President
LeadJen
32
Yelp
ESPN ScoreCenter
Priceline
Jenny Vance started LeadJen in 2004 to provide sales leads and prospecting support to business-to-business sales and marketing executives. Today, it’s a multimillion-dollar lead-generation services company serving more than 200 clients in the United States, Europe and Australia.
“Our real focus as a business is helping our clients get value out of every single prospecting call,” said Vance, a Greenwood native who honed her entrepreneurial instincts at DePauw University.
“In many cases, we hope that’s an appointment for our clients to go in and sell their solutions, but even if it’s not, our mind-set is, ‘What can we learn and share back with our clients’ that will help them understand their market, their strategy in those markets, and optimize our efforts with those clients?”
Inside sales is often a high-turnover area and requires a lot of oversight, said Vance, explaining part of her business’s appeal.
“A lot of companies just don’t have time to waste.”
LeadJen’s service is catching on with the high-technology industry it serves; in 2010, LeadJen tripled its growth, expanding from 20 employees to 60.
“It’s been really fun,” said Vance, noting that 85 percent of LeadJen’s new business comes from client referrals, she said, and 95 percent of clients return for additional work.
That level of client loyalty is key to LeadJen’s business success.
She and her business partner, Bill Johnson, developed software—Jesubi—that works hand-in-hand with LeadJen’s business. While they co-own both businesses, she runs LeadJen, he runs Jesubi, and they serve on each other’s boards.
While busy, Vance, a former high school and college athlete, still carves out time to play in adult league sports—softball, volleyball and golf. Single, Vance has a dog, a maltese/poodle mix that she enjoys.
She also is an active alumna of Lutheran High School, as well as Calvary Lutheran School.•
___
Click here to return to the Forty Under 40 landing page.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.