Proof from markets most firms avoid

The Objective

An early stage startup was seeking to engage Director, VP, and C-suite level executives within leading biotech and pharmaceutical companies in the United States.

Their primary objectives were to:

• Validate their core offering to this market
• Identify the best “point of entry” within these organizations across various divisions and leadership titles
• Engage prospects in a consultative sales process with deal sizes ranging into 7 figures per year
• And transition from reliance on relationships & referrals to having a way of proactively generating new opportunities

The Challenge

Getting in front of your prospects has never been harder.

If you’re trying to send cold emails in 2024 you’re going up to bat against Google & Microsoft.

Their spam-detection algorithms are getting better every day.

On top of that, every enterprise institution (top pharma in this case) utilizes firewalls: proofpoint, mimecast, cisco, barracuda, etc.

These firewalls are primarily designed for cybersecurity purposes.

But they also catch & discard most outreach.

The bottom line?

If you’re sending emails to enterprise institutions without a correct sending infrastructure, it’s most likely that no one ever sees them.

(The “open rates” shown in your sales engagement platform are simply just emails being “opened” by a spam filter, not a human.)

Solution & Results

Within 3 months of engaging Astris Partners - this startup had conversations with leaders at 17 of the top 20 pharma orgs, as well as dozens of smaller organizations.

Here are the strategic highlights supporting this effort:

• Alignment of key value propositions of our client with the pressing needs of stakeholders within their target market
• In depth audience research - conference recordings, event recordings, webinars, podcasts, etc.
• Creation & testing of 23 different angles of presenting their offer
• Creation of foundational marketing collateral to showcase our client’s unique, competitive differentiation

In addition, we’ve nerded out about getting emails through enterprise grade firewalls, to ensure we’re able to effectively engage prospects at scale.

The end result?

A well defined understanding of the target market. A repeatable and scalable system for generating opportunities. And over $1.5mm in qualified pipeline.

Confirmed meeting/opportunity with C-suite executive at CVS - largest healthcare company in US by revenue

How?

It’s not every day that you get an opportunity with a C-Suite exec at the biggest company in your industry.

You might think that it took a complex multi-channel approach to make this happen… combining cold emails, cold calls, navigating gatekeepers, etc.

Not at all.

You might think it took a considerable amount of research & personalization to make this happen… slogging through 10-Ks, CEO interviews, and so on.

Not at all.

This opportunity was created off the back of an 17 word email.

All we did was ask the prospect if they’d like to see a case study on how we solved a problem we guessed they might have.

They resonated with the case study and wanted to explore opportunities.

That easy.

Marketing Assets

When you engage with us, we give you the exact frameworks for creating powerful marketing assets, such as case studies, that have landed clients opportunities and deals with Fortune 100 companies.

We do all of the foundational asset creation - but we do lean on your expertise to color in the details.

We use these marketing assets in our campaigns as part of our proven playbooks.

When done right, a compelling marketing asset will not only land you meetings with the most senior execs at the largest companies in your industry, but it will increase your close rates, while decreasing the length of your sales cycles.

I'm hesitant to endorse Astris Partners, not because of their service, quite the contrary, but because I don't want to share! We've tried other business development firms in the past and no one has come close to booking more qualified new business meetings that result in signed contracts than Astris Partners. Their proprietary campaign strategies are unmatched. Partnering with Astris is a no brainer.

- Nash Castle, CEO, Global IT How? This is a story about speed & persistence - two critical elements in sales.

Within two days of launching campaigns for Global IT, we received interest from the President of a 'perfect fit' company doing $5B in annual revenue.

'Speed to lead' is a concept often discussed in sales.

Multiple studies have been done demonstrating that conversion rates skyrocket when you're able to reach a lead within 5 minutes or less.

In this instance we responded in just under 4 minutes. But we didn't hear back.

And when we did, a day later, the response from the President was 'lukewarm' at best and contained not 1, not 2, but 4 different objections.

15 touchpoints, across multiple channels, and many 'objection-handles' later and we managed to book a meeting between the President and our client.

The meeting went so well the President decided to fast track our client through their procurement process.

(Often, when dealing with senior executives, early objections are actually a good sign - if you can think on your feet and address them correctly.)

From the President's perspective, we displayed every quality he was looking for in a vendor. We were fast, responsive, persistent, and addressed his concerns in a way that gave him confidence.

At Astris, when we take on a new client, we understand that we are representing your brand to your market. We take this seriously, and the results speak for themselves. If you want to explore working together, book a time here.

Astris built our outbound sales strategy from a standing start to generating 80-100 opportunities per quarter. They worked closely with us to optimize our entire sales process, and are constantly bringing us new insights. The Astris team have been an absolute pleasure to work with and I cannot recommend them more highly.” - Stu Brown, Chief Commercial Officer, Medipro

The Objective

Medipro, a leading staffing & recruitment company engaged Astris Partners to create & execute a business development strategy for a new service line.

