About Willdan
Willdan Group, Inc. (Willdan) is a publicly-traded company that specializes in energy performance for utilities, government & public sector, K-12 and higher education, healthcare, hospitality, data center, commercial & industrial, and multifamily housing markets. Founded in 1964, Willdan has grown into a business that generated approximately $391 million in 2021. In 2019, Willdan completed a major acquisition when it purchased the Weidt Group, an energy analysis and consulting firm.
Company Background
Willdan Group, Inc. (Willdan) is a publicly-traded company that specializes in energy performance for utilities, government & public sector, K-12 and higher education, healthcare, hospitality, data center, commercial & industrial, and multifamily housing markets. Founded in 1964, Willdan has grown into a business that generated approximately $391 million in 2021. In 2019, Willdan completed a major acquisition when it purchased the Weidt Group, an energy analysis and consulting firm.
The Challenge
At the time of contacting FullFunnel, Willdan had not yet built a sustainable demand generation program, which was hampering the organization’s ability to scale at a rapid pace. In order to reach the organization’s ambitious revenue goals for 2022, Willdan needed to establish a scalable outbound prospecting strategy supported by best-in-class infrastructure.
Willdan’s Net Energy Optimizer (NEO) product empowers organizations to strike a balance between achieving energy-efficient and cost-effective energy modeling for their buildings (existing or new projects). The online tool predicts building energy performance and provides clients’ stakeholders with accurate data regarding their construction projects to make informed, quick decisions to ensure they maximize both cost savings and energy efficiency. NEO is ideal for small teams with limited budgets, buildings that are in remote areas with limited access to energy experts, and for large teams that are trying to complete projects with short completion schedules or tight budgets. The Willdan team consists primarily of seasoned subject-matter experts and engineers with limited sales experience. Therefore, the team was unsure of how to best approach their target audience and how to keep key stakeholders engaged through every step in the buying process. Willdan approached FullFunnel to improve its pipeline operations process, from deal origination to close.
The Solution
FullFunnel began by implementing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system and sales enablement tool in order to allow for scaled sales outreach and full data visibility. Within the first week, FullFunnel had implemented HubSpot Sales Professional and trained the Willdan team on usage. Within the first two weeks, FullFunnel’s Sales Analysts began testing outreach strategies across a variety of channels to determine which messaging and channel combination would yield the best results.
FullFunnel tested outreach across multiple personas. After seeing little engagement from Willdan’s assumed primary audience in the engineering and architecture space, FullFunnel pivoted to a new audience and tested new industries. This pivot was immediately successful, leading to a higher connect and conversion rate across outreach channels.
On the pipeline operations side, FullFunnel took over the lead qualification process and held training sessions with the Willdan team in order to create an efficient sales funnel and ensure deals were progressing through with ease.
- Hubspot implementation
- Persona testing
- Phone, email, and social prospecting
- Sales process definition and execution
Results
FullFunnel’s goal was to generate one sales-accepted lead (SAL) for every 6.8 hours of sales execution time. Within two months of the engagement kick-off, FullFunnel not only hit this goal, but was able to generate a meeting in only 3.5 hours. FullFunnel’s October goal was to generate 6 qualified meetings for the Willdan team. FullFunnel exceeded this goal by 380% and produced over 20 meetings in month.
Within a short four-month period, the FullFunnel team has created a scalable, efficient demand generation program and the Willdan team has already experienced a return on investment
- Target audience, pain points, and optimal outreach channels identified
- Enhanced data visibility, segmentation, and attribution
- 380% to goal at the top of the sales funnel
- Over $100K of pipeline generated in 4 months