Making a Sale Is Often the Answer, But What's the Question?
How do startups thrive? The key is to get customers, especially for B2B-focused startups. Customers provide insight to your product. They guide your next enhancements. They pay for your services to help you grow. This is why making sales work well is critical for any startup.
Our job at Vestigo is to help startups build a product that achieves product market fit and product market price. As a very important variable to achievement, we encourage founders to build strong, client-centric company cultures. Having sales orientation within your company culture is what brings you the clients, so it has to be an aspect of what you are building as an entrepreneur in your early stage company.
Sales is about hustle, and it's surprisingly simple in many respects. Consider the following: Who is the target? How do I get to the right decision-maker? Why is my solution compelling? Add to that the basics of good sales behaviors, which include preparation for the call/visit, full engagement with the prospect, and diligently following up with a simple thank you along with a list of next steps. Most important of all is to keep up with the agreed upon follow ups and check in with the prospect to be sure they are engaged with you.
We spend a great deal of our time helping startups get sales processes in place, and we love doing it. We're happy to use our network to facilitate connections. We'll be here to help, now get out there and hustle!
— Mark & Dave
New Portfolio Company
We are delighted to announce our latest investment in Advocate, provider of tech-enabled insurance compliance and analytics for lenders and asset managers.
Founded by Ashwin Agarwal (Elysium Management Private Equity, Goldman Sachs) and founding CTO Dimitris Psaropoulos (Shopify, Chute, Sequence), Advocate automates and streamlines complex insurance compliance for lenders, thus reducing service pricing, transaction closing times, error rates and related regulatory fines from non-compliance. Advocate’s compliance engine also collects insurance product data from borrowers, creating a central repository of data.
We've enjoyed building a relationship with this dynamic team, and we're excited about the thought and investment partnership ahead.
Portfolio Company Spotlight
In this month's newsletter, we are excited to spotlight ForMotiv, a behavioral science platform that works closely with leading insurance carriers across life, health, auto, home, and commercial insurance.
The company's solution collects and analyzes digital behavioral data (time, corrections, keystrokes, backspaces, hesitation, indecision, copy/paste, etc.) helping carriers limit the business they don't want, find the business they do, and prioritize the business that is most attractive.
ForMotiv is working with 4 of the top 10 life carriers and 3 of the top 10 auto carriers. In May, the team co-presented with their customers Lincoln Financial and New York Life at the Association of Home Office Underwriter's Conference.
Please reach out if any of our readers are interested in being connected with the ForMotiv team.
DisrupTV Interview
State of Early Stage FinTech
w/ Mike Nugent, Managing Director at Vestigo Ventures
Are You a Vendor or Partner?
When the art of sales is well practiced, it leads to being a partner. At the beginning of the month, we spent a few days in an offsite meeting with one of our portfolio companies. Our singular focus over sixteen hours of meetings was go-to-market (“G2M”). It was refreshing to spend time in person and to be able to focus solely on the company’s strategic direction. Nothing beats a small group of highly motivated people who are focused on developing a winning sales strategy! It is also worth mentioning that great collaboration happens live. We are designed to interact and reflect on the subtleties of expression and voice inflection that the flat screen simply does not pick up. Time to get back out there!
At Vestigo, we have the operators’ experience working across a range of sales strategies and distribution channels. Sales solutions, channels, and G2M strategies will vary. In our experience, both the art of sales and high trust relationship building are developed by a measurable conscious effort of repeatable practices.
The best relationships start off by uncovering a line of sight on the needs, service expectations, pain points, and strategic goals from both sides. We want to strive to move our conversations and relationships from being a vendor to a partner. Partners last through change, whereas vendors get cut. When was the last time you checked in with your customer/client? Are you a vendor or partner?
As the provider of the service (product or solution), we want to have a clear view of:
- What is our best Prospect Profile (“PP”)?
- How are we filling the pipeline with our PP?
- Is our entire team Continuously Aware of Possible Prospects (“CAPP”)?
- Are our clients referring prospects to us?
The art of sales should be practiced, trained and like any muscle, it must be exercised. Go create great partnerships!
Cheers,
Ian & Frazer
ZenLedger Builds a Team
Post its very successful and well-timed B round of funding, ZenLedger has added key hires to its C-suite and team. This has been a whirlwind of work for Pat Larsen, the CEO and Founder, who continues to impress as a first time founder.
The group gathered in Seattle where the company is headquartered. Interestingly, it's always been a remote work company and has used these types of gatherings to build culture and team work. It has survived tough times before having survived and prospered during the first crypto winter.
Kate Mitselmakher, partner at Bloccelerate, who chairs the board of directors, and I applaud the continued growth of their business of being sure those who trade crypto, NFT’s, and other digital assets, have the tools they need to report and pay taxes. While we may be headed into "crypto winter 2" this team can handle it!
Portfolio Updates
AssetMark to Buy Adhesion Wealth from Vestmark
AssetMark has agreed to acquire Adhesion Wealth, a wholly owned unit of Vestmark, to expand its current offerings and serve a wider range of advisors, enterprises and asset managers. The proforma entity will have ~$100bn of assets on its platform and the deal is expected to be accretive in year one. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, though it is expected to close in the second half of the year.
ZenLedger Closes $15M Series B
We are excited to announce Zenledger's $15M Series B led by ParaFi Capital. Funding will be used to expand services globally, innovate further on crypto finance products, and grow retail and government market share.
ZenLedger
ForMotiv Joins Guidewire Insurtech Vanguards Program
ForMotiv has joined Guidewire’s Insurtech Vanguards program, an initiative led by P&C cloud platform provider, Guidewire (NYSE: GWRE), to help insurers learn about the newest insurtechs and how to best leverage them.
ForMotiv
Railz Showcased Latest Feature at FinTech Nexus 2022 (LendIt) Conference
During the LendIt Conference last month, Railz revealed "Visualization SDK", their latest feature that banks can use to build branded, customizable dashboards to make faster, smarter loan decisions. The dashboards display a comprehensive view of the banks' SMB clients' financial health.
Interesting Reads
Emily Heaslip
Natalie Sydorenko
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