Outsourcing Lead Generation in the Corporate Energy Market
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Generating quality leads is becoming a challenge for corporate energy providers. The competition is fierce and long contracts keep potential buyers out of the market for 1 to 5 years at a time.
The uncertainty caused by the pandemic, enhanced by the disruption of Russian gas supply, has made it particularly difficult for a leading corporate energy provider to generate new business opportunities in the UK.
Interested in outsourcing lead generation, they turned to durhamlane for assistance with bottom-of-funnel engagement.
Identifying new high-value customers
The goal of this energy provider was to expand its customer base in the education, farming, and manufacturing sectors, acquiring clients who require a substantial amount of power.
To support their long-term growth plan, they needed to discover the annual energy consumption rate of prospects and collect insights on renewal dates and possible future wins.
In order to make this happen, the company needed to differentiate itself from its competitors through a consultative sales approach.
Balancing quality and costs
The company’s research revealed that building a sales team in-house to achieve its goals could cost more than £100,000/year when hiring, training, management and sales enablement technology costs are factored in.
Outsourcing lead generation is a cost-effective alternative, and it’s a common practice in the energy solution space. Yet finding the right partner and devising a winning strategy posed additional problems.
Normally, energy providers outsource to businesses that run a heavy number of cold calls, favouring an aggressive pace over a more thoughtful approach. When conversations take place with professional buyers though, this strategy yields poor results and fails to capture actionable market insights.
Leveraging an experienced partner
durhamlane upskilled a team of five fully dedicated SDRs.
Approaching the market with a multichannel strategy encompassing email, social selling and cold calling, the team focused on understanding the prospects’ energy requirements and current contractual situation.
The goal was to deliver value in the form of a new, more competitive and personalised contract or advice on how to adapt to the decarbonisation agenda of the UK government.
Focusing on delivering value to their prospects, this strategy allowed the team to start nurturing relationships, capturing the renewal dates of businesses that are in a contract with a competitor and devising rapid responses to new opportunities and challenges.
Unlocking £40M in pipeline value
In two years, durhamlane’s collaboration with this leading energy solutions provider has generated sales qualified leads (SQL) with a pipeline value of over £40m, and more than £360k in closed-won revenue to date.
Learn more about why global leaders in the energy sector rely on our expertise to supercharge their sales by reading our case studies.