Supernova Award Category

The Problem

Lauren Perfors is like most small business owners – she’s keeping a lot of balls in the air. She’s driving sales, focusing on customer retention, providing professional expertise and finding the right employees to join her team. She loves meeting with clients and prospects face-to-face, but driving out to meet them was becoming expensive, time-consuming and taking her away from responsibilities as a founder and leader. Simultaneously, out-of-state business opportunities were popping up that she wanted to explore. Impromptu meetings were important too – the ability for her clients to contact her and her team immediately. In-person meetings, while effective, just weren’t feasible and efficient in all scenarios. Whatever the solution for this problem, it had to be easy and convenient for Lauren, her team and for customers and prospects.

The Solution

With the problem developing into a painfully obvious roadblock to growing the business, Lauren and her team realized they needed a technology solution to communicate, collaborate and stay connected with clients and prospects. They wanted to be able to see clients and potential customers, and wanted to provide a face (or faces) in return.

They embarked on a mission to find a video conferencing tool. Lauren and her team, along with some clients, tried a range of solutions hoping to find the right fit. It was mainly a process of trial-and-error, in search of high-quality video, dependability and simplicity. Unfortunately, the well-known video solutions didn’t meet Lawton Digital Marketing’s needs, mainly due to issues with reliability (lag time and frozen screens). Others were just difficult to use and manage. Skype, Google Hangouts, Join.me and GoToMeeting all failed to make the cut. Then Lauren and her team tried FoxDen, powered by ReadyTalk, and the platform delivered.

The results

Lawton Digital Marketing’s clients and team love FoxDen video meetings and immediately began to see improvements in the way they communicate and work. A single click connects them for impromptu, face-to-face video interactions. It’s now the de facto way for Lawton Digital Marketing to conduct planning meetings, reviews, presentations and pitches. Before implementing FoxDen, Lauren and her team were driving and spending money where they didn’t want or need to, reducing their margins. Now they can manage business relationships and even win new accounts from their own office.

The Lawton Digital Marketing team members aren’t IT gurus themselves, so they appreciate the fact that there’s no software or plug-ins to download, and yet the video and audio interactions are exceptional quality.

Using video conferencing is every bit as effective as meeting in-person for Lawton Digital Marketing, without the drive time, expenses, distraction and stress. As workflows and communication become increasingly digital, smaller companies can be in more places at once, deliver more value, make customers happier, add revenue, decrease costs and geographically expand their business.

Metrics

• Revenue doubled; Lawton Digital Marketing has pulled in 100% more revenue since implementing FoxDen video conferences.
• New business leads tripled.
• Close ratio increased by 25%.
• Margins improved. Small businesses have to constantly think about time and money. Driving to meetings would normally incur labor costs and operating expenses.
• Enabled better, more efficient customer interaction.
• Added at least three new team members.

The Technology

FoxDen, powered by ReadyTalk, is a platform for high-quality video and audio collaboration that can be used on any Chrome browser, Android or iOS device – anytime, anywhere.

Disruptive Factor

Because client services, counsel and collaboration are the core of Lawton Digital Marketing’s success, conducting meetings using video has completely transformed the way the company does business. Clients have much more immediate access to their account teams. With fewer offsite meetings, team members’ days are more streamlined, allowing them to focus on delivering higher quality work for current clients. The team is able to vet and secure new business opportunities more rapidly by establishing a feeling of trust using video.

Upon seeking out and settling on the right video conferencing technology, Lauren was willing to take a chance on video as a primary mode of communication. Not many small business owners (in any industry) are willing to rely so heavily on one technology, but that demonstrates Lauren’s forward-thinking strategy, willingness to do the necessary research and testing, and commitment to finding a solution that works for both the company and its clients.

Shining Moment

A heartwarming anecdote: One long-time client that Lauren is especially fond of is deaf. During FoxDen video meetings, he can read lips, facial expressions and understand everything the team is trying to communication because the video quality is so good.