Diversify Your Sales Pipeline

The first year Liz Espy joined forces with her husband Brian in their business, Doghouse Promotions, they tripled their numbers. The second year, they doubled that figure. They were growing steadily and everything was on track. Their clients included Disney, ESPN, Brocade, ABC, Saturn and Cadillac – not bad for a small promotional products company in Morro Bay.

“We were growing by leaps and bounds,” said Liz. “It never went down, we kept growing pretty much until we had kids. And then we said ‘okay, we don’t need more. We like where we are. We’re going to cruise for a while.’”

After taking a year off to have their first child, Liz came back on a part time basis. Things were still going well, but they realized it was different than before.

“We never really wanted more. We were happy with what we had, but we definitely plateaued,” she said.

At this time, one of their biggest clients began to restructure, and Liz and Brian became immediately aware of their need to diversify their client base and develop new opportunities. Liz discovered Collaboration "serendipitously" and said there was an instant connection after their first meeting.

“Part of our success story is that since working with Collaboration, we did lose a major client due to re-organization within their company, and that was about 50% of our business. But we were only in the red for one month. Overall we’re operating in the black! It’s been a lot of really, really hard work. We’ve both been pushed way outside our comfort level,” said Liz. “Just learning our WorkTraits has been incredibly beneficial, knowing where our strengths are and where our weaknesses are so we can understand our behaviors. We’re getting there.”

By creating structure around their sales process and implementing a sales pipeline and dashboards to monitor their progress, Liz and Brian were able to maximize their efforts and grow their business again, even when faced with a major challenge.

“We haven’t had to really be hardcore sales people before. Collaboration helped us learn sales tools while keeping our own identity,” Liz explained, adding how important it was to them to not incorporate a stereo-typical “sales” approach.

She said that a key to their new sales plan was to be tuned in to their clients’ specific needs, for example, developing programs with environmentally friendly products that are pertinent to companies’ internal initiatives. She calls it “knowing your value proposition."

The other key to their work with Collaboration was addressing their marketing.

“It’s funny because here we are in this industry, we support a lot of marketing departments, but we didn’t even have an elevator pitch. Working with Collaboration, we learned we had to differentiate ourselves. There are 40,000 promotional providers in the United States. Our competition is so widely varied that you have no idea what you’re up against.”

Liz and Brian are excited to take their business to the next level with many new initiatives and opportunities still ahead.

“We’re also starting to work with more local businesses. We really enjoy being so close to clients we can meet with more regularly. If we can help local companies grow and become successful here, then that’s helping our community and that’s an added bonus.”