Website Planet had the chance to sit down and chat with Pete Gillett, CEO of Zuant, an award-winning mobile lead capture app born from his four decades of experience in marketing and multiple entrepreneurial journeys, starting from developing the very first CRM back in 1990.
He told us the story of Zuant’s inception from his own pain point, and what makes it today the Universal Lead Management system chosen by Pepsi, Pirelli, Verizon, Uber and more to scale their leaden efforts by cutting admin costs and increasing engagement and leads quality.
Let’s introduce Zuant to our audience. What is it and how does it work?
It’s a lead management system to collect leads from a variety of channels and then ensure that they are responded to impressively and pushed through to the appropriate CRM or Marketing Automation System.
There are 3 key types of Zuant product:
- a mobile app for iOS or Android for use at shows and events
- a QR code system for use anywhere you can stick a QR code
- our new product developed during the pandemic, Zuant 3D, as a whole new sales channel.
I think the software design is the beauty of all our products which makes them a delight to use!
Ease of use and corresponding reduction of training, streamlining of processes, more user engagement and full ROI measurement – these are the benefits our clients get with Zuant.
How does your mission differ from the other companies in your niche?
The range of products that have a wide role to play in our section of the market, then the looks and ease of set-up contribute to make us really different.
The our core values are a differentiator:
- Minimalist design
- Lively and responsive customer service
- Leading edge tech – always pushing forward
In the long-term, we aim at expanding our traditional events lead retrieval and management business, and at the same time breaking out into a variety of exciting new markets for the Zuant 3D product.
How did it all start? What sparked the idea?
Our core business has always been marketing database and response management through our Network of multilingual call centers around the world.
A client asked us to take their handwritten exhibition lead sheets one day and the job was so horrid we soon applied our tech for an early version of Zuant which was cloud based. The arrival of the iPad moved us across to Apple so that we could run offline and enhance the product with a whole range of content available for the sales guys as a presentation tool.
What led you to start, and how did you validate your product-market fit?
That paper based client kicked off Zuant and validation comes from the license growth with good stickiness year on year! So we didn’t involve potential users or seek expert opinions, no, we simply dived in!
We wanted to stay Apple, but found recently that Android was a necessity to maintain market share – we don’t like it though, and it only represents a small percentage of our user base still!
Originally our service had to involve the supply of hardware to clients at events which slowed us down, but fortunately we don’t need to do that anymore. Going through Customs with 80 iPhones for an Event always raised a few eyebrows at airports, trying to persuade officials that they weren’t burner phones!
Fast forward, our main focus is the US market, and we’re proud to work for about 200 major internationals at over 2000 events around the world. Although the number of events might increase a little, our client base should double over the next 2 years at the current rate.
Who are your typical clients and what problems do they have when they come to you?
We’re strong in Pharma, Construction, Engineering and Manufacturing, and our clients come to us because they simply want a Universal Lead Management system to streamline the whole process and capture more quality leads!
* It’s a shame that small businesses don’t see the value of these systems, as our core clientele is made up of large Corporates
They need streamlined single system to use to avoid admin at each show and allow a fully trained sales team to use the system everyday. That helps them avoid much more cost/lower quality leads/less engagement with customers. Before using your solution they were renting scanners from event organizers, but that obviously doesn’t cut it anymore.
Costs combined with our fabulous marketing, and the more sophisticated demands of CRM systems these days are all factors that made them understand they could do better.
What sets our solutions apart from other companies, it’s simply service support which allows our clients to relax and be comfortable that this very important area of their business is covered – ongoing.
However, our market leading UI/UX combined with lovely customer service is our secret formula!
Can you share any success stories where your product made a significant difference for a business dealing with these challenges?
Yes, Verizon is a great example.
‘Inconsistent lead qualification. Little to no visibility to visitor traffic, visitor to lead conversion, or customer visitors. Lead upload into CRM systems can take more than 5 days due to delays in receiving leads from show registration or lead systems when available. Up to 500 leads per year are manually typed in from lead forms or business cards.
The Verizon Networkfleet event program was focused on high volume lead acquisition through participation in B2B tradeshows, partnership with Verizon Wireless events and association memberships. With this high volume, the team was strained to reliably capture the data from lead forms that had been used at all events up until I joined the team and identified this as an operations issue.
Working on processing lead forms wasdistracting from the team’s capacity to plan other shows and had to be addressed to prevent leads from going cold waiting to be captured into our CRM system.
“Events are a key source of our fleet solutions’ MQLs, and by adding Zuant we were able to gain visibility to prospect and customer touch points, segment our interactions with them and further accelerate our sales pipeline. Key performance points of which Zuant was a contributor to our results along with other strategic initiatives to improve our events program:
- Doubled sales opportunities with increase in qualified leads from better and
- consistent data collection at all events.
- 156% YOY increase in sales opportunities from events.
- 287% YOY increase in unit sales from events.”
“Zuant met the majority of our requirements out of the gate with a very user friendly interface for both show staff and admin users, easy setup changes from event to event, fast business card capture, constant cloud sync, and a robust admin portal. Their responsiveness, industry knowledge and ongoing service have become instrumental to our event program’s success.”
So this is how we change our customers’ lives – Simply more quality leads thanks to highly automated event lead capture systems with CRM system integrations to deliver content.
The quality of the service and ease of use of the app for the sales guys are the two things we get praised for.
If you had unlimited funds, what improvements would you make?
I’d invest in a much larger Sales Team based in the US to expand our traditional Events market business and expand into the new Zuant 3D markets such as Travel and Retail. But watch this space, ‘cause we are indeed coming up with some news!