Happy Sunday!
We made a bold move this week, radically changing our go-to-market strategy. This post details what we did and why we did it.
If you missed last week’s post, you’ll want to go back and read it as it summarizes the data that led to this decision.
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This week at Bullpen …
We made the decision to radically change our go-to-market strategy.
I had a great conversation with a professional in our talent network who shared a laundry list of ideas to make Bullpen better. It was the highlight of my week and informed part of our go-to-market pivot.
As a function of our new past due invoice process, we collected 100% of late payments from Feb 1 invoicing in less than 7 days. This is a BIG win. Late collections negatively impact our working capital.
Our new team member closed another deal (WIN), but our overall deal volume is still lower than where we want it to be (LOSS).
Our New Go-to-Market Strategy
From last week’s post … Since the start of 2022, we’ve had a difficult time converting our leads into customers. Our weekly inbound leads have tripled those of December, but we’re still closing the same number of deals.
This week … Using our sales and marketing data, I was able to narrow down our problem to one of two things … our “go to market” strategy (translated - bad quality inbound leads) OR very poor sales execution on our discovery calls.
I listened to several discovery call recordings this week and determined that poor-quality leads are likely a bigger problem than our discovery calls.
Many leads from the past few weeks have come to Bullpen thinking we can help them find low-cost talent for quick projects. However, our happiest customers use Bullpen to find extremely talented contractors for mid and long-term projects in their business.
Moreover, our happiest customers also recognize that our process and talent network makes us a valuable extension of their team. We are far more efficient and far less expensive than hiring recruiters internally in their businesses.
As such, we made a BIG decision to pivot our go-to-market strategy. Rather than position ourselves as a source of freelancers in the real estate industry, we’ve pivoted to positioning Bullpen as a source of expert contract talent …
If you’re thinking that doesn’t sound very different, you’re right. Our product is EXACTLY THE SAME. However, we’re no longer using the term “freelancer” to describe our talent. In fact, you won’t find the word “freelancer” on our website anymore.
Additionally, we’ve put the words “recruiting” and “contract” in the hero section of our website for the first time ever.
Why didn’t we AB test this first? The best metric that we can use to measure the success of an AB test is the number of leads that our site generates. However, we have a quality problem, not a quantity problem. As such, an AB test wouldn’t accurately test if the number of quality leads increases, so I made the call to make these changes without AB testing.
What if I’m wrong? There is a very real chance that this new “go-to-market” won’t solve our growth and revenue problems. However, change only comes with bold moves, and if your gut is telling you something, it’s usually worth a try.
That’s all for this week! Let me know what you think of this go-to-market pivot.
✌️📤
Tyler
Founder @ Bullpen
Very cool! Love the bold moves!