Home › Case Studies › El Toro
Case study · Co-founded · Sales
El Toro: from a basement to 100+ employees.
Sean Stafford, founder of Hunley Media, co-founded El Toro in 2012 and led its sales for the first eight years. This is a company he helped build from the start.
El Toro sold IP targeting, ads delivered to specific households and businesses by address, before most buyers had heard of it. The hard part wasn’t the technology. It was getting buyers to understand it and trust it. So Sean built the messaging, the sales process, and the sales team to do exactly that.
What happened
100+
employees, grown from three co-founders
No. 13
Deloitte Technology Fast 500, North America, 2017
Inc. 5000
fastest-growing private companies
2015
Emerging Company of the Year, Louisville Business First
The situation
El Toro was founded in Louisville in 2012 by three co-founders, including Sean Stafford, and started in a basement. It became the largest ad-tech company in Kentucky.
The real problem
Buyers couldn’t purchase what they couldn’t picture. Every sale started with explaining a technology that didn’t have a name most people recognized.
What was built
Plain-language messaging that explained IP targeting in terms buyers already used
A repeatable sales process from first conversation to signed contract
Pipeline and prospecting built to keep demand ahead of growth
A sales team hired and trained to sell the same way
The result
El Toro grew from three co-founders to more than 100 employees, ranked No. 13 on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 in North America in 2017, made the Inc. 5000, and in 2019 announced an expansion into a larger headquarters in NuLu.
“What El Toro has done in a relatively short amount of time is phenomenal.”
Sources: Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development · Trade & Industry Development, 2019 · Deloitte Technology Fast 500 (2017)
Selling something your buyers don’t understand yet?
At El Toro, we had to teach a market what we were before we could sell it anything. If your sales feel harder than they should, there’s usually one thing in the way, and it can be found.
Tell me what is going on. I’ll look at it myself, find what is holding you back, and show you how we fix it. If I’m not the right fit, I’ll tell you that too.
Sean Stafford, founder, Hunley Media Group
Book a free 20-minute call. Sean will talk through whether he can help and what the next step would be.
Next case study
TRIM NuLu: replacing a model COVID killed ›Is something holding your business back?
Or see how we work