The Canon Story

As one of the UK’s leading technology companies, Canon never rests in its desire to innovate, explore new growth areas, and enhance its commercial customers’ print infrastructure in new and exciting ways. But Canon operates in a highly competitive market. Staying one step ahead means uncovering new opportunities faster, engaging with customers on a deeper level, and proactively anticipating needs rather than simply reacting to them.  

Canon has been a FullCircl customer since 2017. Their original ambition was to reimagine their approach to sales – moving from a highly-manual process of research on Google and Companies House, to an augmented, intelligence-driven, approach. The goal was to help its direct commercial account team significantly increase new business opportunities, engage, win and retain customers, gain a foothold in difficult markets, and stay ahead of the competition.  

In the years since, FullCircl has evolved the partnership in line with, and ahead of, Canon’s needs; it is credited in shaping the success of the team today.

A constantly evolving, target-beating partnership

Mark Robinson, Business Development Manager at Canon explains: “Before FullCircl we were literally throwing stuff against a wall and seeing what stuck. Every member of the team was spending a vast amount of time on Google and Companies House, looking for scraps that would help us spot new prospects and engagement opportunities.”

He continues, “Today our position couldn’t be more different. Our people have the tools to perform at their best, and FullCircl ensure we are always using the platform to greatest effect. Our expectations of what we can achieve have grown with the platform. Without FullCircl we would be nowhere near the 20-25% net new business revenue target, along with ambitious retention levels, we consistently hit year-on-year.”

As a result, Canon are saving an average of 5 hours per user per week. That’s a total of 8,400 hours saved annually across its 30-strong business services. But it’s not just the speed and efficiency gains that are making a difference to Canon. It’s the greater visibility into its customers, markets and competitive landscape that are generating significant growth, as well as improved customer retention levels. This has been particularly true in sectors where, traditionally, uncovering new opportunities is more difficult.  

Canon has seen a 25% increase in net new business, attributable to its use of FullCircl thanks to the advanced company and people insights, and the impact this has had on targeted prospecting, lead qualification, contextual engagement, and insight-driven decision making.

Time to get even smarter

The evolution of the relationship was taken to a new level in 2023. Canon introduced a new lead generation team tasked with ambitious quarterly pipeline targets, and high expectations in terms of the number of meetings booked per month. It was time to take things up another level.

At contract renewal with FullCircl, Canon not only increased its number of users but invested in deploying FullCircl SmartAcquire across its entire user base to unlock more new business opportunities and create even more meaningful ways to engage.

“SmartAcquire is the perfect example of how FullCircl has evolved perfectly in sync with our changing needs,” explained Mark.  

“It has added yet another layer of detail and enhanced accuracy. Integrated with and augmenting Salesforce, the team has a real-time connected view of every prospect and customer – as a result they are all over-achieving on targets. Our new lead generation team have hit the ground running, generating quality leads, seeking new opportunities across a wide range of sectors and geographies, building dedicated campaigns, and ensuring we always target the right people, with the right messaging, at the right time.”

The lead generation team smashed its targets in the first quarter, hitting an average 57 meetings per month – 14% above its goal.  

‍A fantastic relationship for the long-term

Canon has one of the highest user engagement scores across the FullCircl customer base. It is embedded within Canon’s culture and highly regarded by users. Mark credits this to Canon’s desire to really get the most out of the tools, as well as the fantastic support delivered by the FullCircl team.  

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“I literally cannot think of any issues during our relationship, it’s fantastic”, concludes Mark. “Canon don’t have many technology partnerships that have lasted this long, but there is never a problem when it comes to continued c-suite buy-in for FullCircl. The training and support are first rate. Moving forward, we have a major ambition to increase customer facing time by 70% - I have no doubt FullCircl will help us achieve this.”

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