An interview with tech marketing innovator, Jared Cordes, Director of Growth Marketing Campaigns at SHI
SHI is a technology solutions provider that connects businesses with the IT solutions and services they need to support organizational growth, security, and employee experience. As the Director of Growth Marketing Campaigns, Jared Cordes is tasked with managing evergreen marketing campaigns across business units at SHI and delivering quality opportunities to sales teams.
What are some of the challenges you’re facing that prompted our decision to use Highly Qualified Leads?
We were looking to generate pipeline quickly for our partners, but were still working on developing materials to support traditional marketing tactics such as content creation, nurture messaging, landing pages, etc. We had a lot of content available, but not much that pertained to the specific partner campaign topics we were looking to prioritize. So, we were looking for an option that delivered quality prospects but with low lift from our team so we could start driving pipeline for our partners as soon as possible. [Informa] TechTarget came highly recommended, so, combined with the simple setup [Highly Qualified Leads] offered, it was kind of a no brainer.
[Highly Qualified Leads] are hot leads, so a priority for us has been to equip sellers with the necessary knowledge and best practices to act on these leads quickly and successfully.
How are you leveraging Highly Qualified Leads in your current workflow?
We’ve been passing [Highly Qualified Leads] from [Informa] TechTarget through our Marketo instance into our CRM for sellers to access. [Highly Qualified Leads] are hot leads, so a priority for us has been to equip sellers with the necessary knowledge and best practices to act on these leads quickly and successfully. For example, we created best practice documentation to help reps understand how to leverage the additional insights that come with [Highly Qualified Leads] leads so they can better personalize their outreach. We make sure that sellers know where to find resources and information about each lead we receive through [Highly Qualified Leads] so they are better prepared for success. The opportunity to strengthen the internal relationship between marketing and sales has been an added benefit of using [Highly Qualified Leads].
[Highly Qualified Leads] turned into an ‘easy button’ for us to immediately start funneling sales-ready opportunities to our sales teams in short order to start influencing pipeline, with limited up-front efforts required on our end.”
How do Informa TechTarget Highly Qualified Leads compare to other BANT solutions you’ve tried?
[Highly Qualified Leads] stood out from other solutions due to the low upfront lift for us. We’ve used other BANT solutions in the past that required us to produce or gather multiple pieces of content tied to our campaign’s topic prior to kicking off. Being able to skip that step and quickly deliver [Highly Qualified Leads] to our sales team, without the delays involved in content and marketing deliverables creation, allowed us to significantly reduce our time to value and start influencing pipeline right away.
What benefits have you realized from Highly Qualified Leads’ unique account insights?
[Highly Qualified Leads] turned into an “easy button” for us to immediately start funneling salesready opportunities to our sales teams in short order to start influencing pipeline, with limited upfront efforts required on our end. We were able to identify new contacts at key accounts, opening a lot of doors that were previously closed, which really helped us leave no stone unturned. Our sales cycle can take anywhere from 6 months to a year, so we’re still in the earlier stages of acting on [Highly Qualified Leads], but the feedback from sales leadership and our inside sellers has been that [Highly Qualified Leads], with their detailed level of account insights, have introduced new contacts and provided further details on existing accounts, to support positive conversations related to device projects. So it’s early innings, but we’re already influencing pipeline with [Highly Qualified Leads].
Tell us about your experience working with Informa TechTarget.
It’s been fantastic – I can’t say enough about everybody at [Informa] TechTarget! They’ve been super organized, maintained frequent touchpoints, and gone above and beyond to proactively deliver additional insights beyond what’s included in the upfront package to better inform our outreach strategy.
