Volume AI
.
Case Study Highlights
In our work with Volume AI, we guided them through a critical pivot from focusing primarily on product development to building a powerful sales division in just 90 days. We achieved this by refining their value proposition, expanding their team, and implementing new sales processes, which collectively led to a staggering 395% increase in revenue and £2.3m in funding, doubling their deal flow, and establishing key strategic partnerships.
207%
Increase in conversion rate
3X
The average deal value
395%
Increase in revenue
Volume AI
Challenge
Volume AI (Volume) is an award-winning innovation company that specialises in the development of Conversational AI platforms and the AI middle-ware that helps businesses self-manage and scale their chatbot real estate.
Benoit Alvarez, CTO of Volume AI, had been running the sales division of the AI business but wanted to focus on building great products rather than selling them.
Sales for Startups were approached to create and execute the first phase of building Volume AI’s sales division. They wanted to take a data-driven approach to sales by first creating their sales strategy that would then produce their unique sales model, all within 90 days. This was to lay the foundations which included reevaluating their value proposition, upskilling and recruitment of new team members as well as installing new lead generation, deal management and upselling processes. With this steady base, they wanted to go and raise £2million in funding to secure the long-term growth of the company and expand the team’s sales and product division.
Volume AI
Solution
Through reviewing existing collateral, market research, data analysis and two days of guided workshops, the Sales for Startups team established the business needed to get the right foundations for the commercial team in place in a number of areas.
We created an improved value proposition that centred on outcomes rather than product features, defining the ideal company profiles and buyer personas and appropriate collateral for these target audiences.
We setup a new recruitment campaign for a BDM, installing a proper recruitment process, an applicant tracking system with scorecards and secured a new BDM within 21 days of the advert going live after receiving 300 applicants.
Our solutions covered off sales technology, training for the team and lead generation and in the second 90 day stint also took on account growth, pricing and partner sales.
Volume AI
Results
- Tripled the average contract value from £10K to £35K ARR
- Hired a new BDM in 21 days from the advert to offer acceptance
- Doubled the number of new deals for three quarters in a row, creating 192 enterprise deals in the last nine months
- Created a new partner proposition and secured Accenture, IBM and Microsoft as strategic partners
- Reduced the sales cycle from 10 to 3 months
- Went from an average of 0 deal for QBox in pipeline to 45 live deals in a month
- Signed first-ever Fruut deal for £600,000 within 6 months of product launch
- The total revenue increase in 11 months was 395%
- Secured £2.3m in funding from BOOST
“We lacked the skills and knowledge to create an effective sales model – we didn’t know what good looked like! I was impressed with how our CRO unpicked our business and how quickly they were able to install change. Right from the start, the workshops were insightful and gave us clear recommendations on how to build the foundations we needed. We then selected, onboarded and hired the right talent to fit our sales model and then Sales for Startups have taken an active role in developing the right processes to maintain the momentum we’d gathered to push towards our goals.”
BENOIT ALVAREZ, CTO, VOLUME AI
