The challenge
A global food delivery platform serving millions of customers was struggling to satisfy the hunger shown by merchant restaurants looking to join the platform as sellers. Knowing that customers expect variety, and that they were missing opportunities to add more restaurants rapidly, the company sought a strategic partner to manage and nurture inbound leads.
The TELUS Digital solution
The company turned to TELUS Digital for a comprehensive B2B Sales Outsourcing solution that would address their challenges and drive sustainable revenue growth. Our team sought to find the right mix of processes, people and technology to address the sales challenges at hand.
Implementing a comprehensive lead qualification and sales program
TELUS Digital introduced a lead qualification program to help our client assess and engage with potential restaurant partners through inbound voice, email and web channels. The program was devised to reduce wait times for inbound leads and to seize new merchant opportunities.
With a systematic qualification framework backed by a dedicated lead qualification team, only high-quality leads enter the sales pipeline. Each inbound lead undergoes thorough assessment against specific merchant criteria and market requirements, managed through an automated lead distribution system that optimizes team productivity. With this system, new leads are automatically routed to agents as soon as they become available.
Once qualified, our sales development representatives (SDRs) engage in active negotiation and pitching to convert leads into clients over a 28-day opportunity management cycle. As part of this process, our SDRs perform document collection — including a signed contract, business license, food or operating license, identification documents and tax documents — and necessary follow ups.
Deploying a high-performance sales team
In order to deliver results that would exceed our client’s expectations, we assembled a team of 120+ tenured sales professionals, including sales executives, lead qualifiers and business analysts.
Our talent acquisition strategy focused on sourcing candidates with sales experience, precisely matched to the client's specific business requirements for expertise and language proficiency. To foster long-term commitment and consistent performance, we developed clear career paths, attractive compensation plans and continuous learning opportunities. This approach not only improved employee retention, but also ensured that our team was highly skilled and motivated: 82% of the agents reported feeling valued and engaged in a recent pulse check survey, as measured by Kincentric.
Optimizing for efficiency with the right tech
The challenges our client was trying to overcome were all about efficiently processing an increasing volume of inbound leads. This was a clear sign that processes and team members needed to be enabled by the right technology.
We paired leading CRM and sales engagement platforms to streamline communication and data synchronization across the sales journey. After each interaction, agents record vital information into the CRM, including contact details, initial conversations and qualification status. The sales engagement platform then seamlessly syncs with CRM data to automate follow-up tasks and reminders. For example, when an agent schedules a callback in the CRM, the sales engagement platform sends real-time notifications and places the follow-up on the agent’s calendar, preventing leads from slipping through the cracks. This seamless tech integration helps team members efficiently manage leads and customer interactions.
Additionally, we leveraged our enterprise-grade AI engine, Fuel iX™, to enhance the effectiveness of sales team coaching. Team leaders used Fuel iX to create a generative AI (GenAI) copilot specializing in objection handling techniques. The copilot, which is trained on an ongoing basis on common objections, as well as strategies for handling them, enables team leaders to simulate challenging scenarios for the purposes of coaching. By practicing on realistic scenarios like pricing concerns, the copilot helped team leaders in delivering focused feedback and practical resolution strategies that will be useful in real human interactions.
The results
TELUS Digital's comprehensive solution transformed our client’s sales operations, resulting in significant revenue growth.
Highlights include:
- Achieving improved conversion rates, including 92% on inbound calls and 72% for web leads.
- Enhanced lead qualification accuracy by keeping the false positive rate under 6% (outperforming the 7% target) and false negative rate under 2% (outperforming the 5% target).
- Shortening the sales cycle from 45 hours to 24 hours, bringing a new level of efficiency to qualification and sales processes.
- Fostering 82% agent engagement in a recent pulse check survey, as measured by Kincentric.
