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.

More work
Sourcing Allies
Client
Sourcing Allies
Deliverables
  • Sales Pipeline Automation
  • ICP & Positioning Strategy
  • PR & Thought Leadership Support
Our expertise
Digital sales transformation and lead-generation systems for a traditional, relationship-driven B2B manufacturing and sourcing business.
Duration
2019–2020, and ongoing

The challenge

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.

What we did

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

The outcome

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

Together with Up Strategy Lab, we were able to use modern techniques and methodologies such as the Value Proposition Canvas and Business Model Canvas to reflect on who our core customers are, and what we offered them as a business.

Eric BengtsonCEO, Sourcing Allies

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.

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