Cognism’s Accurate Mobiles Increase Connect Rates by 69%

Team Sunday, the number one sustainable company fashion brand, uses Cognism’s B2B data to:

• Consistently hit target month-on-month.
• Increase connect rates to 69%. 
• Ignite confidence in the SDRs. 
• Seamlessly integrate with Hubspot.

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The company

Team Sunday is the number one European sustainability brand for company fashion. Working with the likes of TikTok, Zalando and Google, they believe in a personal approach by using customer brand guidelines to design company fashion that employees, clients and partners love to wear.  

Sustainability is at the heart of what they do. In 2019, they opened their very own R&D and supply chain unit in Europe's textile industry capital, Lodz. This allowed full management of the entire manufacturing process and supply chain from A to Z. In 2020, 96% of the garments produced were created fully within the European Union.

The challenge

We interviewed Louis Vandommele, Head of Demand Generation about his experience with Cognism. 

Firstly, Louis explained the frustrations the sales team were encountering before Cognism. 

“When I joined the company over two years ago, the tech stack was cluttered with mediocre lead generation tools. Lusha was amongst the tech stack. It’s a large player in the US market and consequently, the platform had much less data coverage in EMEA - our core target market.” 

“There are also minimal GDPR restrictions in the US so much of the data was not aligned with EMEA GDPR standards. This caused inevitable issues when prospecting to EMEA decision makers, especially in Germany.” 

What was the tipping point to start exploring other B2B data providers? 

“There were several: 

1. Stale data 

“Our CEO recognised that we were reusing old data lists as the data was not refreshed in real-time. Outbound is all about giving yourself the best possible chance. If the SDRs don’t have access to fresh email addresses and mobile numbers, then the business is missing out on key buying potential.”

2. Incorrect phone numbers & email addresses

“We work with companies like Zalando and TikTok. Fast-growing tech companies are our best-fit customers. Many of the decision-makers at these firms are busy and heavily targeted. Therefore, it’s critical that the SDRs are armed with valid mobiles and email addresses to reach them.”

3. High-growth targets

“This year we received funding with growth plans to hire 20 SDRs across our German, Belgium, UK and Ireland offices. In sales, we are measured on time to target. Therefore, it’s unscalable to hire 20 SDRs and not supply them with the best technology to support their roles. We can save two first-time hires if we invest in the right tools. Having a streamlined technology like Cognism is critical to meeting our sales goals.”

How did Louis discover Cognism?

“From following the Cognism marketing team on LinkedIn. The content is the best I’ve ever seen in the B2B SaaS market.” 

Louis described the evaluation process Team Sunday underwent to displace the existing providers. 

“The Cognism sales team helped build out a use case tremendously. We compared a data sample against Cognism and Lusha. The results were as follows:

Dial-to-connect rates

Reached the prospect in May - 58% 

Reached the prospect in June - 69% (increase in connect rates) 

BDR targets

May - 37 

June - 68 

“Price is irrelevant, it’s all about ROI and Cognism won the battle. The decision to move from Lusha was a very easy one.”

The solution

In April 2022, Louis became the Head of Demand Generation which also involves managing the entire SDR function. 

Louis explained his workflows with Cognism:  

“In the SDRs’ initial months, I generate the lists in the WebApp and export them to Hubspot on their behalf. Once they’re ramped up in the role, they manage their own lists within Cognism.” 

“Within the WebApp, I condense the list to 100-150 people by cherry-picking the highest quality direct dials and email addresses. It’s much more efficient to have a smaller, high-quality list than having one with thousands of contacts, receiving bounce backs and dead numbers.” 

What is their target market? 

“Our ICP are HR, Onboarding, Employer Branding and Events decision makers in EMEA. The majority of our best-fit customers are fast-scaling tech companies.” 

What features in the WebApp have been useful qualification indicators? 

“The hiring trigger is a great buying signal for us. Here’s an example: if a business is hiring at least ten people per month, that equates to 120 new hires a year. This hiring trajectory aligns with our average deal size. We immediately know that the company would be a fantastic fit for us.” 

The SDRs are regular users of Cognism’s LinkedIn Chrome Extension. He told us how the tool is used in two ways: 

“Firstly, the SDRs use the Chrome Extension for prospecting on LinkedIn. Once they’ve found their ideal buyers, they sync the contact details through the integration with Hubspot.”

“The Chrome Extension is also used for contact enrichment. For example at an event, they will collect a list of leads, input the leads into the Chrome Extension and enrich the contact details with Cognism data.” 

“The best feature of the Chrome Extension is the CRM mapping functionality. The SDR can see if the contact already exists in Hubspot. This triggers the SDR to check the CRM to see the latest activity with the prospect and action if applicable.”  

Louis explained that the Account Executives equally use the Chrome Extension. He told us more: 

“The Account Executives have outbound targets to hit. We originally had a set number of licences in our Cognism package. However, as the team grew, we had to swap out the AEs licences for the SDRs to use. An AE gave the following feedback about this: 

“We need more licences, Cognism is something we can’t live without.” 

Louis explained how the demand generation department uses the platform: 

“I’m targeting the number of SQLs generated per month and quarter. From the outbound side, meetings are created by the SDRs and the inbound leads are created by the growth hacking team. This team uses Cognism data for ad targeting through LinkedIn Matched Audiences by generating email addresses in the Cognism database and uploading them to LinkedIn.” 

This is a best practice we recommend, as our customers can reach up to 85-95% match rate between Cognism lists and LinkedIn Matched Audiences.

The results

Louis highlighted the results they’ve seen since using Cognism:

“The difference in output is monumental because we are reaching people with genuine mobile numbers and mailable addresses. I’ve hit my target for 7 months straight since using Cognism.” 

Despite seeing quantifiable results, Louis described how using Cognism’s accurate database has sparked more confidence in the SDRs:

“Success in sales is all about confidence. We hire young people often with no B2B sales experience. Therefore, they need to trust that they are calling mobiles and emailing addresses that exist. Through using Cognism, they can start every day with confidence that they will reach potential buyers via a cold call or email.” 

The top reasons why Team Sunday would  recommend Cognism

1. Consumable B2B content

“Cognism’s marketing messaging truly speaks to the buyer and provides real value-led content. As a business, the majority of our learnings in demand generation come from Cognism.” 

“Cognism delivers the best content I've ever seen in the B2B software market.” 

2. Attentive customer care

“From the initial onboarding calls to now, the team has always been highly responsive which is hard to come by with third-party vendors.” 

“At Team Sunday, we are very customer-centric and Cognism’s customer success really matches that. Our CSM and AM are insane!”

3- Market leader in sales intelligence 

“We bought LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Cognism at the same time. The difference in data quality is immense. Cognism is not just a B2B lead generation tool. The platform replenishes data every day, is very easy to use and has slick integrations. Cognism is miles ahead of the other vendors in the market.”  

We asked Louis to sum up his feelings about Cognism: 

“Cognism is so embedded in our workflows that we cannot do our jobs without it. Not having Cognism in your tech stack is like going to a demolition site without a sledgehammer.”

Try Cognism’s sales intelligence solution

Over 3,000 revenue teams around the world trust Cognism to:

✅ Build qualified B2B contact databases.

✅ Plan and launch their outbound campaigns.

✅ Power up their social selling.

✅ Meet and beat their revenue targets.

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