Praetura Direct Finance testimonial transcript

I'm Guy Wadsworth. I'm Commercial Director at Praetura Direct Finance, which is a finance company specialising in the bus and coach industry. We're a fairly small team established about 12 months ago and we are busy ourselves on the sales so we're looking to expand the business, get profile in the market as soon as possible. I'd used Vicki and Straightahead in previous work and it seemed like a good fit, we knew how she worked and what we were looking for was to not only to grow our database but grow our customer contacts as well.

We have tried to do telesales internally in the past but with very little or no success. In terms of agencies, the only agency I've used in the past was Straightahead, and it worked really well, so we've not felt the need to go elsewhere. Straightahead, what I found very refreshing about them, was before we even started using them, Vicki came to see us and absolutely understood our business from top to bottom – what our customer based looked like, what we were trying to achieve from any campaign, and really drilled down into what we were trying to achieve as a business, and it was good.

We also went out, myself and a small team of sales people, went out to their premises in Peterborough to fully understand how they operate and to speak to the team and allow the team to ask us any questions about our sector and what we did. So it wasn't just what my perception of telesales was it was really a sort of drilling down to fully understand what we were about as a business and what we were trying to achieve out of any campaign which wasn't just telesales, it was databasing; it was building a business.

I'd used Vicki and Straightahead at a previous employment successfully for about eight years, so when we moved companies a year ago, it was a logical option to get Straightahead involved immediately because of our successes with them in the past, and so when we moved, I contacted Vicki immediately and we got Straightahead on board. So I had experience of working with Straightahead for eight years prior to this new role. Their promise when they started with us when we started the new business, was to build a database, but they're not just a telesales company, they develop a relationship with your customer base and contact them on a regular basis.

I suppose the most important thing for us using Straightahead is the number of leads that we get and the amount of new business that we get. We've always found the commitment of Straightahead to be excellent. They will guarantee a certain number of leads and a certain number of hot leads and they also provide a commitment that if you don't get the agreed number of hot leads, they won't charge you for the month.

Over the years I've dealt with Vicki, I've obviously got to know her really well so if there is any feedback I'll ring her or email her and she will be on the phone immediately to me and anything that needs doing, whether it's an amendment to the reporting procedures or the script behind the calls, it's done immediately, so we've always found them very proactive and very willing to change.