AK Ops drives 4x meetings & 7x opportunities for their clients

Challenge

As a fractional sales and marketing firm, AK Ops is ultimately tasked
with building more pipeline with better conversion rates for its
clients. AK Ops believes in a holistic approach, delivering marketing
automation, pipeline generation and sales enablement processes that
provide its clients with a scalable engine for success.

AK Ops’ model centers around letting inbound engagement
determine its clients’ outbound efforts. The firm recognizes that sales
headcount is a challenge and sales representatives’ time is limited,
so it focuses on maximizing reps’ at-bats by putting them in the right
place at the right time and letting automation do the rest.

“Say your sales representative has 3 hours of prospecting time per
day, do you really want them cold prospecting on LinkedIn or cold
calls, or do you want them following up on those that have engaged
the most or expressing intent in the demand engine?,” says Amy Kohl,
CEO & Founder of AK Operations.

In order to deliver more booked meetings, qualified deals, and wins in
a challenging market, the firm knows its clients must have not only the
right MAT and CRM tools but, critically, they must also have a robust
and reliable database.

AK Ops’ clients aren’t always initially receptive to the idea of
purchasing data on top of MAT and CRM costs but the firm is insistent
that data quality is a top priority.

“The discipline of what my team is doing is only as good as the data
we feed it. You can’t just solve the campaign and the nurture and the
sales strategy problem without addressing the fuel that you’re giving
it,” explains Kohl. “My first year of business was really challenging. I
churned more customers than I should have because I wasn’t selling
upfront that they needed to have a healthy database and that’s where
ZoomInfo is a game-changer.”

“With ZoomInfo we can deliver a controlled strategy so our clients have confidence they’re fishing from a stocked pond of right-fit contacts and will hit or exceed their revenue targets.”

Amy Kohl
CEO & Founder, AK Operations

Solution

One of the first steps AK Ops takes with its clients is comparing data
quality between the client’s existing CRM and a seed list generated
from ZoomInfo. AK Ops launches an identical email campaign to lists
from each database and compares conversion rates.

“That’s when our clients see the conversion rates just flip,” says Kohl.
“The comparison between our clients’ dusty databases that they’ve
collected over the years versus data we get from ZoomInfo
is undeniable.”

In the first month, AK Ops typically sees daily engagement from 1% of
contacts pulled from ZoomInfo. This number grows to 2-3% by month
three. AK Ops also maintains a sender score north of 90% for emails
sent to ZoomInfo contacts.

“Then it just turns into like a math problem,” explains Kohl. “The more
contacts I source from ZoomInfo, the more pipeline I have because
I have this engine with consistent campaign conversion rates for
making opportunities from the AK Ops partnership. And then it’s not
a question of if the client will purchase their own ZoomInfo database,
but rather which package should they buy.”

Once AK Ops’ clients have access to the ZoomInfo platform, “that’s
when the real fun begins,” says Kohl.

AK Ops creates a master list of contacts and accounts in the client’s
new ZoomInfo database to demonstrate the total addressable market
(TAM) for their solutions. This TAM list, often hundred of thousands
if not millions of contacts, then informs the marketing strategy and
justifies revenue targets and benchmarks moving forward. AK Ops can
then pick off target segments and test their clients’ buyer personas
to identify gaps in their existing go to market strategy. The firm
also leverages ZoomInfo’s WebSights tool to reveal the identities of
organizations visiting their clients’ websites, utilizing the tool’s
visualized analytics to inform more targeted, account-based campaigns.

The Results

With a clear TAM, a strong go to market strategy, and accurate data
with a global reach established through ZoomInfo, AK Ops is able to
drive significantly improved engagement for their clients. Within six
months of an average new client relationship, AK Ops can drive a
300% increase in booked meetings, 600% lift in qualified deals, and
150% more closed deals.

“One of our most successful ZoomInfo + AK Ops clients had $1.4M in
proposals out in the first 60 days running on ZoomInfo data and our
program. Then closed over $3M sourced from ZoomInfo before their
subscription renewal,” says Kohl.

Kohl has also experienced improved retention rates for sales
representatives at her clients’ organizations after they
adopt ZoomInfo.

“Having ZoomInfo helps retain sales people,” says Kohl, “because
sales reps don’t just care about money. They care about taking the
best job operationally. Sales reps don’t want to grind day after day,
spinning their wheels on bad data.”

In closing, Kohl says, “AK Operations believes in building a demand
generation engine that will serve our clients for life. With ZoomInfo
we can deliver a controlled strategy so our clients have confidence
they’re fishing from a stocked pond of right-fit contacts and will hit or
exceed their revenue targets.”