How We Not Only Survived But Thrived
A look into how Introhive shifted gears during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic
Like many companies in late 2019, Introhive was chugging along towards hitting our goals with no idea what would come in the months ahead. As we neared the end of the year, we were looking forward to all that 2020 would bring: more events, more travel, more growth, and new challenges.
As an organization, our marketing spend and efforts were largely focused on the global events and tradeshow scene. Our teams were on trade show floors across Europe and North America at least once a month, and often more - it was our main driver of lead generation and as a fast-growing sales organization, we’d nailed our events strategy. One year into the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s difficult to imagine that world today.
When Covid-19 hit, our lead gen strategy went up in smoke - at least for a little while. As we announced office closures, our teams immediately began seeking ways to bridge the gap. At the time, we (optimistically) thought it would be short-lived, with hopes of returning to the tradeshow floors by Q4. Spoiler alert: Nope!
“Every problem is a gift — without problems we would not grow.”
― Anthony Robbins, motivational speaker, and writer
A year into a global pandemic, our business is thriving. In a lot of ways, we've advanced but in some other ways, we've gone back to our roots. Just like in our early days of selling, as an organization, we turned to our own platform to leverage the technology we've built and put it to the ultimate test.
Welcome to the Virtual World
In the "before times'', B2B sales were dominated by conferences, tradeshows, and dinners where we'd wine and dine our prospects while singing the praises of our account managers and customer success teams. In face-to-face settings, we'd hone in on the unique value propositions of our product. We lived on an annual calendar that revolved around in-person interaction to understand a potential customer’s problem and show them the solution we could provide. And, as a global tech company with a remote executive team, we were aptly prepared for the challenge COVID-19 provided... but it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a disruption.
Almost overnight, our 2020 plan was gone. Over the course of a few days, we needed to shift strategies and move our teams from in-office to at-home work. Internally, we quickly adapted to the work-from-home lifestyle and saw an increase in productivity while also switching gears to virtual events to continually drive demand and engagement.
Our virtual events strategy involved a mix of Hive-hosted webinars, roundtables, and mixers or meet-ups and sponsored activities with our past event sponsors. Not surprisingly, these events were well-received and highly attended as folks around the world began to feel the impacts of quarantine. Further, our global lead generation boomed
Relationship-based Marketing Engine
When our in-person events and sales enablement was shut down, we immediately shifted those resources towards our marketing engine. It's easy to underestimate the value of having your sales and marketing teams working in tandem to harness the relationships sales reps have built to drive referrals, create lookalike audiences, and find new opportunities but the impact of this synergy can't be understated. To support this collaboration, we turned to our own software in a big way.
“Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together.”
— James Cash Penney, founder, JC Penney
The Introhive platform surfaces and maps relationships between your current customer and prospect databases to allow teams to find the right connections. Referrals became one of our biggest channels based on the relationships we were able to map simply by leveraging our own software. Since our platform also provides insights around sales touchpoints–who's talking to who, when, and how regularly - we could also streamline the communication efforts throughout our customer's journey to ensure we connected at the right times. This meant that our existing customers never felt alone and our prospects were aptly guided throughout their buyer journey with well-timed communications and ongoing support.
Happy clients = referrals = business growth
Back to Basics–First Principles Thinking
No matter how far along in your company's growth, there's always a time and a good case to return to First Principles - especially when faced with a once-in-a-lifetime problem, such as Covid-19. We dug deep and asked ourselves, what made us successful in the first place? The answer was easy: people and relationships.
Since we couldn't wave a magic wand and send us all back to in-person events, we had to double down on our virtual efforts and get to the bottom of what they were really about: connecting. We leveraged digital channels like LinkedIn, which allowed us to gain direct access to decision-makers and buyers, but we also hosted virtual events like Cocktail Classes, Wine Tastings, and our Workout with the Hive series that allowed us to add value and support to our customers while staying top of mind.
While retaining and growing our customer base was (and is) important, we sought to find ways to connect in an authentic and genuine way. We sought new partnerships, onboarded new platforms, and looked for unique and creative ways to bring people together, though apart.
A new path ahead
As a CEO and co-founder, I feel incredibly fortunate to have not only weathered the storm but forged ahead. Introhive was able to continue to provide value to our customers throughout the pandemic and actually grew as a result of the changes to our business world. But more than that, we were able to learn from our customers to better understand how they leverage our technology, in addition to the other digital mechanisms we had to stay on top of mind for prospects and gain referrals.
As a purpose-built company, Introhive is easy to leverage and the impact our platform has on a sales organization is tangible. After seeing how our platform improved our own team's efforts, I felt compelled to set a goal for us to work with at least three charities in the Miami area to use our software (for free) to increase their donor database and frequency.
Finally, the Covid-19 pandemic helped us realize a more efficient way to drive our business forward. We learned that we can be successful in a new way, that our teams are capable of just about anything, and that our platform has more use-cases than I'd ever dreamt possible when we first founded Introhive in 2011.
Jody Glidden is the founder and CEO of Introhive. Founded in 2012, Introhive is the fastest-growing B2B relationship intelligence service and data management platform. The company was recently recognized by Deloitte’s Fast 50 and Fast 500 Awards and was named the 2020 MarTech Breakthrough Award winner for best CRM Innovation Software.