Altura Ventures Usage of SweepLift’s “Ready-to-Close” Lead Gen System

Background

Altura Ventures, a company specializing in helping startups launch and grow using the GEM System—Growth, Engagement, and Monetization—faced challenges in lead generation, time-to-close, close rate. Their traditional marketing strategies, primarily connection requests and targeted ads on LinkedIn, were proving costly and ineffective.

Problem

Using the connection request method, the number of booked meetings per week was limited to only 3 and the quality was such that the close rate of 5%. While the LTV was a healthy $40,000 per signed deal with no ad cost, there was no way to increase the number of booked meetings due to the LinkedIn constraint on the number of daily connection requests.

So, the next step was to try a targeted LinkedIn ad campaign that drove traffic to a book-a-meeting page. However, this effort yielded only 1 booked meeting per $1,000 in ad spend and if the close rate was 5%, it would have cost $20,000 to get a new client (i.e., a ROAS of only 2x based on LTV of $40,000).

In summary, Altura Ventures had created a great service for startups with proven product-market-fit, huge demand, and a significant LTV per customer. However, it lacked the ability to cost-effectively scale the business.

Solution

In a strategic shift, Altura Ventures implemented SweepLift’s “Ready-to-Close” lead generation system, which leverages targeted incentives and an innovative walled-garden survey to enhance lead qualification and engagement. The system involved:

• A targeted Amazon gift card incentive for completing a short survey and watching a demo video.
• Focusing on U.S.-based sales and engineers under 54, who had CXO or founder titles, with less than 10 years’ experience, who were currently working in small companies with under $10 million in revenue and were interested in startups, LinkedIn was able to narrow its billions of customers down to 110,000+ potential leads.
• Creating a Persuasive Demo and Informative Survey
• Screening the Prospects to Ensure Only Quality Leads went to the Sales Team
• Integrating Results into HubSpot to Improve the First Meeting Engagement
• Tracking the Results of Each Meeting to Improve the Ad Creative, Message and Targeting
• Identifying the Incentive Size that Yielded the Best Results

Persuasive Demo & Informative Survey

Part of what makes SweepLift’s lead gen system so effective is that the prospects it delivers are truly “ready-to-close” because they have already viewed the best version of Altura’s sales pitch that was recorded by the company’s top salesperson in the form of a 1-to-2-minute loom video. Here is the presentation that SweepLift helped Altura craft using the StoryBrand methodology:

You’ll note how it makes the customer the hero, highlights the key problem, introduces Altura Ventures as the guide who understands the challenge being faced, outlines Altura’s system for raising funds, and provides a call-to-action. This is similar to what is shared in the first 10 minutes of the sales meeting.

In addition, the video is followed by a custom-designed survey that provides screening questions to qualify the prospect, business-case questions to better prepare the salesperson, and persuasion-based questions designed to pique the lead’s curiosity. 

Impact

The results were dramatic:

• Cost Per Meeting Held: The cost per meeting held dropped from $1,000+ to $500 
• Increase in Lead Volume: There was a 10x increase in lead volume from the first day of implementing the new strategy.
• Improved Sales Process: The integration of the detailed survey results in HubSpot gave the salesperson access to the prospect’s prior fundraising activity, company valuation, team size, target raise, etc. and this helped make the initial discussions more productive.
• Higher Closure Rates: The closure rate increased from under 5% to approximately 15%.

Notable Achievements

• Of the first five meetings held in the first week of the campaign, one of the leads purchased a license for a $10,000 per month service level and was signed within hours of initial contact because of the efficiency of the "Ready-to-Close" system.
• The entire process from lead capture to contract signing was completed in under 90 minutes. While this probably won’t be the norm, it was highly encouraging when the normal process from lead to signed deal is usually 90+ days.
• The initial cost of the program that set 12 meetings in the first week were fully covered by the revenue from this first client.

Conclusion

The implementation of SweepLift’s “Ready-to-Close” lead gen system transformed Altura Ventures’ marketing and sales approach, significantly lowering costs, enhancing lead quality, and accelerating the sales cycle. This case study exemplifies how integrating advanced lead gen technologies with strategic targeting and incentives can revolutionize marketing effectiveness and sales efficiency, leading to substantial growth and profitability.