Ingenico and Splitit Partner to Bring White-Label, Buy Now, Pay Later to Physical Checkout With Just One Touch

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February 1, 2023

Ingenico and Splitit Partner to Bring White-Label, Buy Now, Pay Later to Physical Checkout With Just One Touch

Ingenico’s PPaaS (Payments Platform-as-a-Service) and Splitit’s Installments-as-a-Service combine to revolutionize BNPL at the point of sale

Ingenico, a global leader in payments acceptance solutions and Splitit, the only white-label, card-based installment platform using existing consumer credit, today announced a global strategic partnership to bring one-touch, no-interest, buy now, pay later capability to the physical checkout experience using PPaaS, Ingenico’s innovative, cloud-based Payments-Platform-as-a-Service, and Splitit’s Installments-as-a-Service solution.

According to Juniper Research’s white paper ‘Buy Now Pay Later: Reshaping the Payments Market’ (August 2022)^[1], “Buy now, pay later (BNPL) users will surpass 900 million globally by 2027 – an increase from 360 million in 2022. At the same time, 75 percent of commerce is anticipated to remain in-store, highlighting a significant opportunity for retailers to offer customers a flexible installment option at the point of sale (POS).”

Traditional BNPL services have struggled to make headway at the point of sale. The substantial friction created by requiring shoppers to follow a multi-step process to register, apply for funding or log into a third-party service or app creates an out-of-brand experience leading to consumer frustration and abandoned sales.

The partnership between Ingenico and Splitit eliminates these barriers to deliver a global, one-touch, no-interest BNPL service embedded into the merchant’s existing POS terminal. The result is an engaging omnichannel customer experience that helps merchants grow their business while driving loyalty and repeat purchases.

Ingenico’s PPaaS solution enables its clients, such as banks and merchant acquirers, to select from a catalog of payments and value-added services without requiring lengthy and expensive software development. It also avoids the complexity associated with deployment across a variety of terminal brands.

Splitit’s Installments-as-a-Service platform is a new way to drive BNPL through a white-label, merchant-branded experience embedded within a brand’s existing checkout flow. Unlike legacy BNPL services that originate new loans, Splitit unlocks existing consumer credit on credit cards for 0% interest^[2] installments. Any consumer with available credit on their credit card is automatically pre-qualified to use Splitit for the value of that available credit. There’s no application, registration or redirects and no additional interest, hidden fees^[3] or credit checks, making it the most seamless and frictionless BNPL checkout experience for consumers online and in-store.

The global partnership has strong initial interest coming from clients of both companies, particularly in the United States and Western Europe.

Nandan Sheth, CEO of Splitit, speaking of the partnership, said: “We are delighted to partner with one of the largest and most admired payment technology companies in the world. Together with Ingenico, we can deliver a one-of-a-kind solution to tap into the massively underserviced in-store BNPL opportunity, which is three times greater than e-commerce alone. This partnership will transform BNPL at the point of sale, opening incredible new opportunities outside traditional retail. All industries – healthcare, home furnishings, home improvement and repairs, automotive and business services, to name a few – will benefit.”

Michael Balzer, Head of Sales and Strategic Partnerships at PPaaS for Ingenico, added: “Splitit and PPaaS are natural partners. PPaaS is all about facilitating how people pay and what services they can access at the point of sale. Splitit is reinventing installment payments at the point of sale in a way that makes it easy for merchants to propose this option to its customers, and PPaaS can help them do this in a simple and effective way. Coming on the back of other partnerships we have recently announced, including Splitit in our portfolio of partners is a testament to how important we believe in-store, easy-to-use BNPL will be in the future.”

As the global leader in payments acceptance solutions in-store, Ingenico is a trusted technology partner for 1,000+ banks, acquirers, ISVs, payment aggregators and fintechs and has some 40 million POS terminals in service around the world, serving retailers ranging from small merchants to some of the best-known global brands.

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Skipify Named to Embedded Fintech 50

STS News Desk

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February 1, 2023

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Company recognized for continued success of their Modern Checkout Platform

Skipify, the Modern Checkout Platform, was named to the Embedded Fintech 50, a list launched by GGV Capital in partnership with Crunchbase, to recognize the most promising fintech companies.

GGV Capital convened 57 investment firms to nominate and vote on the 50 honorees. Having raised more than $12 billion collectively, the Embedded Fintech 50 demonstrates the enthusiasm of venture capital investors in the growth and innovation of this sector. In celebration, honorees will ring the Closing Bell at Nasdaq MarketSite today.

“We’ve made it easy for merchants to address a universal problem in checkout: people love the products they buy, but they don’t like the process of buying them. That’s why there’s Skipify. 85% of shoppers prefer buying with Skipify over traditional and alternative checkout options,” said Skipify CEO and Founder, Ryth Martin.

Thousands of merchants offer Skipify in their digital and in-store channels, supporting millions of checkouts a month. Skipify’s checkout experience requires almost zero effort for shoppers to sign-up and complete a purchase using Skipify’s proprietary integrations directly with financial institutions. As a result, merchants benefit from higher payment approval rates, increased conversion, easier repeat purchasing and gain access to a new payments ecosystem with a rapidly growing network of shoppers.

