.
