Smartling focuses on warm leads to optimize its sales strategy and hits 44X ROI in 11 months

What's on Grace Feeney's priority list? Make sure her sales team is more strategic and targeted in their approach.

“I think a bit more strategic work does pay off. And we like utilizing UserGems more because it's a warmer lead. And you get an in much quicker. So, instilling that mindset instead of ‘I sent 400 emails today,’ therefore I should get results.”

“It keeps us more focused on the top accounts instead of always focusing on the small tech companies. These can be easy wins, but we want the big, global brands as well,” Grace says.

Grace is the Global Manager of Sales Development at Smartling, a global leader in translation management. Their translation management platform helps brands automate, manage, and translate content to deliver culturally relevant brand experiences that facilitate global growth. 

Grace joined Smartling in December 2019. And between then and now, she’s had a series of rapid-fire promotions - from SDR to Senior SDR within a year; then she was promoted to Team Lead, EMEA. And now, she’s the Global Manager of Sales Development in the United States and EMEA.

We sat down with Grace to discuss how UserGems contributes to her growth, her team’s success, and how they’re using UserGems leads today. 

Smartling

Warm leads = Money

“I’m managing five reps in EMEA and seven reps in the United States across three or four time zones. And we’re still hiring more,” Grace says.

But despite the fast growth, hiring, and ramping, “we did double our numbers in February compared to November, which was amazing,” she adds. 

“We prioritize UserGems accounts because it's a warmer lead. They know who we are. So, it already breaks down that barrier. It saves me a bit more time. This is why I used UserGems a lot when I was an SDR,” Grace continues. 

How Smartling uses UserGems leads today

For Grace, the early days of working with UserGems leads were very much “I just need to plug something in because a lot was going on at that point.”

But UserGems has quickly become an essential part of Smartling’s strategic account-based prospecting approach.

“When an SDR gets UserGems leads, those leads are automatically channeled into two separate sequences in Outreach. One sequence is for leads who used to work at our customer but moved to a different company (i.e., previous customers). The other is for those who have spoken to us in the past but weren’t a customer (i.e., previous prospects),” Grace explains. 

“So, when the new batch of leads come through, the SDRs go to their Tasks in Salesforce and send them out. It’s all very automated and saves our team time,” She adds. 

And today, instead of resting on their oars, Smartling is working to improve the UserGems sales motion. 

“We’re building an outreach library. I’m working with the team to update the email sequences for past prospects and customers. We’re adding more channels and touch-points in these sequences. So far, they’ve been mostly emails, so, we’re adding more call steps. We’re also trying to get the messaging more playful - with gifs - as everyone is getting email fatigued,” Grace adds. 

Tips for companies planning to adopt the UserGems sales motion

“Make sure your Salesforce data is clean,” Grace says. 

Pro Tip: UserGems also offers CRM Hygiene 

“Setting up the triggers and defining your UserGems – whether they’re previous prospects or previous customers – to route them to different sequences is fundamental. This will drive significant results from your UserGems leads. Also, I’ve noticed recently that shorter sequences are performing better than our longer ones,” she adds. 

And that's it, folks.

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