Sourcing Allies
Sales lead times dropped from two years to six months
We mapped the business behind the China sourcing experts, then built their sales process & lead engine.
When CEO Eric Bengtson contacted Up Strategy Lab in January 2019, Sourcing Allies — a China sourcing and manufacturing partner founded in 2006, with offices in Sweden, China, the US, and UK — was still winning business the way it always had: trade fairs, in-person relationship building, and no structured way to identify or follow up with serious buyers. There was no digital pipeline, no automated lead handling, and no clear articulation of who the company's best-fit customers actually were. Bengtson wanted a way to generate and manage leads based on results, not proximity to the next trade show.
Sales Pipeline Automation
Replaced manual, trade-show-dependent outreach with an automated lead generation system, integrating Zapier, HubSpot, and Mailchimp so that internal sales processes and lead handling ran on modern software tools rather than relationship memory.
ICP & Positioning Definition
Ran Value Proposition Canvas and Business Model Canvas work with Sourcing Allies' leadership to define who their core customers actually were, and to design a company vision and outreach approach tailored to the partners they wanted to work with.
PR & Thought Leadership Support
Supported Sourcing Allies' public communications, including a March 2020 press release announcing Coronavirus support services for Western businesses manufacturing in China — part of a broader push to position the company as a responsive, on-the-ground partner and build inbound leads through industry thought leadership.
Sales lead time: 2 years → under 6 months Lead cost: $2,000 → $100 Sales conversion rate: 0.7% → 20%. By replacing an unstructured, trade-fair-dependent process with a system that could identify serious buyers and reach them at the point they needed help, Sourcing Allies turned an unpredictable sales cycle into a repeatable one.
In their words
Up Strategy Lab first helped us move away from selling at trade fairs and onto a system that finds serious buyers. Seven years later they're still with us, and the work has shifted from generating leads to attracting the right ones. As we've moved toward managing the whole manufacturing journey, from prototype to delivery, they've rebuilt how we present ourselves around the customers we actually want to work with. They keep asking who we serve and why, and the sales conversations we have now are better for it.
Still selling on relationships when you could be selling on data?
Book a conversation with Noel. No pitch deck required, just an honest discussion about what you are building and whether we are the right fit.
Typically responds within one business day. Based in Gothenburg, Sweden, clients everywhere.
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