How EBQ Surpassed TERRA Staffing Group’s Response Rate Benchmarks by 300%
When TERRA Staffing Group opened a new office location, they needed to build out their client base. By leveraging EBQ’s business development representatives (BDRs), TERRA Staffing Group was able to:
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The Challenge
For over 40 years, TERRA Staffing Group (Terra) has been helping companies across the Pacific Northwest region discover and hire employees with specialized skills. Terra uses a combination of “high tech” and “high touch” to get to know the employers and job candidates, resulting in long-lasting and successful hiring matches.
When Terra opened their sixth office in Portland, Oregon, their executives were tasked to expand their clientele and talent database simultaneously. This naturally presented an opportunity cost: time spent selling their services to prospective companies meant lost time building out their talent pool.
To relieve pressure on the launch team, Jennifer Lambert (VP of Sales and Marketing) decided to try outsourcing the lead-generation function.
The Solution
Terra turned to EBQ to pilot their business development campaign and to set sales appointments for Terra’s internal team. EBQ also helped Terra develop a unique value proposition and upskill their assigned business development representatives in building rapport quickly over the phone.
Since Terra’s average deal size is relatively small for an outsourced sales program, EBQ first outlined benchmarks and metrics to assess if the program delivers reasonable ROI. During this discovery phase, EBQ found that they had to deliver fast results, a higher-than-average response rate, and a high close rate for the program to be deemed successful.
“EBQ didn’t ask us to blindly commit to a program, which was important to me because we had never before implemented an outsourced appointment setting program. The benchmark allowed us to go into the program with expectations based on objective measurements,” said Jennifer.
Initially, Terra had a few sales executives who were skeptical of using an outsourced business development team. Over time, the sales executives noticed that whenever they mentioned EBQ’s business development reps’ names at the top of their sales meetings, the prospects immediately warmed up. The sales team was also surprised by the sheer amount of information gathered during EBQ’s discovery calls, boosting their subsequent sales meetings’ productivity.
“Our branch manager told me that while he was out of the office on appointments recently, EBQ was able to add three additional sales appointments to his calendar. Typically, while he’s out selling, he wouldn’t be able to schedule appointments. EBQ really keeps our sales engine humming,” said Jennifer.
The Results
Within 90 days, EBQ helped Terra achieve a 10% response rate per lead targeted — more than 3x the anticipated benchmark rate. After receiving 242 initial leads, EBQ set 27 sales appointments, and 3 of those meetings resulted in closings. When calculating their sales conversion rates, EBQ had outperformed their initial benchmark by 42%.
Today, all of their sales reps are on board with using EBQ’s business development team for all their prospecting needs.
“After just a few months, EBQ’s appointment setting performance is a little better than our in-house sales reps with 5-10 years of experience,” said Jennifer.
As the pilot program comes to an end, Jennifer plans on using EBQ for another office location.
“Eventually, I’d like to have EBQ handling appointment setting for all our offices,” said Jennifer.
In 2024, TERRA Staffing Group and ASG Staffing united under the Verstela brand.
TERRA Staffing Group x EBQ
Find out how TERRA Staffing Group built an unstoppable sales engine with the help of EBQ’s appointment-setting services.