Tom Jordan is the Chairman of Exodus Complink, based in San Antonio, Texas. He helps business owners increase the value of their organizations and prepares them for a successful exit. Tom is a Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU), a Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA), and a Certified Value Builder™.
Business challenges
With over thirty years of experience, Tom acquired a healthy list of approximately 30,000 verified contacts. Years of trade shows, networking events and referral partners helped build his list. He was looking for a better way to convert contacts into clients.
He was using a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM), marketing content agency and manual excel spreadsheets. This resulted in a mountain of admin work which was time-consuming, inefficient and didn’t result in the engagement from prospects that he wanted. For example, his email marketing system charged per email sent, which meant costs could spike, without any guarantee of success.
When marketing to owners, he struggled to produce content on a consistent basis. His sales and marketing strategy amounted to cold calling, a practice he wasn’t comfortable with and wanted to move away from.
Tom needed a more efficient and cost-effective CRM and marketing system. He was also on the lookout for a library of content he could use to engage business owners. Once leads were generated, he needed an effective way to identify and reach out to warmest ones. This would enable him to focus on his bread and butter – one-on-one facetime with owners.
Why Value Builder?
Tom implemented Value Builder and immediately saw positive results. Firstly, Tom’s eliminated multiple systems and now saves $650 a month using Value Builder as his primary CRM and email marketing system. Rather than being charged by email sent, Value Builder allows him to send an unlimited number of emails per day, to as many contacts as he wished.
Even better, Value Builder provides ready-made email templates tested and optimized against a panel of 25,000 business owners. With Value Builder’s Smart Content, Tom can choose from 500+ pieces of done-for-you podcast episodes, eBooks, articles, email templates and more to market to business owners.
Discussing the impact it’s made, Tom said, “Value Builder made a concerted effort to respond to the CRM needs of advisors.” While software like HubSpot and Salesforce exist, Tom realized that Value Builder provides all the functionality he needs – without the learning curve of complicated software.
Tom also takes advantage of Nurture Cycle, Value Builder’s automated email drip marketing system. Through Nurture Cycle, he can send weekly emails to his contacts, without lifting a finger. Each week, Tom gets a preview of a fresh podcast episode, workshop invitation, or article that he can approve, edit or personalize at the click of a button.
The results speak for themselves. His average open rate on any given email is 37% open rates compared to the industry average of 21%. In addition, he consistently gets a 13.5% click rate (contacts clicking on the link in the email) out-pacing the industry average of 2.5%.
Within his Dashboard, Tom can group contacts based on activity points – Value Builder’s proprietary lead scoring system. Contacts collect activity points each time they open or click on an email or download content. This demonstrates who is engaging with his content and serves them up to the top of the screen. Even better, Value Builder provides real-time notifications when an action is taken, allowing Tom to immediately reach out to them.
Tom’s also coined the “400 Club”. A collection of contacts who have reached 400 activity points. These contacts are his warmest leads and are actively engaging with his content. By creating a segment of highly responsive prospects, Tom has eliminated cold calling, allowing him to focus exclusively on qualified business owners ready to talk. Now prioritizing engaged contacts first, Tom has improved his close rate by 50%. He now turns 60% of sales conversations into paying clients, rather than his previous average of 30%.
Results
After 30 years in the business, Value Builder gave Tom all the functionality he needed to run sales and marketing at his firm. With a single system for his CRM and email marketing needs, Tom saved over $650 per month. Better yet, he’s improved his email marketing results and achieves better open and click rates than ever before.
In addition to cost savings, Tom is saving time. With marketing material readily available, Tom only spends one to two hours per month creating a content calendar.
Tom stopped cold-calling altogether, and focuses on contacts he successfully nurtured with Value Builder content, improving his close rate to 60%. With new-found time to spend with qualified business owners, Tom is confident his practice will only continue to grow.