The world’s leading skill development learning platform uses Cognism’s sales intelligence platform to:
- Validate email addresses and mobile numbers for target accounts
- Fuel Salesforce and Outreach with accurate contact data by seamlessly integrating them with Cognism
- Export contacts at speed with Cognism’s Chrome Extension
- Target their ideal-fit accounts with Cognism’s event triggers
Teams using: Sales
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The company
Sales Impact Academy (SIA) offers a continuous commercial live-learning solution, designed by revenue leaders for revenue teams. Their co-founders Paul Fifield and Alexandra Damgaard, noticed a gap in the traditional higher education system which has let the world of B2B down, with a complete lack of formal, structured education for salespeople world-over. This major oversight has led to inconsistent core technical skills across every role in go-to-market teams from leadership through to SDRs, AEs, CSMs, marketing and revenue operations.
In order to combat this fundamental skills gap, SIA is bringing together the world’s best frontier leaders to teach structured, live and interactive online courses with high learning design principles. The team now supports the skills development of over 12,000 learners across 280 customers including PayPal, HubSpot, GitHub, Gong, Klaviyo, Rubrik & ThoughtSpot.
The challenge
We interviewed Sam Butcher, Senior Partnerships Manager and Lianna Lachappelle, Global SDR Manager at SIA about their experience with Cognism.
Lianna explained why they chose us as their sales intelligence provider.
“Cognism and SIA are both key players in the sales industry and have many overlapping values. SIA was founded in 2019 and in order for the sales team to find prospective clients, they required highly-accurate, actionable data to do this. Consequently, Cognism’s CEO, James Isilay and SIA’s CEO, Paul Fifield met and realised the combined impact of each service. Ultimately, a long-lasting relationship formed between both organisations. We are now a well-established customer and partner."
The solution
The overall SDR team consists of six people across the company. Lianna manages the SDRs in North America.
What is SIA’s target demographic?
“We speak to fast-growing Series A and above, B2B technology companies in North America and EMEA. We are currently hyper-focused on our prospecting, management and leadership schools targeting senior sales leadership titles.”
“Our ideal customer is a business that’s expanding. In order to sustain growth, supporting staff with sufficient learning and development resources is paramount. This is where we come in.”
What are the everyday workflows with Cognism?
“We employ a multichannel approach: cold calls, LinkedIn messages, videos, voice notes, emails and GIFs.”
“At the start of the month, the SDRs are given a list of 40 accounts to target. Cognism is used for legitimising the individual mobile numbers and email addresses at these companies. The SDRs export the contact details into the Salesforce CRM and prospect to these businesses using Outreach, a sales engagement tool.”
Lianna told us more about the successful alliance between Outreach and Cognism.
“Cognism has a direct integration with Outreach. You can immediately plug all of your prospects from Cognism into the software and add them to sequences. Most of our pipeline is generated through this integration. It’s really seamless.”
“When we were initially building our list of the top 500 businesses, we used Cognism’s funding sales trigger to check the account’s credibility. It works by cross-referencing the company’s most recent funding round or IPO status. It’s an invaluable qualification tool for us.”
How has the Cognism Browser Extension been utilised at SIA?
“The SDRs use this plug-in every single day. Within minutes, they can export the company domains and contact details from the extension into our Salesforce CRM.”
Lianna elaborated on the accuracy of the data.
“I generally find that Cognism has high coverage and more verified mobile numbers than other tools. It’s undeniable that the data is the best in class.”
How has Cognism’s support service contributed to their success with the platform?
“Our CSM is highly engaging, quick and regularly encourages tool adoption. We have a great working relationship.”
The results
Lianna explained the core reasons she’d recommend Cognism:
1. Remarkable data accuracy
“Cognism allows us to connect with a diverse range of people. The direct to prospect conversion rate for meetings attended has significantly increased.”
2. Seamless integrations
“The integrations between Salesforce, Outreach and Cognism are flawless. The ability to find a prospect, click the contact, redeem the contact details and export the information straight into Salesforce ready for Outreach is revolutionary for an SDR. They’re no longer spending time laboriously exporting contacts into the CRM.”
Sam praised the partnership between SIA and Cognism.
“SIA is the resource that helps set your team up for success. Our courses provide you with the skills, insights and understanding of how to go about your go-to-market work successfully."
“Cognism provides the tools to operationalise all the topics learned at SIA. Here’s an example: an individual attends a SIA sequencing course and Cognism provides the B2B data to action the sequences.”
“The Cognism partnerships team is very knowledgeable about how to build a mutually beneficial partnership. We have a great working relationship and Cognism continues to be our go-to sales intelligence provider.”
Try Cognism’s sales intelligence solution
Over 1,000 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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