Boosting Sales with High Connection Rates | Colby Haverkamp from PhoneBurner

Ernesto: Pathmonk is the intelligent tool for website lead generation. With increasing online competition, over 98 percent of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments with relevant micro experiences like case studies, intro videos, and much more.

Stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50%. Add Pathmonk to your website in seconds. Let the AI do all the work and get access to 50% more qualified leads while you keep doing marketing and sales as usual. Check us on Pathmonk.com. Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guest. We have Kobe from PhoneBurner. How are you doing today? Kobe. Good. How are you doing Ernesto? great. good day. And good to have you on today’s show.

Colby Haverkamp: Yeah, I’m happy to be here. Thank you for having me. Excited to speak with you.

Ernesto: Awesome. Great. Let’s get into it, right? Let’s see what PhoneBurner is all about. I’m sure our listeners are eager to know. Tell us a little bit more in your own words—what is it all about?

Colby Haverkamp: Yeah. We are a dialer solution—obviously a decent number of those in the market. But for people that aren’t familiar with us, we’re a solution that’s focused on the activation of phone calls.

So there’s a lot of pieces out there when it comes to lead generation and getting in front of people, but we feel like we neatly embed ourselves in that process as the activation component—allowing people to simply get through calls more quickly at a much higher live connection rate.

Ernesto: Definitely, that’s always important. And so that everyone listening can get a good understanding of PhoneBurner—what key problems do you solve for clients?

Colby Haverkamp: Probably like any other dialer in the space, we address speed. The main difference for us versus auto or predictive dialers is what’s referred to as a power dialer.

I didn’t know this before starting at PhoneBurner, but power dialing is working through contacts in a much more sequential, intentional manner—one to one—versus calling six to ten people at one time. It allows more intentionality, keeps your numbers healthier, and increases live connection rates.

And that’s really the biggest problem we’re addressing: how do you actually get more people on the phone so you have more talk time and more significant conversations that lead to actual leads and conversions down the road.

So among everything we help with, live connection is the most important to us.

Ernesto: Definitely—especially over the internet. I think it’s super important to have that connection and presence there.

So would it be fair to say your clients are all B2B? Or is there a segment, vertical you guys like to go for?

Colby Haverkamp: Traditionally, the majority of our customers are B2B. We have about 3000 clients today. We’ve been around since 2008—we’re a privately owned company.

But we’ve seen a shift in users. We’ve seen an increase in spaces like software and tech, whereas traditionally we also had a lot of real estate and mortgage presence, and various industries.

Long term, B2B is where we’ll reside and where we’re seeing more sophisticated customers come to us. But we also have a ton of individual users.

For instance, in large mortgage groups or financial institutions, maybe the entire department doesn’t purchase PhoneBurner—but an individual will come and say, “I want to increase my phone calls,” and buy it themselves.

So the use cases are wide open. Industry-wise we’re all over the place, but we do have a few areas where we’re especially strong right now.

Ernesto: Awesome. Great to hear that. So how does your audience typically find out about you guys? What would you say is your top client acquisition channel?

Colby Haverkamp: Mostly it’s word of mouth and referrals. That comes from a couple of different things: we have great reviews on G2, Capterra, Salesforce Exchange—positive reviews from organizations using us, and also people who used us in the past.

With 3000 clients, there’s a lot that comes through that word of mouth channel. We also see people move companies and pick up PhoneBurner again at their new spot, which is always great.

And a lot of our traffic is driven by the website. We have supplemental SEO pieces, but a lot comes from word of mouth.

Ernesto: All right. Awesome. Great to hear that. And while I’m here on the website, phoneburner.com, what role does the website play for you guys for client acquisition?

Colby Haverkamp: For us, maybe more than a lot of organizations, it’s critical—because we’re trying to get people into the solution actually using it. We’re constantly pushing folks into free trials so they get proof of concept and feel comfortable before moving forward.

So we want that experience to be as seamless as possible—easy signup, and everything there. Transparency is big too: we have pricing posted, relevant case studies, trying to educate the community… without providing too much information. It’s a fine line.

