How Cole Information Became a Scalable (and Saleable) SaaS by Reimagining Its GTM Systems, Pricing and Sales Team

HEADQUARTERS

INDUSTRY

COMPANY SIZE

SERVICES
Omaha, Nebraska

SaaS, Data Services

<100

HubSpot Enterprise (sales and marketing),
custom integrations, pricing strategy, sales coaching

A legacy data company navigates digital transformation with unified systems, reduced churn, and new growth momentum.

Churn rate reduced by from 50% to 15% and inside sales team efficiency surged through training and automation.

The Challenge

After decades as a print directory company, Cole Information had successfully evolved into a SaaS business—but cracks were showing. Unlimited-use pricing, manual renewal processes, and siloed teams were contributing to elevated churn and stagnant growth.

Post-sale customer communication was sparse. Renewals were managed out of accounting systems. And its CRM offered no support for a modern, connected customer journey. Cole knew it needed to modernize its technology stack and operating model—and turned to Austin Lawrence Group to diagnose and direct the transformation.

Our Approach

ALG began with a full review of Cole’s marketing, sales, and customer success infrastructure. We uncovered three core priorities: build integrated systems, establish customer success as a formal function, and move from email-only outreach to a full-funnel marketing engine.

Key actions included:

  • Replacing Cole’s legacy CRM with HubSpot Sales Enterprise
  • Implementing HubSpot Marketing Enterprise and Service Hub Pro
  • Designing nurture and renewal workflows tied to subscription lifecycles
  • Recommending and integrating Chargify (now Maxio) for subscription management
  • Leading the first-ever full two-way integration between Chargify and HubSpot, using Cyclr iPaaS
  • Creating custom sales pipelines, lead round-robin assignments, and success workflows
  • Aligning internal teams under shared dashboards and KPIs

We collaborated daily with HubSpot, Chargify, Cyclr, and the Cole team to build, test, and launch a scalable system that supports marketing, sales, and service in sync.

The Outcomes

  • Renewal rates improved by 50%, supported by a new approach to subscriptions, pricing and packaging, personalized welcome and nurture workflows
  • Inside sales gained massive efficiency using click-to-call and automated lead routing
  • Executive dashboards gave real-time visibility into team performance and pipeline
  • Marketing shifted from static email blasts to targeted nurture and reactivation sequences
  • Sales and customer success now operate in a shared CRM with full context and tracking
  • Subscription management fully automated with renewal triggers and pipeline syncs
  • After a few years trying to sell the business, it was acquired by XpressDocs in 2024.

Jim Eggleston, President & CEO, Cole Information (now VP at XpressDocs)

“The entire integration of our new software solutions for sales, marketing, customer service, and subscription billing was complex—and ALG played a huge role in making it a success. These solutions really made a huge impact on the way we do business and communicate with our customers.”