In the legacy Managed Services model, CIENCE provided lead generation services to businesses looking for fast growth by offering multi-channel outbound sales specialization. CIENCE combines research with personalized messaging delivered through multiple channels to create a predictable stream of qualified appointments for sales teams. The vendor states that to date, they have delivered more than 10's of million leads to over 2,500 clients in over 225 industries.
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pharosIQ
Score 8.4 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
pharosIQ is a provider of first-party intent-driven lead and demand generation solutions, delivering insights and demand for B2B organizations’ sales and marketing success.
Cience is well suited for providing building blocks when you are starting with very little. They took the time to learn our unique product and weren't hesitant to jump on an account for a less than traditional ICP. If you are looking to outsource sales, just be prepared to be an active voice in the partnership.
pharosIQ delivered well on our TOFU ask with scaled lead delivery across 5 geographies. Having a single vendor POC helped to streamline communications across the global campaigns to ensure quality, quantity and fulfillment was continually fulfilled. We struggled with the mid-funnel program as the conversion forward was not very successful to sales ready leads. We also did not hit the benchmark of survey completions as originally proposed from pharosIQ from other customers who completed this campaign.
STEER CLEAR- their company and model are a mess. We had a kickoff call in February with our "team" and by mid-May, none of them were still with the organization. We were never looped in on this turnover and as a result, there was a total diffusion of responsibility. Beware of the "10-20 day onboarding period" ours was more than 30 despite the fact we proactively provided them with a 15+ page playbook detailing everything they needed: 1) Target personas 2) Objections and counters 3) Product info 4) Company history 5) Talk tracks 6) Etc. Every ball that was dropped was on their end and there was a complete lack of ownership and accountability from their leadership team. The only person who took ANY ownership was our CAM, who was let go as part of a massive company-wide layoff. Their whole organization is a mess.
We made numerous coaching asks of their team after hearing in the call recordings that the SDR was deviating from the script completely and had no idea what they were talking about. Their message was, "We help HR leaders retain talent so that they can promote their talent and not lose existing talent"--- the most generic of pitches and not at all related to what we do. They continuously referred to it as a "system" when we are a professional coaching organization. We coached continuously on every biweekly call and gave them suggestions, none of which seemed to get back to the SDR as they continued to repeat the same mistakes and even went far as pushing a prospect to take a meeting when she was in a rush because "I get incentivized from meetings booked over the phone."
Despite our continuous asks, there was no collaboration. Our landing page mockup featured companies that weren't even customers of ours and would've been catastrophic to our brand had it been released. We never saw a mockup of this until the last minute and ended up having to do the entire thing ourselves despite them selling us on the fact that it was something they could handle.
It is very easy to use, and the setup is very convenient. Proofs are provided quickly and accurately, and adjustments are made efficiently as well if needed. Display as well is very easy to set up, as we utilize Google campaign manager, and we send tags over, and it's implemented right away
While we do have a dedicated account manager, I feel like they make a lot of mistakes, which sometimes affect the timeline of our campaign launch. Prior to this account manager, we had a different one who unfortunately left the company, and they did a great job with keeping track of all the changes that we requested to our campaigns. Simply put, at the level of investment we are making, we expect top-notch management of our account with as few mistakes as possible (of course, no mistakes at all is not realistic).
The process outlined was exactly what we were looking for (hand holding before, during and ongoing) and was right on in terms of what we needed for implementation. We were successful in identifying the team from CIENCE who would be dedicated to Manifest and were able to have all levels of both companies involved in the implementation process.
We evaluated a handful of other companies in this industry before signing on with CIENCE. After doing the research, we found them to be a far better company with a much more compelling value and cost. I don't even remember the exact names of the other companies we met with, but I do recall how secretive and dubious their competition was about pricing and how the team resourced their time. The other models honestly did not make sense because they were cheaper but claiming that they would produce more for us with fewer resources and less of our support and collaboration. I have a lot of experience working in this industry in my past, and CIENCE was the only vendor our Executive team trusted after discussing potential contracts with at least 3 other vendors. They have since proven themselves even more, and the transparency, clarity, and collaboration that they sold us on originally have only developed more as we continue to work with them.
I work with a variety of paid media vendors and providers. In addition to pharosIQ, we work with TechTarget, DemandScience, and several others that aren't even listed. pharosIQ consistently has competitive pricing, has equal or greater lead quality, has similar or better services, and often provides a better ROI. pharosIQ is definitely worth adding to your mix.
Terrible waste of money. Just starting out we want to use our funds the most effective we can. This had ZERO ROI and was a waste of time.
They ask for a three-month upfront payment and gave us nothing back. While this is the risk we take with no guarantees, you would expect a reputable business to offer something for a performance so poor. A free month to try and make things right by providing a few leads, or some small amount of refund, something. Their response was to tell us they did nothing wrong and they would not even consider anything.
The good reviews from this company are baffling to me. I reviewed them before starting and felt they must be reputable. The truth is the onboarding process took 30 days even though we provided them with everything before it started. They charge for this ramp-up time even though nothing of substance is happening.
Within two weeks of the campaign starting our Cience team had lost over half of its original members due to attrition. 3 out of 5 of their members left the company
We have had multiple positive leads generated from pharosIQ that have come full circle.
One drawback would be from repeat leads in the past on different campaigns, which would be acceptable as sometimes similar products are put forward however we would like for this to be flagged and corrected before we receive them.