The key objectives were to:

• Identify target market(s) which would benefit most from the new service line
• Transition away from relationship based client acquisition to a pro-active, scaleable model
• Create a repeatable client acquisition strategy

The Challenges

In the past, Medipro had largely acquired new clients through relationships & decades of industry connections, as is common in industries like healthcare.

Additionally, as a staffing & recruiting firm, it was critical to pinpoint buyers at the right moment. That is, when they are either undertaking new hiring initiatives, or struggling to meet current hiring needs.

Finally, healthcare staffing & recruiting is one of the most competitive industries. Creating a strategy based around competitive differentiation is critical in a market like this.

Buyer Intent

The use cases for buyer intent data & sales triggers can range from simple to complex.

In the case of staffing & recruiting - the intent “play” is fairly straightforward.

You can either look at the obvious trigger: a company with a new hiring need.

Or, you can take a predictive approach, and track data such as funding, news, and the opening of new locations or new divisions to identify future hiring needs.

In this case, throughout rigorous testing, we identified a winning strategy of tracking job posts that had been active for a certain amount of time but had a low applicant count.

We built a system to automatically track these posts, identify the key decision makers at these companies, and reach out to them to support them with their most challenging hiring needs.

Results

Building the sales engine in a brand new division meant not only creating outbound prospecting campaigns, but designing & optimizing a sales process, creating new marketing materials, and refining pricing strategy and proposals.

Astris Partners took a holistic approach to this process, supporting Medipro with all of the elements necessary to consistently acquire new clients.

This included:

Buliding a prospecting engine that consistently adds 5+ new opportunities per week for the Medipro team

• Creating a proprietary in-house solution to identify buyer intent - specifically targeting hospitals, clinics, and practices who are actively struggling to hire for key roles
• Creating new marketing assets for Medipro based on proven frameworks
• Refining the sales process and increasing win rate by over 30%
• Testing & optimizing pricing strategy to maximize bottom line profitability

The result of these efforts is a cohesive sales engine that has allowed Medipro to efficiently acquire new customers while rapidly growing their new division.

Engagement & Results

An international consulting firm engaged us to help them identify opportunities in an emerging market segment.

Within a 3-month timeframe - this firm had 29 opportunities that moved into “sales accepted”. That is, they had multiple conversations with key stakeholders, engaged in solutioning, and put forth proposals.

They secured 3 new contracts, with 4 more still in negotiations.

These 3 contracts represent $360k in new, annual recurring revenue for the firm.

Astris Partners acted as an extension of their internal team to refine their value proposition to this emerging segment.

We identified a key ‘problem area’ where the firm addressed an urgent need of the companies in this emerging market.

Their solution was so compelling that we began booking meetings for them the day we launched campaigns.

On average, the prospecting campaigns we run for this consulting firm achieve an 11x higher engagement rate than industry standards.

(Across all clients we average roughly 7x higher engagement than industry standards.)

The end result?

Often agencies will throw out phrases like “10x ROI” - almost to the point where it has lost meaning.

This is an instance where a client achieved a 14x ROI on their engagement with us.

We are tracking to consistently add 7 figures in recurring revenue, every year, for this firm.

Development, Alveo Technologies The Background

Alveo Technologies, a pioneer in handheld molecular testing, had spent years perfecting its platform.

As they prepared to launch, they faced a new problem.

How could they connect with the right partners to co-develop and scale the technology? These needed to be specialist partners. Ones with technical expertise, funding, and a clear reason to care. Finding them proved incredibly difficult.

It was like searching for a needle in a haystack. For two and a half years, this was our biggest challenge.

The Challenge Traditional methods weren't working.

• Industry events and networking were too slow.
• Cold outreach often failed to reach decision-makers.
• Many prospects simply did not understand what was possible with Alveo's platform. At the same time, missing the right partners came with a big price. Each one represented a major commercial opportunity. "Every partner could be worth six figures or more. But getting in front of them was exhausting." The Approach Alveo brought in Astris Partners to help solve this. Together, they built a focused outbound strategy:
• Identified very specific profiles of potential partners.
• Developed campaigns to reach decision-makers directly.

• Created messaging to make the value clear, even to those unfamiliar with the technology.
• Worked closely week by week to refine and improve outreach. "You weren't just sending emails. You understood our business and shaped the approach as we went." The Results The impact was immediate.
• Early campaigns delivered 25 to 30 percent reply rates.
• 60 to 80 percent of replies were positive.
• Almost 100 meetings were booked within the first few months.
• The pipeline quickly filled with qualified, engaged prospects. "We went from struggling for conversations to being overwhelmed. The volume and quality have been incredible." The Outcome These weren't just any meetings. They were with ideal partners. Each call represented serious potential. Many of the companies Astris reached would not have seemed obvious fits at first glance, but turned out to be perfect. "You found people we would never have found ourselves. Somehow they were exactly right." This success has opened up a path to faster commercialization, stronger partnerships, and significant revenue opportunities. "You switched on the tap. This partnership has been a game changer."

