How Volume Nine Evolved Its Sales Approach to Dramatically Improve Client Retention
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Volume Nine is a boutique digital marketing agency based in Denver, CO that was founded in 2006 by Chuck Aikens. With no formal sales experience, Chuck built the business on his industry knowledge, passion, and hustle.
Offering services like search engine optimization, social media marketing, and content creation, V9 landed big-name clients including Volkswagen, Fiji Water, and Vitamin World. The agency grew rapidly to 30 employees.
To accelerate growth, Chuck brought on an experienced sales executive who helped skyrocket revenue by closing many deals. However, beneath the surface lurked problems. Many of the new clients were a poor fit or had unrealistic expectations of the services V9 could provide.
In Chuck's own words:
"Our sales guy was closing deals, but many of the clients were a bad fit or had unrealistic expectations due to issues with our sales process. The customer churn on the back end was killing my delivery team, and our profitability suffered."
Instead of pride in his thriving agency, Chuck felt trapped managing a high-stress, stagnating business. He constantly put out fires and worked long hours to make up for the gaps created by rapid growth without the right systems in place.
The Solution: A Customized, Consultative Sales Approach
To transform V9's sales process, Pitch Lab introduced a consultative approach focused on winning long-term clients instead of short-term projects. This shift required changing mindsets around how deals were closed.
Jay worked closely with Chuck to tailor the solutions to V9's specific needs. He took the time to understand the company's culture, service offerings and clients.
Key changes to V9’s sales process included:
Implement a lead scoring framework to better qualify leads and use V9’s limited sales resources effectively
Leverage a value-based discovery framework to allow client-facing teams to ask better questions during initial meetings to deeply understand customer needs and what outcomes they were trying to achieve
Define clear sales roles and responsibilities for efficiency and use a team approach to involve the right SMEs at the right times in the sales process
Document standardized sales processes to train and delegate sales responsibilities to various members of the team so Chuck didn't have to stay involved in every step of the process
Address project scope concerns early on in the sales process through Account Manager approvals BEFORE pitching to help prevent customer churn after the close
Create a humane culture of accountability to transition out underperforming sales staff to enable, change and adoption as well as and reduce Chuck's overall stress level
This customized consultative approach transformed how V9 attracted and retained the right clients.
The Results: Less Stress and 200% Higher Client Retention
The focused efforts resulted in dramatic improvements including:
Eliminated 40-48 hours per month of Chuck's time spent on sales tasks which allowed him to focus on long-term strategy
Reduced Chuck's stress level from a 9/10 to a 3/10 (self-reported)
Maintained a 70% close rate on referrals and 40% on cold leads without Chuck being directly involved in the entire sales process
Increased predictability and efficiency of the sales pipeline
Improved client retention by 200% (from 25% of clients renewing to now 75%)
What V9’s Founder and Its CEO Says:
“Jay is one of the good guys out there trying to make a difference for B2B founders. While running my agency, Jay helped me 'extract' myself from being the #1 go-to salesperson while finding a way to stay involved in the sales process as a thought leader and visionary to help close deals when needed.”
– Chuck, Founder @ Volume Nine
“It's hard to condense what's great about Jay into a short block of text. I've worked with a lot of sales consultants over the years, and I can I say unequivocally Jay was the best. He took the time to understand our company, culture and service offerings and custom create a sales process for us. I'll be eternally grateful to Jay and the impact he has had on our organization.”
– Natalie, CEO @ Volume Nine
the V9 Team Celebrating another happy client
How Pitch Lab Can Help Your Team Win
At Pitch Lab, we specialize in helping B2B services companies with $10-100M in annual revenue and sales teams of 3-50 people overcome common challenges like:
Your salespeople struggle to close business at a high rate
Most of the salespeople you hired don’t work out
Sales processes that are poorly documented, unoptimized, and unscalable
Ready to transform your sales process and achieve scalable success? Let’s chat to learn how we can help.
