Belkins vs. CIENCE Sales Development (legacy)

Belkins is well suited for:

1. Scaling businesses seeking to expand and generate new opportunities.
2. B2B companies targeting other businesses.
3. Time-strapped businesses in need of specialized appointment setting and sales support.

Also Belkins may be less appropriate for small businesses with limited budgets.

Cience is well suited for providing building blocks when you are starting with very little. They took the time to learn our unique product and weren't hesitant to jump on an account for a less than traditional ICP. If you are looking to outsource sales, just be prepared to be an active voice in the partnership.

• Belkins creates personalized campaigns that really speak to potential clients, making them more likely to respond.
• They’re great at setting up meetings with people who are actually interested in what you have to offer, helping you get closer to making a sale.
• Belkins isn’t afraid to change things up. They test different ways to reach out to people until they find what works best for you.
• Their team works together smoothly, making sure everything from finding leads to setting up meetings runs without a hitch.

• Rapidly created marketing scripts based on the domain knowledge we provided.
• Rapidly identified the key executives and ways to reach them in our target audience.
• Provided well-spoken representatives who were able to get our message across.
• Provided excellent weekly feedback on their 'hit-rate.'

• I think they could stop selling leads they don't have
• In my experience, their service department ignores you or just passes you to someone else who won't help

• STEER CLEAR- their company and model are a mess. We had a kickoff call in February with our "team" and by mid-May, none of them were still with the organization. We were never looped in on this turnover and as a result, there was a total diffusion of responsibility. Beware of the "10-20 day onboarding period" ours was more than 30 despite the fact we proactively provided them with a 15+ page playbook detailing everything they needed: 1) Target personas 2) Objections and counters 3) Product info 4) Company history 5) Talk tracks 6) Etc. Every ball that was dropped was on their end and there was a complete lack of ownership and accountability from their leadership team. The only person who took ANY ownership was our CAM, who was let go as part of a massive company-wide layoff. Their whole organization is a mess.
• We made numerous coaching asks of their team after hearing in the call recordings that the SDR was deviating from the script completely and had no idea what they were talking about. Their message was, "We help HR leaders retain talent so that they can promote their talent and not lose existing talent"--- the most generic of pitches and not at all related to what we do. They continuously referred to it as a "system" when we are a professional coaching organization. We coached continuously on every biweekly call and gave them suggestions, none of which seemed to get back to the SDR as they continued to repeat the same mistakes and even went far as pushing a prospect to take a meeting when she was in a rush because "I get incentivized from meetings booked over the phone."
• Despite our continuous asks, there was no collaboration. Our landing page mockup featured companies that weren't even customers of ours and would've been catastrophic to our brand had it been released. We never saw a mockup of this until the last minute and ended up having to do the entire thing ourselves despite them selling us on the fact that it was something they could handle.

In my experience, they don't give you the leads they promise.

They are easy to work with and very organized.

In my experience, Belkins exhibited commendable project management skills throughout the collaboration. They consistently delivered appointments on time and remained responsive to our needs and feedback.

They have a pool of talented teams and being responsible.

The process outlined was exactly what we were looking for (hand holding before, during and ongoing) and was right on in terms of what we needed for implementation. We were successful in identifying the team from CIENCE who would be dedicated to Manifest and were able to have all levels of both companies involved in the implementation process.

Our main goals were to book qualified appointments and expand our sales pipeline. We couldn't do it ourselves, so we started looking for a professional lead generation agency. We googled the top best agencies and found ratings where there were many different lead gen companies. But Belkins was in the top almost everywhere. We got acquainted with the offers of several agencies and chose a few. After reviewing their websites and collecting detailed information about them, we chose Belkins. They had a lot of positive reviews, and their portfolio has a lot of successful cases specifically in our industry.

We evaluated a handful of other companies in this industry before signing on with CIENCE. After doing the research, we found them to be a far better company with a much more compelling value and cost. I don't even remember the exact names of the other companies we met with, but I do recall how secretive and dubious their competition was about pricing and how the team resourced their time. The other models honestly did not make sense because they were cheaper but claiming that they would produce more for us with fewer resources and less of our support and collaboration. I have a lot of experience working in this industry in my past, and CIENCE was the only vendor our Executive team trusted after discussing potential contracts with at least 3 other vendors. They have since proven themselves even more, and the transparency, clarity, and collaboration that they sold us on originally have only developed more as we continue to work with them.

• Belkins successfully booked 55 high-quality appointments
• The collaboration resulted in a notable expansion of our sales pipeline, with a steady influx of engaged leads showing interest in the company's solutions
• They generated 10k+ relevant leads
• Their email outreach campaigns had approximately 30% open rate and about 12% reply rate

• Terrible waste of money. Just starting out we want to use our funds the most effective we can. This had ZERO ROI and was a waste of time.
• They ask for a three-month upfront payment and gave us nothing back. While this is the risk we take with no guarantees, you would expect a reputable business to offer something for a performance so poor. A free month to try and make things right by providing a few leads, or some small amount of refund, something. Their response was to tell us they did nothing wrong and they would not even consider anything.
• The good reviews from this company are baffling to me. I reviewed them before starting and felt they must be reputable. The truth is the onboarding process took 30 days even though we provided them with everything before it started. They charge for this ramp-up time even though nothing of substance is happening.
• Within two weeks of the campaign starting our Cience team had lost over half of its original members due to attrition. 3 out of 5 of their members left the company