How Zilla Security leverages Cargo to improve its SaaS bowtie metrics
Jason GoldbergCargo has been a game-changer for Zilla, turning our go-to-market strategy into a dynamic and responsive engine that speeds up our sales cycle by enhancing data accuracy.Jason Goldberg
The problem#
Inflated tool stack
“Our go-to-market strategy was severely impacted by the multitude of tools, making it nearly impossible to adapt quickly to market demands. My main goal was to reduce the effort required by the sales teams, so they could focus on being on calls with customers.”
Succeeding in cybersecurity means going beyond traditional cold outreach. Zilla Security, with a lean team and multi-channel sales approach, including partnerships, focused on improving the quality and response speed to time-sensitive signals from their target prospects.
Before Cargo, Zilla's sales team faced the challenge of managing a fragmented set of tools that demanded heavy manual effort. Sales reps juggled multiple interfaces to access signal and enriched customer data, slowing their ability to respond quickly to new opportunities.
Incomplete signals hampered scoring and targeting
Integration issues between disconnected tools left sales and marketing teams with incomplete insights on potential buyers. Marketing might spot signals of interest from a prospect, but without detailed insights on their specific needs or buying readiness, sales teams struggled to create the perfect pitch on the first contact with the prospect.
This resulted in generic interactions that failed to engage potential clients at a deeper level or move them through the sales funnel.
“Often, we only knew a potential account was showing some signals, but nothing more than that.”
Data engineering constraints preventing experimentation with unconventional signals
Manually merging data from multiple sources required extensive time and effort from Jason himself. He had to manage the technology stack needed to ship data between different systems and implement new logic to support new requirements. This continual need for manual intervention ate into precious revenue operations and enablement time that could have been spent on more strategic initiatives.
The technical complexities often forced Jason to settle for the minimum viable outcomes that were buildable and maintainable, sacrificing important nuances. The stack was heavily reliant on Jason, making it difficult to delegate or transfer ownership to other team members.
The solution#
Use case 1: ICP scoring
“Cargo made it really easy to experiment with different webhook events and data enrichment extracts unified into data models.”
Zilla’s team has implemented Cargo as the central hub for all go-to-market operations, consolidating customer data from various sources into unified models. This eliminates the need to switch between systems, allowing sales teams to access all data in one place. They developed a scoring system within Cargo, assigning scores to contacts based on enrichment quality and signal strength within a single workflow.
To counter scattered signal data reaching the sales reps, Zilla uses Cargo to split their total addressable market into three segments (cold, warming, hot). Hence, only the best enriched and promising leads reach the CRM.
Use case 2: Integrating non-conventional signal sources
“Once the core workflow components were built, I could add variations to existing processes in minutes by simply changing the inputs and outputs of a workflow to test a new approach.”
Previously, setting up out-of-the-box signals was time-consuming, but with Cargo, Jason can set up a new signal-based workflow in under an hour. One use case involves swiftly identifying accounts impacted by publicly disclosed security incidents or data breaches, moving them from the 'warming' stage to the 'hot' stage in the CRM, i.e. ready for active engagement by an AE.
To build this, Jason uses a computed column in a Cargo data model ensuring that every 90 days, all accounts in the 'warming' stage are searched for the occurence of data breaches - which is a strong indicator of a potential need for Zilla's services. Next, he uses the Serper and Firecrawl integrations to search for the latest data breaches and compliance failures. Once a data breach is detected, this information was updated within the signals object in the CRM.
“With Cargo, I’ve been able to gather signals like a potential customer visiting our site and then quickly run a search to see if there’s a related event, such as a recent data breach or compliance failure, that could explain their interest. This gives us critical context to tailor our outreach more effectively changing the inputs and outputs of a workflow to test a new approach.”
Use case 3: Tracking ex-champions who have moved to new companies
“Cargo enables us to uncover potentially overlooked prospects, who already love our product, and could now open > doors at their new companies.”
Being a small industry, a lot of stakeholders move often to contemporary companies. Cargo's change-based workflow enrolment rules allow Zilla to trigger periodic searches that track champions in the CRM who have moved to new companies which could be future Zilla customer.
With Cargo's native LinkedIn integrations, Jason compares the latest employer details of a champion against existing CRM data. When a change is detected, the workflow sends a warming email to the champion and notifies the relevant account executive to re-engage, potentially opening doors at the champion's new company
The Outcome#
4 hours to activate a new signal
The integration with Cargo reduces the response time to potential buyer signals from 3 working days to under 4 hours, enhancing agility in the sales process. The moment a signal occurs, it triggers various workflow streams. Some workflows use AI to construct messaging based on our predefined templates or new AI-generated content, which is then sent out to start creating interaction and awareness. While others workflows assign the lead to a sales rep based on territory or other criteria.
15% higher conversion rates
By multiplying the sources of signals feeding sales reps' interactions, Cargo helps increase lead-to-opportunity conversion rates by 15%. Orchestrating standalone signals into a more comprehensive picture, Zilla identifies patterns and opportunities that might otherwise have been missed. That enables the sales team to assign someone to go and have a discovery call to collect intelligence and push for a potential opportunity.
90% reduction in overhead
Maximizing automation upstream and ensuring that sales teams don't need to switch between multiple systems, allows Zilla's sales reps to cut manual data processing time, freeing them to focus more on selling rather than administrative tasks. Cargo
Zilla Security specializes in automating user access reviews, offering advanced solutions that enhance compliance and integration across diverse platforms. By updating complex legacy systems with modern, cloud-based innovations, Zilla provides essential security services to a wide range of businesses, from emerging startups to large corporations..
Engineer your growth now
Set the new standard in revenue orchestration.
Start creating playbooks to fast-track your revenue growth.