Improved Sales Cycle by 10x

Challenge

When The AGL Group was first established in 2013, its main focus was providing international export services to the Forest Products Industry. However, in 2020 when the pandemic emerged, the uncertainties of international trade weighed heavily on their business and ultimately caused The AGL Group to retool its go-to-market strategy.

“Covid was the catalyst for creating a new revenue stream. If we were going to survive, we would need to diversify our business,” explained Stephen Zambo, CEO and Founder of The AGL Group. “This is when we decided that launching a domestic division to serve customers in North America would not only expand our opportunity but also provide a layer of stability for our business moving forward.”

The AGL Group soon learned that breaking into new markets would come with a whole new set of obstacles. “Our first challenge was determining who we should be targeting. Not only were we looking to prospect into companies located in the United States but we also decided to start exploring new opportunities for serving industries outside of Forest Products.”

Previously the team had relied heavily on conferences and referrals from existing customers to generate new leads but that strategy wasn’t scalable. “When I found ZoomInfo, I felt a sense of relief. They had exactly what we needed to successfully expand into new markets.”

“We brought on ZoomInfo in 2020 to support the launch of our new domestic division. In the first year, we brought in $800k in revenue for this division alone; in year two, we’re on track to hit $8 million. In year 3, we are projecting to hit $12 million. ZoomInfo is helping us tap into new markets and build a closeable pipeline at scale. Because of the success we saw with our domestic branch, we have now hired another person to implement the same process for our export division.”

Stephen Zambo

CEO and Founder of The AGL Group

Solution

With ZoomInfo’s robust portfolio of sales solutions, The AGL Group has been able to build sophisticated, refined, and targeted prospect segments to drive market expansion.

“Before ZoomInfo, we didn’t have a formal prospecting strategy in place. We operated in a traditional manner, leveraging existing relationships and pitching to prospects in face-to-face scenarios,” explained Steve. “Now, with ZoomInfo, we’re able to easily identify key prospects in new markets and export their details directly into our CRM for our sales reps to begin prospecting.”

Behind the scenes, The AGL Group leverages ZoomInfo’s artificial intelligence to analyze past won and lost deals to identify specific attributes that are indicative of companies who make up their best fit prospects. “ZoomInfo has given us a better understanding of who we should be targeting, helping us further hone in on the key attributes that make up our ideal customer profile,” said Steve. “This has been incredibly helpful as we continue tapping into new areas of our total addressable market.”

The Results

Since partnering with ZoomInfo, Steve and his team have noticed the immediate impact of high-quality data and access to greater market intelligence.

“We brought on ZoomInfo in 2020 to support the launch of our new domestic division. In the first year, we brought in $800k in revenue for this division alone; in year two, we’re on track to hit $8 million. In year 3, we are projecting to hit $12 million. ZoomInfo is helping us tap into new markets and build a closeable pipeline at scale. Because of the success we saw with our domestic branch, we have now hired another person to implement the same process for our export division.”

The AGL Group rapidly improved their sales cycle by 10X since implementing ZoomInfo just over a year ago. Now, Steve and his team are able to continually source new clients across North America and globally who are in need of logistics support.

“In 2020, we did 959 shipments in the entire year, and so far this year, we’ve done 3,300 shipments and are on track to cross 4,000 shipments. We’re also now the number two largest forest products export in the United States and are continually building up the verticals that we support,” said Steve.