"Having Astris on our side, clearly being able to get the deliverability into the enterprise, being able to workshop the messaging that we're seeing, getting that feedback loop. Was very helpful for us." - Taylor Tresselt, Chief Commercial Officer, Ennoventure How?

You might think that reaching Fortune 500 enterprise prospects requires massive SDR teams, complex multi-touch sequences, and months of relationship building.

Not at all. This breakthrough happened through our AI-powered research system that uses

real-time triggers, behavioral signals, and dimensional list building to identify decision-makers with active brand protection problems, not just curious observers.

We then deploy 95%+ inbox placement infrastructure with persona-specific messaging that gets past enterprise spam filters and AI gatekeepers while their internal team stayed focused on core activities.

The Challenge

Ennoventure (AI-powered invisible brand protection) was struggling to reach enterprise prospects:

• Deliverability issues: emails getting labeled as spam or routed away from decision-makers
• Small internal SDR team without IT expertise for enterprise email infrastructure
• Science experiment meetings: prospects curious about technology but no buying authority
• Enterprise gatekeepers: $500M+ revenue companies constantly barraged with vendor requests Results After Collaboration
• ✓ Enterprise meetings booked with Merck, Roche, Pfizer, BMS, Tata Motors, Mahindra, CEAT, Colgate
• ✓ High-quality conversations with actual brand protection decision-makers (not tech-curious observers)
• ✓ Multi-campaign flexibility: direct outreach, conference preparation, event-based campaigns
• ✓ International expansion: successful campaigns in multiple global markets The Game-Changer We didn't just solve deliverability. We identified the specific personas with active brand protection responsibilities within each enterprise target. Instead of booking meetings with people who wanted a "science experiment demo," we connected with supply chain leaders, brand protection managers, and operations executives who had real authentication problems to solve. Multi-Campaign Support Beyond direct outreach, we provided:

• Conference preparation campaigns: prospects aware of Ennoventure attendance before events
• Event-based outreach: targeted campaigns around specific trade shows
• Persona-specific messaging: different approaches for CEAT vs. Colgate vs. pharmaceutical companies
• Real-time campaign pivots: quick adjustments based on market feedback Client Testimonial "You did a great job for finding the individuals who are actually impacted and who have responsibility on whether it be brand protection side or supply chain and operations who have the problem… rather than to be just walking into meetings where people just have a kind of a vague interest to learn a little bit more, but it's not actually pertinent to their day-to-day jobs." "Having Astris on our side, clearly being able to get the deliverability into the enterprise, being able to workshop the messaging that we're seeing, getting that feedback loop. Was very helpful for us." - Taylor Tresselt, Chief Commercial Officer, Ennoventure If you want enterprise meetings with Fortune 500 decision-makers in your industry, book a time here.

"We definitely have the ROI now to prove that it was the right decision to really trust your guidance." - Marvin Kloss, Founder & CEO, Medzoomer How? You might think that cracking pharmacy outbound requires complex multi-vendor approaches and months of trial and error with blacklisted domains.

Not at all.

This breakthrough happened through our proprietary AI-powered qualification system that uses intent data, behavioral triggers, and predictive signals to pinpoint pharmacies ready to outsource delivery services.

We then deploy high-volume infrastructure with timely, executive-level messaging that converts at enterprise scale, while their previous vendors were stuck using outdated domains and generic outreach.

The Challenge Medzoomer (VC-backed "DoorDash for pharmacies") was burning through vendors:

• 98% reliance on expensive and unscalable cold calling
• Multiple blacklisted domains from failed email attempts
• 2-3 previous vendors with "no substantial metrics"
• Unqualified leads taking up sales team's time Results After 10 Weeks
• Guardian Pharmacy Network: one call leading to 50 pharmacy opportunities
• 3-5 highly qualified calls per week vs. previous unqualified call congestion
• $250,000 annual ARR from single leads vs. $36,000 average The Game-Changer We didn't just crack email deliverability for healthcare. We identified network opportunities that turn single meetings into enterprise partnerships. One Gold Star Pharmacy lead alone delivered $250,000 ARR, nearly 7x their average single pharmacy value. Client Testimonial "Every single previous outsourced vendor was willing to use our domains, our emails, our old standardized workflows. You guys said no to that… We definitely have the ROI now to prove that it was the right decision to really trust your guidance."

We actually did increase our spend with Astris. So in terms of positive signaling from a customer standpoint, the best thing to do is not only to get 'em resigned, but actually to have them increase their monthly spend with you.

- Marvin Kloss, Founder & CEO, Medzoomer

If you want to see whether a similar 8-10x ARR opportunity exists in your market, book a time here.