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Case study · Customer reactivation
The trust was already built. One line of business had not caught up to it yet.
A Montreal IT provider, 150 employees, had been equipping Quebec schools for years — solid relationships, orders that come back, a position nobody else had. Our partner Milos saw the thing that is hard to see from the inside when the business is working: all that earned trust opened onto a line of services nobody had yet had the time to put in front of them. He built the offer with them, helped them price it, filled the room, then held the follow-up with all ten reps to the end.
- $70,000
- at least, in annual recurring revenue (CAD)
- 1
- webinar
- 0
- new leads generated
- $0
- in advertising
- 3 yrs
- and still renewing
Nobody was working that list. Not out of neglect — because the business was working.
This is the detail that makes the whole thing work, and it runs against what people assume. These customers had not gone cold: they were still buying, the reps knew them by name, the relationship was excellent. That is precisely what made the opening possible. One line of service simply had not got there yet, and a team busy delivering what already works does not have the time to go looking.
We asked for an export of every education customer who had not been approached about it in the last 60 to 90 days. Our counterpart laughed: "it's all of them." We ask that question of every business we work with, and the answer is almost always the same. That is not a fault in this company. It is what happens when a team is busy.
It was not a price problem, and it was not competition. It was a conversation that had not happened yet, with people who were already ready to have it.
Without him, that line of business does not exist.
They had built the relationships. They had the credibility, the accounts, the standing in that market. What was missing was the time and the mechanism — and that is what Milos brought, end to end.
He spotted the opening a busy company had no time to look for — a service line nobody had worked, not a relationship gone cold.
He built them an offer they did not yet have.
He helped them price it, off their own cost.
He built the webinar — and structured it so the client kept their place in front of their own customers.
He drove all ten reps, one by one, to invite their own accounts.
He got them to the sector's conference to continue the same conversations face to face.
And when the follow-up started slipping, he is the one who called every rep, every week, until it landed.
After that, the team ran the play on its own: other product lines, other vendors, then the customers nobody had got back to in a while. It became how they sell — and that part they did themselves.
Eight steps. None of them are complicated.
There is no trick in here. The method is not the rare part: somebody running it all the way to the end is the rare part.
Pull the list
Every customer in one segment, filtered on a single question: who has never been offered this?
Build the offer with the client
Priced off their real cost. Fast to deploy, so a minimal setup fee — and none at all where install ran about an hour.
Invite two ways
Email, plus the reps phoning their own accounts. A real voice inviting beats email every single time.
Structure the session
Technical content in the middle, the client presenting their own value at the start and the end — so nobody leaves thinking they can buy direct.
Segment on behaviour
Who showed up, who asked a question. It is the one interest signal you never have to ask for.
Route to the right rep
Each lead goes back to whoever already knows that customer. A stranger calling starts from zero.
Follow the leads in person
A few months later, the sector's own conference. Same conversations, face to face.
Name one owner for follow-up
One person. Not "the sales team". This is the step that nearly sank it, and it is the one everybody skips.
What nearly sank it.
Ten good reps were each supposed to invite and follow up their own accounts — on top of their quota, their quotes and their existing customers. Nobody owned the project centrally, so every week it fell to the bottom of the pile. Of course it did. So we did that job ourselves — calling all ten, every week, to find out who had been invited, who had confirmed, who had been followed up. The gap was not in the people. It was that the project belonged to nobody.
"You can have this project laid out to the best of your abilities. If you don't have people chasing these leads, all this falls apart."
Milos Sukic, partner, Modus — who ran the campaign
That is why step 08 exists. A list does not work on its own. Neither does a webinar.
What it produced.
At least $70,000 CAD in annual recurring revenue
In a business that ran on one-time contracts and RFPs and sold nothing recurring. The bulk landed in the three months after the webinar; the rest rolled out over the year, because school boards have to go to tender above a certain amount. Outside that regime it moves a good deal faster.
Without a single new lead
All of it came out of the customer base they had already paid to build. And it holds: those customers have been renewing for two and three years, because what was sold is easy to install, manage and support.
The method got reused
Segmented again for other product lines, then repeated with other vendors. It became how the company runs an entire division.
Where the number comes from. It is the campaign as it ran, in Canadian dollars, reported by the partner who ran it. We are having the client confirm it from their own system — the period, the final amount, and exactly what is counted. If it moves, we correct it here. We would rather publish a conservative figure that is true than an impressive one we cannot stand behind.
What has to be true at your shop.
This does not work everywhere. Here are the four conditions, in the order they matter.
Customers who have bought at least once
Once is enough. This is not a purchased prospect list.
Records that are minimally clean
Name, email, phone, employer, and enough context to know what kind of business you are talking to. A messy spreadsheet can be fixed. Nothing at all cannot.
A direct line that already exists
This is the one that carries everything else. Somebody at your place knows this person, you have already done business together. This is not cold outreach dressed up.
Somebody to do the work
Every week, for weeks. That is step 08, and it is where this almost always breaks.
Before you send anything
Something most owners do not know: in Canada, implied consent that comes from a purchase expires after two years. Six months if the person only made an inquiry. A list that has been sitting for three years is a list whose consent has lapsed — and emailing it is no longer allowed.
It does not kill the project. It changes the first step: you segment by recency, and the oldest records go through the phone or the mail before any email. It is workable, it is lawful, and it is by far the best place to start.