How VA Partners Helped Thomas Solutions Grow from 1 to 40 Customers

Thomas Solutions
 
Over the last five years we have had 50 clients and one of these clients, Thomas Solutions, was recently featured in the Toronto Star. Thomas Solutions is a 40-year-old company that specializes in work truck rentals and leasing, manpower services and cartage services. We started with Thomas Solutions about two years ago and at that time they had one very large customer that comprised over 99% of their annual revenue and no website. Our goal was simple, diversify the revenue base and improve their visibility. We were to accomplish this by growing sales and by increasing Thomas Solutions’ mindshare in the market. We focused our efforts specifically on the work truck rentals and leasing business as it was the most scalable, repeatable and offered the best returns. Today, Thomas Solutions boasts over 40 clients and has doubled its work truck rental and leasing business.
 

A Few of the Key Successes

 

  • Helping to double revenue and grow customer base from one to over 40 clients
  • Active sales funnel with more than 50 additional opportunities and growing
  • Developing a target database of over 750 companies and growing
  • Running successful marketing campaigns for Thomas Solutions in two key markets comprising of print, radio, TV
  • Developing a corporate video and video testimonials for use on the website and in customer presentations
  • Working with our PR partner to secure two articles in tier 1 national papers – The National Post and Toronto Star

 
Thomas Solutions success was built on using Venture Accelerator Partners’ Sales and Marketing Fast Start Plan. It entailed a lot of hard work and support from not only Thomas Solutions’ General Manager and senior leadership group but also our team and our partners. From a sales and marketing perspective though, I wanted to highlight some of the key steps we undertook to get to this point as I believe they are valuable and can be transferred to almost any business to help achieve success.
 

Key Steps

 

  • Working with the senior management to develop a sales and marketing plan that looks at past successes, the value proposition, core competencies, human and capital resources to identify what markets to focus on
  • Refining the value proposition with a focus on addressing client business pain in quantitative means – basically building a compelling and quantifiable business case
  • Targeting of specific markets and companies where the Thomas model has the most likelihood of success
  • Utilizing a CRM system to manage the customer and prospect database which is also used for a variety of marketing and sales purposes (Newsletter, direct mail)
  • Providing prospect research, cold calling, targeted emails, follow ups and proposals to end clients
  • Understanding where to use marketing to help support the sales effort and create brand awareness and staying power; and being able to try in some cases a few different options
  • Executing the actual sales and marketing work with precision and dedicated effort and feeding back learnings into the messaging
  • Providing ongoing support so the momentum is not lost

 

I think ultimately the development of sales and marketing plan with actionable items and then the execution of that plan is what makes our relationship with Thomas Solutions a success. If you have a need for sales and marketing assistance to help get your business moving in the right direction, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We would love to help.
 

How VA Partners Helped Thomas Solutions Grow from 1 to 40 Customers