Professional services company finds $250,000 hidden in their phone calls
Fannit, an inbound marketing agency based in Everett, WA., had a problem. Their client, a professional services company, was complaining that there was a lead generation problem. With a unique insight that only CallRail’s call tracking platform could provide, Fannit proved to the client that the leads were in fact flowing in–by phone. The client’s real problem had nothing to do with lead generation; it was converting those phone leads into sales. Fannit utilized data and call recordings from CallRail to uncover sales conversion issues that, when corrected, uncovered an additional $250,000 in annual revenue potential for their client.
The Challenge
Tony Lael, Partner and Marketing Strategist for Fannit, admitted that before working with CallRail, Fannit’s visibility into a client’s inbound calls was relatively limited. “It was pretty rudimentary,” he explained. “We relied on the client to tell us information on their inbound sales. We would try to have that conversation often, but clients were not that forthcoming. Later, we found out these same clients were not tracking calls.” “Our visibility was limited to metrics we could measure: ‘Are we driving web traffic and are people filling out forms?’ Forms provided valuable information in some cases, but in others you need to know who is picking up the phone to call a business. and what the result is of that conversation.”
The Agency’s Solution
Fannit chose CallRail as its call tracking platform in order to deploy unique, trackable numbers that are assigned to different sources of inbound leads, enabling the agency not only to understand where leads were coming from, but also whether lead generation really was the problem for their services client. They also used call recordings to monitor how leads were handled once a customer was dealing with the firm.
“There was some resistance at first when the client realized that we would be tracking their calls,” said Lael. “But we responded that we would be able to gain insight on whether our own work was driving calls and answer whether or not those calls were valuable leads. It was an essential component of our strategy because CallRail helps us weed out conversations that are not relevant when analyzing call history.”
Agency Shows Client Superior Results
When Fannit analyzed both forms and the call data from CallRail, they discovered that in one 4 month period a full 60% of their client’s leads were coming in as phone calls. Below is a summary of what they learned.
Fannit Marketing generated an average of 76 leads per month for the client (307 total):
- 50.4% of the leads were generated from calls (monitored by CallRail)
- 67% of the phone calls were generated from organic search and recorded with CallRail
From this data Fannit could see that they were clearly generating plenty of leads for the client. However, Fannit also discovered that of the 313 billings made by the client over the same period, the average was only $35.28 revenue-per-service, which was frankly unacceptable for their client.
This prompted Fannit to review the phone calls recorded and stored by CallRail. Fannit discovered that the client’s staff was not fielding questions about high-end services effectively—and in some cases totally inappropriately.
“When we listened to the calls, there were revelations in terms of what their sales people were saying during these calls,” stated Lael. “We realized it was not a marketing problem, but more of a sales issue. Fannit knew that when a lead physically went in to talk to one of the service firm’s representatives, their close ratio was approximately 80%. The problem was that good leads were falling through the cracks because the wrong type of conversations were occurring.”
Lael highlights how important a tool like CallRail is in helping their client to understand how they need to change in order to improve their overall performance. “It’s a powerful discussion to have with a client to show them where the real issues are,” he said. “With CallRail we’re able to prove not only that we are driving qualified leads to the client, but also show the client how to improve the way sales staff and receptionists answer questions related to higher income generating services.”
The result is having a significant impact on the client’s bottom line–Fannit projects the client will net an additional $250,000 in annual revenue by implementing its inbound call recommendations. The visibility to make these recommendations is attributable directly to CallRail.
Agency Finds CallRail Critical To Client Retention
Call analytics through CallRail has made Fannit an essential part of their client’s marketing team. And the examples of success go far beyond this one client. “With CallRail, it’s very easy to jump in and see what is going on with the inbound calls for a particular client,” explained Lael. “_We use CallRail extensively in our weekly and monthly client priority planning meetings. In one case, we actually terminated a client relationship when CallRail showed us that the client was dropping calls and would not follow our recommendations to correct the situation.”_
“Whether you’re in a marketing or sales role, CallRail provides visibility into conversations that you wouldn’t normally benefit from without a very sophisticated call monitoring and tracking process,” he continued. “We are not selling CallRail, we are selling the value we can provide by using it—in that sense, it is easy to sell because it is an extension of what we do.”
