BrandActive Breakdown: 75% More Fortune 2000 Deals, No Hires

Why do only one or two people on my team close the big deals?

Usually because referrals used to do the qualifying. When a team goes direct, reps pitch before they know who decides or what the problem costs. BrandActive fixed that with live deal coaching and stages the buyer controls, and closed 7 new Fortune 2000 clients in a quarter, up from 4.

Want the story in Sarah Icely Hill's own words? Watch the full BrandActive interview.

The situation

BrandActive helps Fortune 2000 companies through a rebrand or a merger. They work out what it will cost to change everything over and how long it will take, down to which vendors to use. Sarah Icely Hill runs growth there as SVP.

When we met them, they had three full-cycle reps. Seven directors from the delivery side joined sales calls too, because they knew the work better than anyone.

For most of their history, new business came through agency partners and repeat referrals. Those buyers already knew their problem, and they showed up at the right moment.

The challenge

About two years before we met, BrandActive started going direct to clients. That's when the trouble started.

A cold Fortune 2000 buyer usually doesn't know they have a problem yet. Sarah told me a brand change happens maybe once in a career, so most buyers have never seen what it can cost.

They were booking plenty of first meetings. In one quarter before we started, their three reps ran 20 discovery calls. By the end of it, 15 of those deals still hadn't moved past the first call. Their sales cycle had gotten 85% longer than the year before.

The reps often didn't know whether they had the right person, or who else had to say yes. With referrals, that had been settled before the first call. Sarah put it this way: the referral did the qualifying for them, so the team never had to learn it.

So new business only closed when one of the firm's partners got involved. One partner won about 4 out of every 10 deals he ran. The outbound reps won between 1 and 6% of theirs. Every big new deal pulled a partner away from running the firm.

What they'd already tried

They tried fixing it themselves, with homemade playbooks and team meetings to walk through them. Sarah said none of it was ever solid enough to use every day, and there was never time for a real training.

What we did first

We started with a diagnosis. We interviewed the team one by one, from the reps up to the firm's partners, and went through their deal data and call recordings.

Then we held off on training, because of something Sarah said to me. When someone hands a team a playbook on day one, they read it and say nobody here thinks like that.

What we changed

Live deals, twice a week. We got on calls with the reps and directors before their real meetings and coached them through one deal at a time. We role-played the meeting, worked out who else needed to be in the room, and planned the next step before the rep ever spoke to the buyer.

That changed how the reps run a deal from the first meeting:

• They qualify early, asking about budget and who needs to be involved before they pitch anything.

• They dig into the buyer's problem and what it's costing them.

• They tell a story about a past client in the same situation.

• They build a business case the buyer can take to their own leaders.

Pipeline stages the buyer controls. We rebuilt their stages around steps the buyer has actually taken, like an executive signing off. A deal only moves forward now when the buyer does something.

Then the training. After about four months of live deal calls, we ran a formal training in Toronto with everyone, including the directors who deliver the client work. The reps had already tried the moves on real deals and watched them work, so Sarah said the training didn't feel abstract.

Quarterly tune-ups. In the first one, they pulled calls where reps followed the process and calls where they didn't, and compared the results. When reps skipped qualification, they got ghosted.

Do your big deals still need one or two specific people in the room? Book a Revenue Strategy Call.

What the team put in

All of this happened on top of their day jobs, with the reps working live deals and the directors running client projects.

The team met with us twice a week for an hour each time, always on live deals. Sarah and I spent another one to two hours a week building out the playbooks together.

Their leadership team also had to agree on who owns each step of a deal, from the first call to the handoff to delivery. Sarah told me the hardest part was building all of it on a tight timeline while everyone was busy.

The results

• Inside 90 days: reps were meeting more executives on the buyer's side and working several people in each account. They were building champions who could sell for them when they weren't in the room.

• A few months in: one rep hit a 100% reply rate on cold outbound to Fortune 2000 buyers, and half of those replies booked a call.

• The first quarter after the training: seven new Fortune 2000 clients, against four in the same quarter the year before.

Those three extra deals are the 75%. Their deals start around $100,000 and some run to seven figures, so they added hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single quarter.

They sold the same work to the same kind of buyer with the same reps and directors. The extra deals came from how the team now runs a deal.

The honest part

Sarah was honest that keeping it going over the long term is the part they're still figuring out. She said change like this is never one and done.

With a firm that has sold one way for 30 years, the hard part is the change itself. You have to show the team the new way and bring them along, and that takes time.

I asked Sarah where they'd be if they'd kept going alone. She said they'd be like ducks spinning in circles, still trying to find the starting line.

This would have failed if we'd handed them a playbook and left, or if the team hadn't made time for the weekly calls. It takes leaders who show up every week, and reps who bring their real deals, including the ones going badly.

Is this your team?

• Your big deals need one or two specific people in the room. If those people are out, the deal waits for them.

• Your calendar is full of first meetings and very few second ones.

• Most of your past wins came from referrals, so your team may never have had to qualify a cold buyer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I just hire another closer?
Hiring another star usually adds one more person the number depends on. BrandActive grew 75% in a quarter without hiring anyone.

Our best people are busy delivering client work. How much time does this take?
BrandActive's team met twice a week for an hour, always on live deals they were already working. Sarah spent another one to two hours a week on the playbooks.

We've already tried writing playbooks. Why would this be different?
BrandActive had too. This time the coaching started on live deals, and the training came after the team had watched the moves work.

Will this work in my industry?
Everything we build comes from your own calls and your own data, so it fits the way your buyers buy. We've run the same system in enterprise services, cybersecurity, K-12 education, energy, hardware and commercial pest control.

How fast will we see results?
Stuck deals usually start moving inside the first 30 days. BrandActive saw the first signs inside 90 days, and the 75% jump came in the first quarter after the training.

What if it isn't a fit?
Your first 30 days are built so your downside stays small. If by day 30 it doesn't feel like a 9 out of 10 to you, you stop there and keep all the work we've done.

Who is this for?
Owners with between 3 and 20 reps, whose leaders and reps will show up to the weekly sessions. If you're an individual rep looking for coaching, or you want a one-day motivational training, we're the wrong people.

If your big deals still need one or two specific people to close, book a Revenue Strategy Call below. We'll look at who your number depends on and what we'd fix first.

Marcus Chan is the founder and CEO of Venli Consulting Group. Venli helps founder-led B2B companies build a sales system their team can run without the founder on every deal. Before Venli, Marcus led a 110-rep, $195M sales org at a Fortune 500 company. He is the author of the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller Six-Figure Sales Secrets, a 5x Salesforce Top Sales Advisor and a 6x LinkedIn Top Voice. Venli has served 700+ clients.