League, an innovative employee benefits platform, needed to set itself apart in a crowded marketplace. Using Salesloft, the sales team has seen a 2X increase in appointments and more than doubled overall revenue growth. After employing cadences and personalization, the new U.S. team grew its customer base by 133%.
Who Is League?
League helps companies of all sizes provide their employees with better, more competitive employee benefit solutions. The company’s mission is to change the way organizations think about benefits for their employees, especially with regard to healthcare. League is viewed as an innovator in helping employees live happier, healthier lives and is trusted by brands like Unilever, Shopify, Uber, and more.
Challenge: Stand Apart in a Crowded Marketplace
Like many industries, the employee benefits marketplace is a noisy one. Decision makers — typically the CFO, CEO, or HR leadership for an organization — are exposed to an infinite range of competing providers. To successfully position itself as the best choice for buyers, League has focused on building relationships for the long-term. The company invests its energy in making a good first impression and demonstrating from the beginning that it’s different from other providers.
League also understands that converting prospects to a new benefits platform is not a one-call close. It’s essential for the sales team to educate decision-makers about what separates League from the rest of the pack. They need to demonstrate to buyers that they understand the challenges they face. Sales reps must communicate that they genuinely want to help reduce costs and provide better benefits for employees.
When Steve Dinner joined the company to launch its U.S. sales operations as Director of Business Development, he knew League’s audience required a better buying journey. His team would need to be more authentic and sincere in all of its efforts. Reps would have to use personalization across the entire sales cycle, starting with cadences.
With better personalization, League could reach inundated executives in unique ways that weren’t possible previously. As an added bonus, new hires would benefit from the cadences and workflow processes.
Clearing these hurdles alone would be challenging enough. But Steve had no prior experience using Salesloft, which League had chosen before his arrival. Coming from an environment that lacked a Sales Engagement solution, Steve quickly realized the pain of not having one.
The first obstacle he needed to overcome was learning to use Salesloft himself and understanding how his team was using it. As he shadowed team members and gathered feedback, he realized usage was inconsistent and little governance was in place. Steve needed to achieve widespread adoption, as well as align the team around a consistent framework and approach.
Solution: A Collaborative Partnership, Personalization, and Cadences Help League Succeed
To address the barriers preventing his team from using the platform to its full potential, Steve reached out to his Salesloft Customer Success Manager (CSM), who joined the team to review each individual concern. Together, the group identified a plan of attack to quickly align reps around a consistent framework, but the collaboration didn’t stop there.
League’s Salesloft CSM continued to join the team’s planning sessions and meetings, serving as an extension of the team. Together, they identified new opportunities to improve performance and results. In Steve’s eyes, what made Salesloft stand out was the relationship they were able to build. He felt he had found a partner to champion League’s success.
One of the key differentiators between you and the competitor in the market is that Salesloft builds really great relationships up front. Our Customer Success Manager has been a true partner for me and a big part of our success. When I need him, he’s there — and we’ve needed him often over the past year. This level of support is a huge differentiator. A lot of vendors say they will be there for you, but few make themselves as available as the Salesloft team has been for us. — Steve Dinner, Director of Business Development at League
Achieving Personalization Through Cadences and Integration
With adoption and usage challenges out of the way, the team shifted its focus to developing and implementing a unified cadence. It was a collaborative effort that addressed League’s desire to embrace personalization across all its interactions with prospective customers.
League took advantage of a couple Salesloft integrations to help scale this effort and its sales process. The team used the Vidyard integration so reps could create personalized 1-to-1 video messages as part of their cadence. Reps also used Salesloft’s LinkedIn Sales Navigator integration. Sales Navigator provides an alternate channel for the sales team to efficiently and effectively target the right potential buyers with relevant messages.
“Salesloft provides so many options for personalization via its plugins and integrations,” Steve said. “One of our team’s favorites is Vidyard, which allows us to create personalized 1-to-1 video emails. This has been a fun and effective way for our reps to personalize communications and make a great first impression.”
The team also uses snippets and templates to save time with personalizing communications. These features enable them to share and repurpose the most successful sales messages.
Extending Cadence Proficiency to Other Use Cases
As the team has become more proficient with the Salesloft platform, it has expanded its range of cadences specific to various use cases. There are cadences for webinar registrations and appointment setting, for example. The team even has cadences to use during vacations, ensuring reps keep activity high, even during their time off.
With a clear process and workflow in place, new cadences can be developed, tested, and shared across the team.
Salesloft is really the engine for everything that we do for opportunity generation. The BDRs live in Salesloft — you could even say they live there more than Salesforce. The big impact is being able to do something consistently across multiple geographies. With a brand new team… being able to really easily share templates and cadences is a big benefit. — Kyle Norton, Vice President of Sales at League
Results: 300% ARR Growth Projected, 133% Increase in Customer Base
League’s SDR and BDR teams consistently use Salesloft to personalize sales activities at scale. SDRs focused on inbound pursuits are able to reach an average of 100 quality activities per rep per day. Being able to capitalize on the qualified leads the Marketing team delivers is a game-changer. BDRs are now able to engage with more defined targets in less time.
The improvements the team made have far exceeded Steve’s expectations. League intends to continue its collaboration with the Salesloft team, all of whom are committed to the long-term success of League.
Without a doubt, we wouldn’t be where we are today without the incredible level of dedication and support our CSM and the team at Salesloft have provided. No vendor comes close when it comes to ensuring our team is as successful as we can possibly be. It’s simply amazing to have a partner we can rely on — no matter what — to help us crush our goals.” — Steve Dinner, Director of Business Development
A blend of personalization and automation activities is helping League win new customers. The company is hitting its stride, expecting 300% growth in existing ARR within one year and continued expansion of its U.S. presence. The U.S. sales team also grew its customer base by 133%.
Having a platform that supports automation and allows the sales team to personalize at scale has also helped League replicate its success and expand to new markets. With Salesloft, League is achieving its goal of putting a healthier lifestyle into employees’ hands.
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