Situation Revenew’s original sales strategy was to engage the manufacturer’s channel partners and get them to spend their coop funds executing marketing programs on the Revenew marketing automation platform (e.g. local dealers could execute co-branded banner ads, paid search or email campaigns to generate leads). This resulted in unpredictable revenue streams and excessively high labor costs from inside sales teams that were required to engage a large number of dealers for a small spend (average $500 per dealer per month).
Leadership To stabilize an unpredictable revenue stream that was not achieving sales targets, I revised the sales strategy to focus on targeting manufacturers and offering a monthly SaaS pricing model that was based on channel size and select marketing tactics (email, social media and syndicated web content). Then incremental marketing services (digital banner ads and paid search) could be purchased by dealers using their coop funds. This was a significant evolution for Revenew since the legacy model and value proposition for the company was focused on dealer based services. Migrating to a manufacturer based revenue model not only required management support, it also required a cultural and resource shift to produce marketing materials that enabled and trained manufacturers to use the platform.
Result The new sales and marketing strategy drove 3x revenues and 10x client list with a more predictable revenue stream. Additionally, it ensured that manufactures maintained active participate in their channel’s success resulting in a case study that demonstrated a measurable sales lifts of +10% from dealers that actively using the marketing campaigns (versus those that did not). This paradigm shift for the organization is now recognized as the foundational steps that were required for the company’s new momentum.