Ernesto: All right. Awesome. Great. And is there anything you’ve learned about what makes a great converting website—any tools, tips, methods, approaches you’d recommend?

Colby Haverkamp: Speed and ease. We want people to accomplish their goals as fast as possible—especially in a world where you’re constantly bombarded with information. We want you to complete things in a couple of clicks.

Our marketing team calls the website the front door to an organization. But you still need a target audience—if you’re trying to be all things to all people, it’s not going to be possible.

You have to think about what’s most important to people at the top level. We can talk about everything we offer later, but if you overload the website with too much content, that can be problematic.

Ernesto: All right. Awesome. Great to hear that. Let’s switch gears a bit and talk about you. At PhoneBurner, what are some key tasks you focus on in your day to day work?

Colby Haverkamp: We’re standing up our outbound motion formally with a concerted effort in 2024. We’ve probably been 97–98% inbound business, which isn’t a terrible problem to have. But that’s where I’m spending a lot of my time.

If it’s not prospecting, it’s conversations about who can be good customers for us, and how we can develop strategic partnerships with groups that bring in organizations that are a good fit.

A lot of that looks like sales development or frontline sales processes, but I think there are other applications we haven’t leaned into as much—like customer support teams that have a lot of call tasks, or industries we haven’t spent much time in.

I’m exploring all avenues and I think that will help us improve how the solution is used and gather feedback to keep improving.

Ernesto: Definitely. Let’s jump into our rapid fire question round. Are you ready for them, Colby?

Colby Haverkamp: Yeah, I think so.

Ernesto: Awesome. First up—what is the last book that you read?

Colby Haverkamp: The last book I completed was Unbroken. It’s about a runner during the World War II era who competed in the Olympics and eventually enlisted, then was captured as a POW when his plane went down.

It follows his journey from being an Olympic runner to being a POW in Japan. I didn’t know a lot about it.

And I’m also reading one right now that’s not super lighthearted either—Evicted—about the eviction crisis in the U.S. and what eviction policies and housing insecurity look like.

Ernesto: Awesome. Great reads there. What is one single thing that your company is focused on at the moment the most?

Colby Haverkamp: Pure growth, and leaning into live connection rates. We want to be the leader in live connection percentage for anyone considering a dialer—being intentional about who you reach out to.

Paired with that, we want to be an expert in compliance, trust, and safety in the telecom space. We want to be that reliable partner.

Ernesto: All right. Awesome. Now, if there would be no boundaries in technology, what would be the one thing that you’d want fixed for your role as a marketer today?

Colby Haverkamp: The refreshing of assets. There are so many things constantly changing—new integrations, new information. Often when we’re creating an asset, we have updates that need to be incorporated. So automating that would be huge.

Ernesto: Awesome. And if there’s one repetitive task that you could automate, what would that be?

Colby Haverkamp: Follow up—or the solicitation of information. A lot of the time we ask for the same pieces, whether that’s in sales or marketing, but you still have to manipulate it a bit for each group.

I don’t know if it ever fully goes away, but in a perfect world, sending follow-up information or emails in an easier way would be great.

Ernesto: Awesome. And Colby—what’s one piece of advice you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Colby Haverkamp: Don’t be afraid to look dumb. Don’t be afraid to ask questions you don’t know the answer to.

I spent a lot of my life trying to fake it or staying silent because I didn’t want to look stupid. If you realize sooner that it’s okay to raise your hand and ask, you’ll go farther, learn more, and everyone around you benefits too.

Ernesto: Definitely some great advice. Colby, thanks a lot for being on the show with us today. Last word—if someone forgets everything about the interview today, what’s the one thing they should remember about PhoneBurner?

Colby Haverkamp: We’re the leader in live connection rates. If you want to talk to more people and increase your sales volume, come give us a shout—sign up for a free trial. We’d love to have you test it out.

Ernesto: Awesome. Great. Everybody—thank you so much for tuning in. And Colby, thank you so much for being on with us today. Looking forward to our next episode at Pathmonk Presents.