AGIMA Story
In-house outbound sales team construction in 2 months
From inception to an operating business unit
From inception to an operating business unit
- TwoMonths to set up a fully
operational outbound sales
department from ground up - FiveSales reps hired from 15 interviews
and almost 30 hot applications - FiveGTM hypotheses researched, put to work and tested in two months
AGIMA is Russian's largest full-cycle integrator of digital solutions, specializing in web, mobile, analytics, and machine learning areas since 2006. With over 500 employees, they've been developing data-driven web-services and mobile apps for Mercedes, Leroy Merlin, O'Stin, PWC, Mars, EMC, and others.
Industry: Custom Software Development
ICP: MM & Enterprise
Geo: US, EU, MENA
Industry: Custom Software Development
ICP: MM & Enterprise
Geo: US, EU, MENA
CHALLENGE
As part of its diversification initiative, AGIMA's strategic goal was to expand beyond CIS market and do so fast. Prior to engaging with Sales Unicorns, they'd worked with 3 well-known leadgen agencies each targeting different markets, but the long feedback loops and lack of tangible results prompted the leadership to look into building an in-house outbound sales department.
AGIMA's leaders approached us with a challenging task — they asked us to help set up an outbound sales department of 4-5 reps including researchers and SDRs for both global outsource and CIS out staff directions.
This was to include both hiring and onboarding english-speaking reps, setting up and fine-tuning automated email & LinkedIn tech stack, designing a reporting capability, and a framework for continuous testing of Go-To-Market hypotheses — all within 2 short month.
AGIMA's leaders approached us with a challenging task — they asked us to help set up an outbound sales department of 4-5 reps including researchers and SDRs for both global outsource and CIS out staff directions.
This was to include both hiring and onboarding english-speaking reps, setting up and fine-tuning automated email & LinkedIn tech stack, designing a reporting capability, and a framework for continuous testing of Go-To-Market hypotheses — all within 2 short month.
SOLUTION
#1: After designing job descriptions and initiating the hunt for the right talent within niche sales communities, we set out to build the technological core for AGIMA's outreach system. That included email domain and custom tracking setups, warming up the new addresses, procuring and fine-tuning the time-tested tech stack to ensure stable deliverability and open rates for whatever campaigns the sales team will throw at it.
#2: To get the right people on board, we designed custom test jobs that would immediately let us see if the candidate had the hard skill required for the job. We've completed 15+ interviews within just about 3 weeks and made 5 offers to the best fits.
#3: During the HR paperwork process, we shaped up a framework together with AGIMA's Go-To-Market leaders — a step-by-step process from research to designing effective sales outreach and testing GTM hypotheses from the ever-replenishing backlog. The framework was meant to keep everyone in sync, making sure the team doesn't fall into the spray-and-pray trap splashing the market with generic "we're the best digital agency" cold emails that hardly get 1% response rate.
#4: After the new hires officially joined the team, we initiated regular all-hands and 1-on-1 sessions to get reps up to speed as soon as possible. We were able to run 5 GTM hypotheses together with them to make sure they learned the mechanics and all the processes getting almost autonomous in their work.
#5: Final touch in the project was delivering a granular sales playbook that would cover the entire flow both for the trained reps to use as a handbook and for new hires to onboard at a lightning speed without introducing too much of managerial overhead for the GTM leaders.
#2: To get the right people on board, we designed custom test jobs that would immediately let us see if the candidate had the hard skill required for the job. We've completed 15+ interviews within just about 3 weeks and made 5 offers to the best fits.
#3: During the HR paperwork process, we shaped up a framework together with AGIMA's Go-To-Market leaders — a step-by-step process from research to designing effective sales outreach and testing GTM hypotheses from the ever-replenishing backlog. The framework was meant to keep everyone in sync, making sure the team doesn't fall into the spray-and-pray trap splashing the market with generic "we're the best digital agency" cold emails that hardly get 1% response rate.
#4: After the new hires officially joined the team, we initiated regular all-hands and 1-on-1 sessions to get reps up to speed as soon as possible. We were able to run 5 GTM hypotheses together with them to make sure they learned the mechanics and all the processes getting almost autonomous in their work.
#5: Final touch in the project was delivering a granular sales playbook that would cover the entire flow both for the trained reps to use as a handbook and for new hires to onboard at a lightning speed without introducing too much of managerial overhead for the GTM leaders.
RESULTS
Within 2 shorts months (July-August 2023), we managed to:
#1: Implement all the necessary cold outreach technology and processes including email and LinkedIn automation tools that gave stable 99% deliverability, 70%+ open, and 5%+ response rates.
#2: Design a hiring process including test jobs and success criteria, get 28 applications, complete over 15 interviews, hire 5 sales reps, and onboard them to nearly full autonomy.
#3: Research, test, and validate 5 go-to-market hypotheses from the team's backlog effectively putting to the test the system that we developed.
#4: Fully replace 3 outsource leadgen agencies with trained in-house sales reps that exceeded 3d-party agencies' performance.
#5: Documented all the processes and best practices into a comprehensive sales playbook both to help support existing reps and onboard new hires within days and without taking too much of leader's focus.
#1: Implement all the necessary cold outreach technology and processes including email and LinkedIn automation tools that gave stable 99% deliverability, 70%+ open, and 5%+ response rates.
#2: Design a hiring process including test jobs and success criteria, get 28 applications, complete over 15 interviews, hire 5 sales reps, and onboard them to nearly full autonomy.
#3: Research, test, and validate 5 go-to-market hypotheses from the team's backlog effectively putting to the test the system that we developed.
#4: Fully replace 3 outsource leadgen agencies with trained in-house sales reps that exceeded 3d-party agencies' performance.
#5: Documented all the processes and best practices into a comprehensive sales playbook both to help support existing reps and onboard new hires within days and without taking too much of leader's focus.
