Beacon is revolutionizing technology implementation in state and local governments, a sector notorious for a high failure rate in IT projects. By providing a comprehensive view of project health, risks, and opportunities, Beacon equips teams with the critical information needed for swift and informed decision-making. Despite facing a challenging market with complex procurement processes and the difficulty of engaging the right decision-makers, Beacon targets a significant opportunity. The potential is exemplified by the California Governor’s 2024 IT project proposals, which amount to $641 million and over 275 positions.
The sale of software to state and local governments is fraught with challenges, including intricate procurement processes, bureaucratic hurdles, and the need to quickly establish trust and credibility in a market dominated by long-standing relationships. Beacon faces the task of penetrating a market where IT leadership is not only difficult to identify but also engage. The uniqueness of this market demanded a specialized approach to identify and connect with key players effectively.
In response to these challenges, Beacon, in collaboration with Trender, has innovatively transformed their team’s workflow. This strategic shift has not only allowed them to navigate the complex landscape of government IT projects more effectively but has also led to a substantial 50% increase in qualified opportunities. Their success underscores the importance of tailored strategies in overcoming market-specific hurdles and capitalizing on significant growth potential in the government sector.
About Beacon
Founded in 2021, Beacon has developed a platform specifically designed for managing complex technology implementations. Using cutting-edge AI technologies alongside a dedicated software project team, Beacon sifts through the noise to find the signals that matter most. It offers a clear, consolidated view of the health, risks, and opportunities of the implementation, empowering your team to make informed decisions quickly.
Their advanced, intelligent tool ingests project artifacts – ranging from code repositories, task tracking artifacts, emails, testing results, and much more – to produce actionable insights that dramatically improve the chances of a successful outcome.
Beacon has a go-to-market motion that includes selling their SaaS solution directly to large government agencies. Their solution requires an enterprise sales approach, and typically includes selling into a cross-functional team including a primary contact and multiple stakeholders.
Beacon needed a solution that could quickly profile and monitor comprehensive contact information of target contacts at named accounts, at scale, all in one platform.
Going to Market with Traditional Tools
Reveald was following a traditional sales playbook. Everything was manual. They used Zoominfo for finding contacts. SDRs would spend hours searching LinkedIn, the web, YouTube, and various forums to try and make sense of their target prospects, in order to try and craft intelligent email outreach.
“It just wasn’t scalable.”
Reveald began searching for a tool that united quality data with efficient engagement features to ensure their team could provide relevant content to the right audience at the right time.
So, Trender was brought in as a pilot.
Trender streamlined research and amplified signal monitoring
Beacon was following a traditional sales playbook. Everything was manual. They used LinkedIn to find contacts. Founders would spend hours searching LinkedIn, the web, event agendas, org charts and project documents to make sense of their target prospects – and craft intelligent email outreach. “It just wasn’t scalable.”
Without a sales team, Beacon leadership was spending more than 50% of their time researching across social media and the web to pull together relevant details about target accounts. Beacon needed a tool that would make this whole process faster and more effective. So, Trender was brought in as a pilot.
We saw a lot of potential to be influential from the ground up, in terms of my product knowledge and industry knowledge, but also my experience building and scaling SDR teams. Trender was there to help them do it.
The Results
With Trender, Beacon was able to quickly set up social watch channels for key contacts they were targeting for engagement. “What we saw was amazing, with Trender we had a single tool that would track and monitor prospect engagement across social media, and alert us when one of our targets posted.”
“In addition, Trender allows us to “profile” target individuals with a contact dossier, and provides a series of concise email icebreakers in various tones from interesting to humorous, that can be used when drafting outreach.”
By automating monitoring, founders bought back a large chunk of their day. Kaitlin and the Beacon team were able to effectively engage top prospects and book f2f meetings at key events and conferences. It was a game changer for booking meetings and building new pipeline.
About trender
Find & engage the right people at the right companies who want to buy. Warm up your customer engagement with intelligence & insights. We’re building a new approach to B2B sales that leverages AI and automation to accelerate time to revenue (TTR).