Brand A, applicant tracking
- Qualified leads +215% vs. prior year
- New revenue +39.6% · about 4x goal
- Q1 FY17 110% to goal
Results / Case study
Paychex
A Fortune 500 handed a 28-year-old two stalled acquisition brands inside a $1.25 billion portfolio. One year later, every lead-generation record in 45 years had fallen.
45 yrs
Of company lead-generation records broken, in a single year
+215%
Qualified leads vs. prior year, incl. the highest-performing month in company history
+39.6%
New revenue year over year, roughly 4x the forecasted goal
$25M
In ignored leads found sitting in the database, and put back to work
Paychex, Inc.
Fortune 500 · Pays 1 in 12 American private-sector employees
The situation
Paychex had spent 45 years becoming one of the most dominant companies in American business services, roughly 605,000 payroll clients across 100 locations. But inside the giant sat two acquired software brands that had never found their footing: an applicant tracking system and an expense management platform, competing against Oracle, SAP, and iCIMS with aging positioning and fragmented lead generation. One line of business had not beaten its quarterly sales goal since 2012. The other had never had a record month since being acquired in 2011.
The mandate
Integrate both brands into a $1.25 billion portfolio, fix lead generation, and make the sales numbers move. Nick owned strategy, budget, lead generation, brand, content, sales enablement, and vendor management for both acquisition brands simultaneously.
The work
He didn’t start with ads. Both brands were rebuilt from the studs: full brand evolutions, competitive positioning against the entire market, and buyer personas mapped to a real 3-to-6-month group buying cycle. A data-science segmentation surfaced $25M in ignored leads and put them back to work through nurture sequences and Salesforce overhauls. The demand machine was engineered end to end, search, social, landing pages, review-site channels wired direct to sales, and the sales team armed with comparison charts, testimonial one-pagers, and a standing every-four-weeks cadence with sales leadership.
The outcome
Brand A: qualified leads up 215%, the single highest-performing month in the company’s 45-year history, new revenue up 39.6% (about 4x goal), and the first quarter of sales over-performance since 2012. Brand B: turned around in under 90 days, leads at 141% of the previous all-time best, revenue up 28.3% (about 3x goal), and its highest revenue month since the 2011 acquisition. Every lead generation record in company history fell in a single year.
Evidence contract
How to read the record.
Select an evidence view. Every record keeps its unit, period, baseline, source, and context attached.
Brand B, expense management
- Previous all-time lead record 141%
- New revenue +28.3% · about 3x goal
- Revenue month and units No. 1 since the 2011 acquisition
Two-brand comparison
- Brand A qualified leads +215% vs. prior year
- Brand A new revenue +39.6% · about 4x goal
- Brand B lead record 141% of prior all-time best
- Brand B new revenue +28.3% · about 3x goal
Brand A, applicant tracking
Acquired 2011, no quarterly goal beaten since 2012
+215%
Qualified leads vs. prior year
+39.6%
New revenue, ~4x goal
110%
Q1 FY17 to goal, first over-performance since 2012
FY16 finished at 140% of FY15 lead generation, with the record month at 215% of the prior-year month.
Brand B, expense management
Turnaround completed in under 90 days
141%
Of the previous all-time lead record
+28.3%
New revenue, ~3x goal
No. 1
Highest revenue month and most units since the 2011 acquisition
The records that fell had stood through decades of professional marketing teams and eight-figure budgets. The same playbook has since generated $550M+ in client revenue across 215+ brands.
He broke every company record we had in 45 years, in just one year.
Paychex leadership
Figures are drawn from client dashboards, CRM exports, and recorded working sessions, shared with client permission; team, market, and product context contributed to every outcome. Periods are stated with each figure. See the disclaimer for how results should be read.