Background
Founded in 2019, Seminary Now is a subscription-based, streaming video platform that delivers exclusive biblical, theological, and practical ministry training from a diverse group of leading educators and thought leaders. Think of the format like Netflix or Masterclass but for biblical education and equipping church/ministry leaders.
Challenges
As an early-stage startup, Seminary Now's first customers came through more of a B2C sales model. All digital. All through marketing and email efforts.
But they didn't have the sales infrastructure in place for B2B sales. In their case, "B2B" meant reaching out to churches and nonprofits.
Without experience training B2B sales reps, Seminary Now wasn't only looking for recruiting help, they wanted assistance with a sales playbook, onboarding, training, coaching, and managing their first BDR.
Solutions
Seminary Now turned to Sales Empowerment Group to hire, train, and manage their first BDR.
"The idea of us hiring a salesperson and training that person ourselves, we would have done a poor job at that because we wouldn't know how to even train that person," said Executive Director Jason Giles. "For us, that was the key value in SEG - you helped us select the person with the right sort of skills and from there developed a sales playbook and trained that person in a skill area where we don't have expertise."
Outcomes
Through their BDR's efforts, Seminary Now landed new meetings and increased B2B sales to complement their online sign-ups from individuals. Seminary Now proved -- with the help of SEG -- they could triple their monthly subscriptions via outbound calling and emailing.