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eOriginal knew something about their sales pipeline wasn't right

Before being acquired by Wolters Kluwer, eOriginal hired Sponge.io to scrutinize every handoff from Lead to Closed Revenue.

The solution: a Lead-to-Revenue Assessment

During a Lead-to-Revenue Assessment, we interview Sales and Marketing stakeholders, and independently analyzes system data. Within 45 days, Sponge.io:

  • audits the existing Lead management systems and process,
  • identifies and documents gaps and points of failure,
  • recommends new processes, KPIs, definitions, and goals,
  • hammers out consensus around Sales' & Marketing's roles and responsibilities,
  • and builds a funnel performance dashboard in Salesforce.

In essence, Sponge.io identifies where the funnel is failing, and ultimately answers:

  • Is the pipeline of MQLs/SALs/Opportunities real?
  • Is our Sales process accurately identifying real prospects?
  • How do we move real prospects forward (both in Marketing and Sales)?
  • Should nurture be owned by Sales and/or Marketing?

What we found: Rapid growth during the pandemic was a double-edge sword

At the beginning of the pandemic, eOriginal signed a huge partnership to process SBA (Small Business Administration) loans. But they didn't add Sales headcount. The sudden flood of leads overwhelmed Sales' capacity and found every crack in the funnel:

  • eOriginal hadn't negotiated SLAs between Marketing, SDRs, or Sales. When prospects missed meetings, no one hunted them down to reschedule. And if prospects languished in a stage, there were no triggers to route them elsewhere.
  • Reps prioritized SBA partner opportunities over outbound prospecting and inbound MQLs, leaving qualified pipeline behind.
  • Marketing and Sales used different reports and dashboards to track pipeline.

Sponge.io worked with eOriginal to plug the gaps. Together, they:

  • documented eOriginal's ICP fit,
  • implemented simple, self-evident lead stages,
  • negotiated the Marketing-to-Sales handoff, including SLAs for follow up,
  • agreed Authority & Need were the only BANT criteria needed to create an Opportunity,
  • met as a combined RevOps team biweekly to review a shared dashboard,
  • and hired an external agency to follow up with Leads, [re]schedule meetings, and create Opps before passing the baton to Sales.

The result: A transparent and effective Lead-to-Revenue funnel

After the new process launched, eOriginal:

  • followed up with every MQL within 24 hours,
  • grew pipeline 36% QoQ,
  • decreased stalled pipeline by 47% over the next 6 months,
  • and became Wolters Kluwer's highest-scoring BU on the Accenture Digital Maturity Assessment.

"Sponge.io audited how we generate Leads and manage Opportunities through our sales funnel. Their work has been outstanding and I recommend this for other portfolio companies."

Brian Madocks, CEO at eOriginal

Sponge.io specializes in:

Building Trust

We facilitate hard conversations between Sales and Marketing, so they share goals, carve out roles and responsibilities, and work from the same playbook.

Driving Pipeline

Whether it’s nurture programs, webinars, emails, BDRs scripts, or landing pages, we build demand gen campaigns that consistently deliver revenue.

Solving Tough Problems

We tackle weekly sprints for the grittiest and most confounding automation problems, so everything *finally* works.

Remodeling Tech Stacks

We implement, integrate, and optimize sophisticated MarTech tools, so marketers can automate complex processes and focus on growing.

Working Every Lead

Stop ghosting leads. We’ve developed a methodology to track leads through the funnel (and see how quickly Sales works them).

Proving Marketing’s Contribution

We build the KPIs, reports, dashboards, and custom attribution models that durably demonstrate Marketing's contributions.

Interesting in rehabbing your marketing process and systems? Let's talk: