Bant.io
Bant.io began as an internal process. Andre Breeze needed an efficient sales and lead generation process for his previous company, Keptify, and the system he built for that purpose later evolved into a standalone service. Andre said the company launched in early 2015 and has been self-funded from the start.
The service works by initiating conversations with the ideal prospects of other B2B companies. Bant.io's own software gathers data points such as the technology a prospect's website uses, its third-party spending, and shared LinkedIn connections. Before a campaign goes live, a team of contractors checks each contact to confirm the details are current. Clients pay a monthly subscription, with the median plan costing about $1,200 a month, and the company offers a 100% money-back guarantee on a minimum number of hot leads, defined as a positive reply showing immediate interest.
The first customer was Captify, Andre's former company. The team then ran a $200 AdWords campaign when they launched, and Andre said everything took off from there. After that, growth came almost entirely through word of mouth and referrals. Prospects who asked for a demo were walked through the process and a discovery call before deliverables were agreed.
Andre estimated customer lifetime value at about $7,000 and said the company was spending nothing on paid acquisition. Customer churn was high, at roughly 25 to 30 percent monthly, which Andre attributed to seasonal client demand. He acknowledged that the business is not a pure SaaS model, even though it is priced like one.
As of December 2016, Bant.io had about 30 to 31 active customers, a peak of 50 to 55 in one month over the past year, and a team of about 12 people based in London. Andre said current MRR was around $37,000, and he was aiming for at least $1.5 million in revenue in 2017.
- •Using the lead generation process first on their own company gave Bant.io a proven, operational product before it was sold to anyone else.
- •Positioning the offer as a guaranteed number of hot leads, backed by a refund, lowered the risk for buyers who were skeptical of cold outreach.
- •Word of mouth and referrals produced every customer without paid acquisition, which kept customer acquisition costs very low.
- •Pricing around $1,200 a month for a service that replaces a sales-prospecting function made the offer easy to justify against headcount costs.
- 1.Build a repeatable prospecting process for your own business first, then package it as a product once it demonstrably produces results.
- 2.Offer a measurable guarantee, such as a minimum number of qualified replies, and define the qualifying criteria clearly before selling.
- 3.Use a small paid test, like a $200 ad campaign, to validate demand, then focus on referrals from early customers.
- 4.Combine proprietary data collection with a manual quality check before every campaign to protect results and customer trust.
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