Squeeze is a marketer’s best friend.
The company’s services sit between marketing and sales, taking care of the high-volume, shorter-interaction leads so sales teams can focus on closing deals.
Founder and CEO Carson Poppenger studied marketing and business management at UVU, and that knowledge — combined with his work experience handling leads for sales teams — taught him there could be a better way for marketing and sales to support each other.
“Years ago, I was working at a company in Provo, and they were acquiring a large amount of leads every week,” Carson says. “We would get those to the sales team, but the sales team wasn’t calling them frequently enough to penetrate the customers we were acquiring. So, I built a system with them to follow up on and nurture leads.”
He realized this issue extended to various industries, and Squeeze began — with a goal to “squeeze” more opportunities for companies to optimize their speed to lead, contact rates and conversion.
The company was founded in 2009, and now, Squeeze is proud to employ over 400 people with offices in Orem, Logan and Rexburg, Idaho. Fast fact! The company was named one of Utah Valley’s Fastest-Growing Companies four years in a row — from 2021 to 2024.
“Everything we’re doing is to improve the sales process,” Carson says. “That’s why we call ourselves the leaders in sales experience.”
WHAT’S THE SQUEEZE?
Here are the juicy details on how Carson and his team are becoming masters of the industry.
“We’re a servicer for marketers. We can help them because we understand their pain points,” Carson says. “We want to help them achieve the return on ad spend that they want, and it won’t really happen without people picking up the phone and calling leads.”
Squeeze has been hired by top-flight companies — including Purple, Vivint, Mr. Cooper, SoFi and Globe Life — to handle lead follow-up.
“When we work with a client, we represent their brand,” Carson says. “Our account managers sync up with the marketing teams of clients to become better versed in their product, language and voice.”
For example, if a team member is assigned to work with Mr. Cooper, that will be their sole focus project. Squeeze makes outbound calls to leads to help the customer understand the product better, such as a mortgage from Mr. Cooper.
“We really went all-in on the phone,” Carson says. “We’ve tried text messaging, email marketing and direct mail — but calls have the highest yield. The companies we represent have services that need to be talked over on the phone.”
And the best part? Clients only pay when Squeeze performs.
“Every project we do is performance-based,” Carson says. “We don’t charge an hourly rate, or setup or management fees. We only charge for the transfers we deliver and the appointments we set.”
This approach means Squeeze is the party under pressure to deliver — and the company’s 3,000 daily appointments and transfers deliver the juice. Carson attributes the company’s success to earning the business of their clients every day.
But in the end, servicing marketers only works if they succeed at marketing themselves.
MARKETING TO MARKETERS
When Squeeze first started, they focused on Google ads to attract clients. However, they found that too many of the businesses reaching out to them weren’t the best fits.
“We want products we can be proud of,” Carson says. “We want to work with businesses that have great reputations and great brand awareness.”
Carson switched gears and focused Squeeze’s attention to producing more content about what they do — so they started a podcast: The Juice Consumer Direct podcast. This specifically targets CMOs and VPs of marketing with topics like “the future of lead generation,” “building a winning sales culture” and “boosting ROI in mortgage marketing.”
“We talk about the problems we know they’re having,” Carson says. “Calling it ‘consumer direct’ is a signal to anybody in the industry. Our topics are meaningful to them.”
On top of the podcast, Squeeze participates in lead-generation trade shows, is launching an ambassador program, and is building its own AI tech called “Peel” — which will analyze and give feedback about client sales calls.
ORANGE YOU GLAD WE SUCCEED?
What makes a company like Squeeze a fastest-growing company for four consecutive years? A focus on having fun, aligning actions with goals, doing the right thing, staying technology-focused, continuously improving, and having incredible managers and teams.
“Honoring our commitments is something we’re really big on,” Carson says. “Our clients know that if we say we’re going to do something, we’re going to do it.”
That’s the Squeeze sales experience.