3 Ways to Revamp your Sales Strategy with Apollo Power User Marcelo Cortez

At Apollo, we pride ourselves on not only having an outstanding product but also having outstanding and brilliant users.

One of those brilliant users is Marcelo Cortez, an emBlue SDR and an absolute Apollo powerhouse.

Noticing his consistent success with our product, the Apollo Team recently sat down with Marcelo to uncover what it is he loves about Apollo and how he uses the Apollo sales engine to fill his pipeline quarter after quarter.

And we want to share these insights with you!

More about Marcelo and emBlue

emBlue is a marketing automation platform that helps companies design and optimize their marketing campaigns and manage customer conversions through an omnichannel approach. emBlue is global and the company is establishing a dynamic international team – fast.

Based out of Nuevo León, Mexico, Marcelo is an emBlue SDR (known in Mexico as a “Hunter”) who is the only one at his company tasked with establishing a client base in the country.

No easy feat for a single salesperson…

This is why Marcelo looked to Apollo. “The people over here often write each email [manually]...,” Marcelo told us, “I found Apollo myself and showed [it] to the Sales Director and he said ‘Wow, this is beautiful!’”.

And after seeing Marcelo’s sales success, the Director made Apollo the go-to sales engagement platform for emBlue’s entire team of SDRs!

What Marcelo loves about Apollo

“I think all companies that make sales need to have Apollo”, Marcelo declares.

Here are a few of his biggest reasons why:

Best in-market data

First and foremost, Marcelo loves Apollo’s comprehensive and reliable B2B data, which is made up of verified contact data, advanced company info, and dynamic searching tools across 220M contacts and 30M companies.

“Apollo is just beautiful with the info that it [gives you]”, says Marcelo. He uses Apollo’s specific data points like technology and funding information to reach out to best-fit prospects and personalize interactions.

And Marcelo isn’t the only one raving about Apollo’s data quality…

Apollo.io leads G2 Crowd in Sales Intelligence, Lead Intelligence, Marketing Account Intelligence, AND Sales Engagement.

Time-saving prospecting

As an SDR at a rapidly growing company, Marcelo is constantly juggling dozens of tasks. So it’s no mystery why Apollo’s time-saving features are a game-changer for his outbound prospecting process.

“Apollo is the one application that’s helped me do more work in less hours”, says Marcelo.

From building out and searching by personas to creating dynamic lead lists, Apollo users can prospect more efficiently than ever – while also improving results.

Marcelo told us that 80-90% of his booked meetings are directly contributed to Apollo! “I can do more things [with] prospecting using Apollo”, he told us.

All-in-one capabilities

Apollo is an all-in-one sales intelligence engine, and Marcelo leverages that daily.

“Apollo is like Alice in Wonderland for me…”, Marcelo said with a smile, “It’s beautiful because I can search for new customers, I can search by company, I can find the mailing [address] of the customer, and I can put the customer in a Sequence with only one click from LinkedIn”.

Unlike other sales tools, Apollo doesn’t have users bouncing around platforms, in-and-out out of dozens of tabs, trying to find resources and use tools. In the Apollo platform, everything you need to seamlessly move your prospects through the sales funnel is all in one place.

3 tips for improving your sales with Apollo

Without further ado, here are the 3 exclusive tips that Power User Marcelo shared:

Tip #1: Build out detailed personas aligned with your ICPs

If you’re an SDR using Apollo, one of the best ways to find best-fit prospects is to build out detailed Personas that align with your ideal customer profile (ICP).

Apollo’s Personas are sets of titles, seniorities, and departments that define different groups of people that you can target within key accounts. This allows you to find contacts faster with Apollo's Search tool, receive better recommendations, and improve analytics!

emBlue’s sales team has four built out Personas:

• A C-Suite Marketer Persona
• A General Marketer Persona
• A C-Suite Sales Persona
• A Human Resources Persona

These Personas reflect the key characteristics of their ideal customers and make prospecting in the Apollo Searcher a breeze.

“You find companies, then put in the Persona. It’s very easy,” Marcelo says.

Here’s an example of one of Marcelo’s Personas applied to an Apollo search:

There are tons of other strategies for using Personas, too! For this, they are an indispensable part of Marcelo’s workflow and he recommends that you try it too.

Tip #2: Leverage Apollo’s advanced filters

Next, Marcelo recommends you utilize advanced filtering in Apollo’s database.

“One of the best things that you have in the Apollo Search is the [filters],” Marcelo says.

In particular, he mentions how important the ‘Technologies Used’ and ‘Funding’ filters are to his prospecting workflow. emBlue is a SaaS company, so he is always on the lookout for companies who use technologies that integrate well with emBlue’s software (making them a strong lead!). It’s also important that he can see a potential customer’s funding history, “With Apollo, I can see companies that need to have more customers, more clients…and that’s a good company for emBlue,” Marcelo says.

More than technology and funding data, advanced filters allow you to search by titles, employee headcount, open roles, location, year founded, and more.

A simple filtered search eliminates the hours of preparation (and often additional funding) that go into finding ideal buyers for your pipeline.

Take Marcelo’s advice and use filters for more targeted prospecting!

Tip #3: Create Sequences that respond to prospects’ pain points and activities

Sequences are custom Apollo outreach campaigns designed to help you leverage automation and personally engage with your target audience at speed and scale.

An effective sales sequence is carefully calculated and well-designed. And for Marcelo, this involves organizing his outreach based on his prospects’ specific needs and recent activities.

“A Director of Marketing, a Director of Sales… a person in Human Resources. Each one has different pains”, Marcelo says, “I do Sequences based on [those] pains.”

When you add prospects into your sales sequences, use a value-based approach. Think: What is your outreach offering them? Are you helping them solve a particular business challenge they are facing?

Marcelo also encourages SDRs to utilize Apollo’s activity data when building out Sequencing campaigns.

“I can see [in Sequences]…if the person opened an email [multiple] times”, he tells us. Here’s an example of all the performance data he can see from his Sequences dashboard:

He goes on to explain that from here, he develops a strategy to reach out to the prospects he sees are highly interested and adds unique steps in a sequence just for them.

In Closing

Insights from Power Users like Marcelo are what make Apollo a standard-setting, world-class selling community!

Don’t miss out on future Apollo tips and tricks. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and put all your sales wisdom to action by signing up for a free Apollo.io account.