Introduction: Climate Vault offers carbon reduction and removal solutions to organizations aiming to neutralize their carbon footprint. Its mature alternative to traditional carbon offsets helps organizations build a brand-safe, environmentally responsible reputation. Climate Vault’s industry and the typical size of its deals require a more involved cycle of establishing trust with potential clients and creating successful channel partnerships. In order to build this trust with prospects more quickly and facilitate shorter sales cycles, Climate Vault adopted Verified, a platform that provides independent, credible, and confidential customer reference interviews that are available to prospects on demand.
Client Profile: A large executive placement firm headquartered in Zurich, with offices globally, sought a reliable carbon reduction solution, first engaged with Climate Vault in the summer of 2022, and ended up closing as a client in 2023.
Verified Builds Trust: During the sales process with this prospect, Climate Vault leveraged Verified to offer independent and unbiased customer reference interviews. Given the size of the sales opportunity and the prospect firm in question, Climate Vault recognized that providing credible references early in the sales cycle would have a significant impact on their ability to close the new customer. The prospect did not explicitly request references, but Climate Vault had a library of them ready to go at a moment’s notice.
Verified enabled Climate Vault to proactively supply pre-recorded reference videos and let their happiest clients speak for them – while circumventing the need to schedule inconvenient meeting times between Europe and North America. Contacts at the prospect firm were able to view the prerecorded reference video at their convenience.
Proactively sharing the reference video mattered to the prospect: Verified analytics data reveal that one of the main contacts viewed 93% of the reference video within 24 hours of receiving it.
“My prospect was thrilled that I could so easily share actual customer references. In a deal where we were competing against an incumbent competitor, our ability to share relevant references built immediate trust and gave us the competitive edge. The ease of the Verified app perfectly illustrated our customer-first mentality and ultimately won us a new customer.” – Climate Vault salesperson
The Impact of Verified: Because traditional carbon offset solutions have come under increased scrutiny and have created brand risk and legitimacy issues for organizations that rely on them, trust and brand safety played pivotal roles in the client’s decision-making process. Verified reference interviews, which are always conducted independently and confidentially, bolstered the client’s understanding and perspective of Climate Vault’s approach to carbon solutions and customer engagement. In an environment where legitimacy is critical, the reference interview provided unbiased, transparent confidence about the credibility and value of Climate Vault's solution.
Ultimately, the client partnered with Climate Vault over renewing with an incumbent vendor, emphasizing that trust was a crucial factor in this decision. Signing this new customer demonstrated the tangible impact that Verified interviews have on a sales process.
Climate Vault has also leveraged Verified to build their partnership program:
“Climate Vault doesn’t just use references for direct sales, but also for partnership creation and channel creation. 100% of our video shares have led to either a sale or a new partnership, in part because we help prospects do their due diligence, and in part because we better understand the sales cycle by how prospects engage with the references we share.” – Climate Vault salesperson
Conclusion: Climate Vault's implementation of Verified over the course of the last year has yielded very successful results. The ability to provide independent customer reference interviews instantly has played a crucial role in building trust during the sales process, allowed Climate Vault to leverage references proactively without the concern of frustrating its existing customers, and differentiated the organization from its direct competitors.
Using Verified in the sales cycle has enabled Climate Vault to respect both its prospects’ and its clients’ time, avoiding burnout and reference fatigue. Climate Vault’s client base wants to create greater environmental benefits and is thus generally happy to provide references; doing so with Verified preserves their valuable time and maximizes their support over providing continued real-time references.
Ultimately, using Verified helped secure a new deal with a highly regarded international client, new partnerships, and a more expansive market reach. By leveraging Verified, Climate Vault demonstrates its commitment to transparency, credibility, and fostering trust with both clients and partners in the carbon reduction landscape.
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