How Attention’s BDRs produce 4x more leads than the industry standard by using Captain Data
Listening to customers - and truly understanding them - is one of the big keys to success in today’s global marketplace, where choices and alternatives are constantly being placed in the consumer’s field of vision. Attention.com was founded to give companies an edge in listening to customers and pulling insights from those interactions. Anis Bennaceur, co-founder and CEO, recently sat down with us to discuss how incorporating Captain Data in Attention’s daily work has led to better products for Attention’s customers and better processes for Attention’s employees.
As a founder with bootstrapping experience in the mid-2010s, Anis developed a lot of skills to find the data his companies needed. But thanks to that experience, he quickly recognized that a lot of the “growth hacking” that was so prevalent up until around 2020 is no longer relevant, and indeed can become a problem.
Namely, Anis – and many other Captain Data users – saw that LinkedIn and other platforms have become much more restrictive in their data practices. Today, an individual growth hacker is more likely to have their accounts and IPs banned than they are to successfully scrape the relevant data for their business.
But because it’s gotten harder, accessing structured data from the web has also gotten more valuable. Over the past three years, Anis has had a clear view of the challenges and value both as a founder building a solution that pleases Attention’s customers, and as a consumer looking for the best the market has to offer.
So when Anis met Marc, Captain Data’s COO, he was excited to hear about how Captain could help Attention cleanly industrialize their data gathering. Namely, Anis wanted to put together a workflow that would benefit Attention’s customers - a referral feature within Attention’s product that required profile enrichment using data available on LinkedIn.
“We knew that if we kept using the old growth hacking tools, our accounts would get shut down pretty quickly. So I spoke to Marc about how we could use Captain Data to create truly automated automations (meaning there’s no manual input needed at all, with actions being triggered all day every day). Building that referral enrichment engine was our first use case.”
In the process of building that workflow in late 2023, it became obvious to Anis that Captain Data’s platform could help in other areas of the business as well - he does, after all, have all that experience in growth hacking!
“I saw how robust Captain Data is, how much flexibility it could give us. That doesn’t mean it’s super simple to build those more complex workflows, but it’s worth it. And especially because it’s just so much more stable for our LinkedIn accounts.”
That’s when he turned his attention to his business development team, looking for ways to improve the BDRs’ lead generation efficiency. Importantly, Anis decided to shift a big part of the burden regarding BDRs onto himself, at least temporarily, by recruiting BDRs who are willing and able to be trained on Captain Data’s system. That means finding people who are comfortable with both sales and technology, which he knew can be a big ask in the tight market for top BDRs.
“I don’t just want BDRs who can do effective cold calling, I want them to also be growth-oriented and able to learn how to build their own workflows. I started having the Captain Data team teach our BDRs how to use the product, to the point where now we have about a dozen different workflows running. They go from extracting post likers or commenters, extracting people or company data, finding the right personas in the right companies, etc.”
Importantly, Anis notes, these Captain Data workflows are also connected via API to other software tools, such as Cargo and Clay, to ensure that they aren’t targeting current Attention customers or prospects that are already in the sales pipeline.
This approach obviously requires more investment (and time) in recruiting and training. But it also means that Anis now has a BDR team that is essentially autonomous in their lead gen activities. And not only are they autonomous, but they’re also more productive than the industry standard.
“Our BDRs can run their own Captain Data campaigns and get the prospects they need every day, without waiting for anyone else or hunting for information. The result is that while most companies want their BDRs to hit around 10 new leads per month, our BDRs are aiming to hit 40 new leads every month. It’s much more aggressive, but it turns our BDRs into growth gurus, and it works.”
As always, the proof is in the bank account: from the moment when Attention started generating revenue in February 2023, they’ve gone from 0 to over $2M in ARR, with growth only accelerating! 💪💪
Many thanks to Anis for telling the Attention story - we can’t wait to see what new workflows he (or his BDRs!) come up with next. For more Captain Data customer stories and use cases, head over to our blog, and don’t forget to keep up with us on social media.
