3 fractional hires 27% more sales
How Dongar increased sales by 27%, orders by 37% and conversion rate by 19% with the help of 3 fractional hires from Hello Generalist.
- Sales
- +27%
- Orders
- +37%
- Conversion rate
- +19%
About Dongar
Dongar aims to make driving safer by bringing dash cams to the masses through easy and affordable plug-and-play dash cam adapters. One study found a 60% reduction in accidents when dash cams were used.
Challenge
Lack of ecommerce and marketing experience, and limited marketing connections within the founding team.
Dongar was solving an important issue: enabling safer driving for the masses. The problem was, most of the founding team came from an engineering background in Silicon Valley. They knew how to build their product, but not how to market or sell it at scale.
They were getting thousands of visitors a day on their digital storefront and already had 45,000 customers, with the goal to 3x their sales. No one on the team had the knowledge to optimize their Amazon or Shopify store, build a cohesive marketing message, manage digital and creative assets, or define a marketing strategy to get them to the next level.
My background is in engineering. I wasn’t in a place to hire people because we didn’t know what we didn’t know recruiting wise. There wasn’t great ecomm marketing talent in the valley. It was clear we needed to outsource hiring to find an expert who could hit the ground running.
Kevin Sayo · Founder & CEOGiven the lack of time to recruit in-house, the desire to be cost conscious as a bootstrapped startup, and few connections to ecommerce marketing talent, Kevin Sayo, Founder and CEO, decided top-tier fractional talent was the best solution. Through a mutual connection, he was introduced to Hello Generalist.
Solution
Hello Generalist screened, sourced, and connected 3 seasoned ecommerce and marketing experts with Dongar.
Kevin and the HG team set up an initial chat so HG could understand the ins and outs of the business, its main challenges, and what sort of support it would need.
One thing I loved about working with HG was they helped me make business decisions on the fly. They helped me understand who I should be hiring and for how long, what their project scopes should be, and really helped demystify the process of bringing on fractional talent.
Kevin Sayo · Founder & CEOAfter the initial conversation, HG wrote job descriptions for three different hires:
- Ecommerce Brand Lead, to create a more cohesive brand strategy
- Marketing Lead, to own all top-of-funnel marketing initiatives
- Ecommerce Advisor, to support the intersection of product, operations, and client implementation
With Kevin’s approval, HG sourced multiple candidates for each role and ran the interview process. The HG portal let the team quickly scan candidates’ LinkedIn profiles, stories, availability, relevant achievements, and answers to Dongar’s prompts.
I liked how all the candidates were super high quality. I’ve worked in corporate before and even after screening so many candidates, you can still end up with bad fits. That wasn’t the case with HG. We had 3-5 people for each role, and we could’ve easily hired any one of them.
Kevin Sayo · Founder & CEOResults
Dongar grew sales by 27%, orders by 37% and conversions by 19%, and brought one fractional hire on full time.
Each hire hit the ground running, owned initiatives end to end, and drove immediate value for the Dongar team.
We were able to get insider knowledge to support our team that we just wouldn’t have been able to find full-time. The folks we hired wouldn’t normally be interested in working at a company of our size.
Kevin Sayo · Founder & CEOAs a bootstrapped company, growing revenue means growing runway, launching new products, and increasing their impact on safer driving.
If you’re trying to figure out how to justify it, fractional hires can pull their own weight. If someone increases revenue by just 5%, it pays for itself. And the quality of people we were able to get was fantastic, both on the soft skills side and the hard skills side.
Kevin Sayo · Founder & CEO