How Sunday Accelerated Market Expansion Through Strategic Lead Qualification

Sunday's lean sales team faced a complex balancing act: maintain focus on client-facing activities while pursuing an aggressive geographical expansion strategy. Their lead qualification process required detailed technical knowledge about restaurant point-of-sale systems - information that couldn't be found through standard research methods. With valuable sales time being spent on preliminary market research rather than closing deals, Sunday needed a solution that would enable efficient market expansion without compromising their sales team's effectiveness.

After an initial trial as an SDR role, Sunday and Runway pivoted to focus on lead qualification and market preparation. The Runway talent was tasked with a systematic approach to market preparation:

• Evaluating technical compatibility with potential partners' POS systems
• Identifying and documenting key decision-makers through tools like ZoomInfo
• Qualifying leads based on specific criteria including location count and service model
• Building comprehensive market intelligence for new target regions
• Segmenting and prioritizing leads based on restaurant group size and service type

The engagement was structured with clear, focused tasks and deadlines based on market priorities, allowing for agile shifts between geographical targets as business needs evolved.

The partnership yielded both immediate results and strategic insights that transformed Sunday's approach to market expansion. In the Dallas market alone, one partnership was secured with several more in active discussions, demonstrating the effectiveness of the refined qualification process.

More significantly, the engagement revealed the value of separating market preparation from direct sales activities. This insight led Sunday to create dedicated sales associate roles in the Northeast and Southeast regions, fundamentally restructuring their sales organization for more efficient growth.

The success of this approach has given Sunday a scalable blueprint for future market expansion. As their Head of Sales noted, "The ability to use this type of work to do market prep was a really positive learning for us. We've now got that base knowledge for our next expansion markets, which helps us move faster."

Beyond the immediate business impact, the engagement helped Sunday optimize their expansion strategy by:

• Creating a standardized process for market preparation
• Developing clear qualification criteria for potential partners
• Establishing a more efficient division of sales responsibilities
• Building a foundation for rapid geographical expansion