Gusto is a household name for small business payroll, but as their enterprise product evolved, their sales leadership faced a new challenge: penetrating larger, mid-market accounts. The problem was that CFOs and VP-level HR executives at 500+ employee companies are heavily guarded. Traditional outbound cadences were getting caught in enterprise spam filters, and their internal SDRs were spending more time hunting for valid contact data than actually selling.
Worse, the traditional lead-gen agency they previously had on retainer was delivering low-tier managers instead of true decision-makers. They were burning a massive monthly budget paying for hours and effort, but the qualified pipeline just wasn't materializing. Gusto needed a way to guarantee meetings with strictly defined buyer personas, without the bloat of a long-term contract.
Shifting the financial risk
Gusto’s sales leadership partnered with Send Proud to execute a 30-day guaranteed growth sprint. They didn't want to pay for another open-ended attempt at outbound; they wanted absolute certainty. Together, we defined one single, non-negotiable metric: 40 qualified meetings with CFOs or VP-level Finance executives at companies with over 500 employees. If we missed the target by even one meeting, Send Proud would refund the entire sprint.
Precision targeting and soft outreach
To hit this aggressive target, we completely bypassed the standard data scraping tools that most agencies rely on. Instead, we tapped directly into Send Proud’s private network of 100M+ verified decision-makers, isolating the exact financial leaders Gusto needed to reach.
Because CFOs are immune to standard sales pitches, we utilized our "Soft Outreach" methodology. We deployed highly personalized, plain-text messaging from warmed infrastructure to ensure primary inbox placement. Instead of pitching Gusto's software in the first touch, we started genuine, peer-to-peer conversations about the specific compliance and scaling challenges mid-market CFOs were currently facing.
The 30-Day Results
Our in-house team managed the entire process—monitoring the inboxes, answering initial questions, and manually qualifying every single positive reply to ensure they met Gusto's strict headcount and title requirements.
In exactly 30 days, Send Proud manually qualified and booked 48 high-intent enterprise meetings directly onto the calendars of Gusto's Account Executives, exceeding the guaranteed target. By shifting the financial risk and relying on verified, premium data, Gusto unlocked a massive new revenue channel without wasting a single dollar on ad spend or agency retainers.
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