Organizations and individuals are defined by how they react and adapt to change and challenges. As many of us know, we couldn’t have predicted everything that happened in 2020. From a pandemic, to protests and riots, to a wild presidential election, and large-scale nation-state hacking, this year was challenging. 2020 was a year full of change and C3 took that change in stride.
Despite these difficulties, C3 Technology Advisors comes out of this year stronger than ever as we have accomplished our annual goals. Without missing a beat, our consultants pivoted their businesses and assisted clients in everything from work-from-home technology to security and disaster recovery. The team’s resilience to this year’s challenges makes me so proud to be a C3er.
Here's our ‘20 highlights -
- Employee growth. We grew from 15 employees to 22
- 4 IT consultants
- 1 growth/retention consultant
- 1 technical engineer
- 1 Marketing Specialist
- Product Revenue Growth.
- Territory growth. We expanded our physical presence into Indiana
- Enterprise sales growth. Our penetration into enterprise accounts continues to improve.
- A large automotive supplier signing of a client to a 3yr, $6M WAN/SD WAN/SASE contract with a strategic partner of C3
- A household consumer brands client signing 6 contracts with C3 between 3 and 5 yrs totaling $5.5M in total contract revenue
- A large contact center client contracting for 3 yrs, $3M in total contract value
- Our Microsoft revenue has increased significantly due to the onboarding of a strategic partner
- Being officially recognized by Shark Tank Sharks Daymond John and Robert Herjavec as having the best pitch in our space – https://vimeo.com/466670687 (Password: SharkTank)
- Lifetime Achievement Award by Avant - https://goavant.net/avant-communications-announces-third-annual-special-forces-summit-awards/
- Charitable donations
- Starkey Hearing Foundation
To assist our consultants in hitting their goals, we’ve created an ecosystem of interconnected prospecting and marketing tools. We believe that the true benefit to this ecosystem has yet to be felt and should further accelerate sales in ’21.
Here's our ‘20 highlights of our tools –
- Salesforce – We transferred our CRM system from Sugar to Salesforce. This tool now enables our consultants to not only track their progress and performance around their goals, but also helps us manage our client’s data too.
- HubSpot – C3 leverages HubSpot to email prospects, track engagement and interactions of prospects and clients, report on our social media analytics, and set up meetings seamlessly.
- Vidyard – Video is the future. We provide the ability for our consultants to record personal messages to send to their prospects and clients. From introduction messages to summarizing meetings, video is one way to keep everyone connected.
- ClientPoint – This is the newest tool we implemented in 2020 which allows the ability to exceed client’s user experiences. C3 leverages ClientPoint to store all documents and links for clients, sign and redline proposals/scope of works, join and schedule meetings, and acts as a repository for all documents post-implementation. This tool also tracks client engagement levels to ensure that our clients continue to move along in the buying process.
Our brand continues to grow as well as we focus more energy and resources into this. C3's Marketing Team will be implementing a new video, social media, and inbound strategies. This is just the start of what our vision is and how our team and will get us there.We encourage C3ers to actively post content and videos online. This year alone, C3ers, Ryan Boyk, Taylor Vossler, and Jeremy Domanik, have created their own LinkedIn personas to entertain and educate their network.
Here's our ‘20 highlights of our social media -
- Social Media Growth. We expanded our brand online and within the community.
- Followers increased by 125%
- Published C3 posts increased by 267%
- Shares of C3 posts increased by 765%
- Engagement rate of 5.89% in 2020
- Over 78K impressions made in 2020
- Video Development.
- Created 13 YouTube videos in 2020
- Created 13 webinars in 2020
As we look into ’21, we plan to improve and build upon the strategies above and introduce some new ones. New initiatives for the coming year include the formation of an internal operations team to better support our consultants and improve business processes and the reintroduction of in-person events (such as the West Michigan IT Summit) in the second half of the year. Our clients enjoy thought leadership and networking events and we all look forward to escaping the virtual world for the actual world occasionally. We plan on a big push to improve our brand and brand recognition, so we’re doubling down on our content strategy as well.
Our goal is to build the best company in our space and we think 2020 was another building block in getting there. The team that we’re building at C3 to accomplish this goal is second to none and we’ll continue to add key pieces ONLY as we find the right people who strive for greatness and never settle. C3 team, thank you for everything you do. I truly enjoy coming to work every day and working with the best.
Sincerely,
Matthew Toth
President/CEO
