DecisionLink Business won the software category of Atlanta Inno's Fire Awards.
DecisionLink produces ValueCloud, a cloud-based customer value management platform that aims to help all members of a business turn customer interactions into insights to increase revenue. Founded in 2011, the software startup raised $18.5 million from prominent Silicon Valley firm Accel at the beginning of this year.
Here's a Q&A with CEO Tim Page.
Q: How are your company’s innovations changing your industry’s landscape?
A: We are proud to say that ValueCloud is the recognized leader in the emerging $26 billion customer value management category, and excited to completely change the engagement model between buyers and commercial teams! Here’s the simple reason why — ValueCloud shifts conversations away from tactical features and functions engagement to discussions of business value. Gartner indicates that 70% of digitally savvy buyers know what you do by the time they engage you; what they really want to know is the business value you deliver and if they can trust you to deliver it. That’s where we come in. We automate and simplify business value conversations that grow credibility and trust.
This need to automate is being driven by two market forces — working from home and virtual engagement versus the ability to build trust in-person, at a hockey game or a dinner, and the increasing pressure from buyers' finance teams to justify every investment both initially and at renewal time. That manual approach is neither scalable nor adequate to support the steep annual recurring revenue or net recurring revenue targets that chief revenue officers are mandated to hit every year.
Today, savvy CROs turn to us to empower team members through a few clicks on ValueCloud to build a business case collaboratively with customers and to demonstrate value realization through reports and dashboards. When they do, the results are spectacular. We like to say we help customers like ServiceNow, Crowdstrike, NCR, Elastic, DocuSign, Verint and so many others go beyond winning deals to winning customers for life.
Q: What’s your advice to future and current entrepreneurs?
A: Follow your passion. Our founders Jim Berryhill and John Porter had a major passion — they wanted to turn sales into a noble profession. They believe that by elevating buyer/seller conversations to reflect business value, a salesperson will be viewed as a problem solver and trusted advisor versus just a person that comes around once a quarter to take an order for products or services. In my experience, I've built and grown a handful of successful companies and handled successful exits where there is passion and leadership, and where there is leadership there are actions, and through those actions, companies are built and succeed. That's the formula. But if it's just about the money, it typically doesn't succeed.
Q: What’s been the biggest roadblock in your growth, and how did you overcome it?
A: Talent. This is what keeps me up at night. We have awesome talent, but we are a software organization, unlike our competitors, who are consultants and value-selling trainers with multiple sales enablement plays. We need top talent who understands software-as-a-service and value-based “everything” — value-based marketing, selling and customer success. We require subject matter commercial experts that help us continually innovate the platform based on our target persona needs as well as technology experts that know how to leverage the latest technology advancements like data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud and other important technologies to keep us fresh and moving forward. I estimate we have a two-year lead on our competitors right now because of our innovation and our people being real commercial leaders versus former consultants. Still, we have to maintain a breakneck pace to widen the gap and keep winning, and we need great talent to do that. That is the key to continued success.
Atlanta Inno's Fire Awards 2021
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