Increasingly, merchants and financial institutions are looking to technology providers like Skipify to create frictionless checkout experiences while protecting their customer relationships. Just months ago, Apple Pay passed Mastercard in annual payments volume and is on course to overtake Visa. Skipify is building a future where shoppers, merchants, and financial institutions have a digital wallet that creates value for all.

“Embedded fintech is a bright spot in today’s market, and it is exciting to see how companies are democratizing access to financial services through technology,” said Hans Tung, managing partner at GGV Capital. “We are excited for the continued development of the embedded fintech landscape and further creative innovations to come. Congratulations to the Embedded Fintech 50 honorees!”

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SalesTechStar Interview with Mike Carpenter, CEO at XFactor

Paroma Sen

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February 1, 2023

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SalesTechStar Interview with Mike Carpenter, CEO at XFactor

Mike Carpenter, CEO at XFactor shares a few go-to market tips while taking us through the story behind XFactor’s launch…

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Welcome to this SalesTechStar chat Mike, tell us about yourself and what inspired XFactor, how has the journey been since starting up.

My name is Mike Carpenter. I’m the co-founder and CEO of XFactor.io, a newly-launched company that provides technology and services for enterprises, startups and venture capitalists to modernize annual operations planning and eliminate unwarranted go-to-market risks. I’m also a Venture Advisor for Lightspeed Venture Partners and I most recently served as CrowdStrike’s President of Global Sales Operations.

Throughout my 25-year career, I’ve always searched for “X factors”– the little things that can move the dial and get maximum results for a company. My professional success was due in large part to the models and plans I built around these X factors, not necessarily any superpowers in my job functions. If these plans needed to go through approvals, however, they were rendered all but obsolete: by the time they were signed off on, as the numbers and circumstances surrounding my predictive models were stale and irrelevant. The frustration that this caused me, coupled with the results I had seen with my models, led me to seek out a better way to approach operations planning.

XFactor.io was born out of the necessity to fundamentally shift how companies approach go-to-market and annual operations planning. Our AI-powered go-to-market platform provides real-time data and business intelligence models, to drive better business decisions. In addition to our go-to-market platform, XFactor.io offers ongoing Managed Services to provide customer support when optimizing planning, sales, and revenue operations — as well as the XFactor Executive Council, which is a group of expert advisors from across the technology industry that provide proof-of-concept and product market fit analysis for startup founders, enterprises, and investors. The first Executive Council member advisors include executives from Gong, Proofpoint, Campbell Soup Company, and Wiz. We’re fortunate to have some great momentum since launching with a $10M seed round, led in part by Lightspeed Venture Partners, as well as securing some of Lightspeed’s portfolio companies as initial customers.

How are go-to-market trends changing in today’s B2B ecosystem and what need is this fueling for specific types of go-to-market platforms? Can you talk about the evolution of these tools and how do you feel these platforms will impact more in future?

Organizations are concerned with growth and ROI now more than ever, and the need to improve operations in these areas is becoming increasingly important. In market downturns, sales cycles often slow down, making go-to-market (GTM)/operations planning even more critical. Today’s B2B ecosystem is already becoming saturated in AI-powered tools, but this trend will only continue to ramp up as industry competition increases.

AI tools enable organizations to make better, informed decisions based on real-time data. For startups specifically, these tools eliminate GTM risks and ensure reliable growth year over year, as opposed to building out traditional plans that are obsolete upon completion.

For enterprises, these tools guarantee business continuity amid uncertain market conditions. We’re at a time in the world where manual complexities limit GTM leaders to micro-level data. As these tools continue to evolve, businesses will not only be more efficient, but also have the ability to de-risk business decisions, drive successful outcomes, and retain high-performing team members.

Why is it crucial for teams/B2Bs to optimize their go-to-market and operations planning processes today. What are some of the biggest challenges you see businesses face here?

Almost every organization struggles to accelerate time to revenue. At the same time, increased competition and continuous innovation puts an emphasis on efficiency and agility in all aspects of business. Today, the B2B ecosystem is too competitive for organizations to miss out on critical data and intelligence. The biggest challenge organizations face when choosing not to invest in GTM and operations planning is poor decision-making. GTM and operational planning have historically been based on misaligned priorities, insufficient data, and subjective perspectives. Many organizations still rely on this outdated method of data aggregation, leading to misguided decisions when creating GTM/operations plans.

On the other hand, organizations that are taking advantage of modernized tools are able to deliver data-driven plans based on real-time data and intelligence. A company’s proof of concept and scalability all rely on a successful GTM/operations plan. If business leaders invest in these planning processes — with real-time data to back up their strategies — they’ll be able to quickly and confidently capitalize on their company’s potential. Confident team members tend to be better leaders overall, which positively impacts productivity, morale, job security, empathy, and more across the entire organization.

Back to XFactor, tell us more about your future plans for the platform.

A spreadsheet is not an operating plan. To successfully go-to-market, your operating plan must constantly evolve with what the data is telling you — about your internal resources, the market, revenue streams and more. XFactor.io is poised to revolutionize GTM and annual operations planning for enterprises, startups, and venture capitalists. Its AI platform provides real-time data and intelligent modeling to enable always-on operations planning, so organizations never miss a growth opportunity. We see XFactor.io as the solution and source of truth for all organizations trying to scale their businesses and optimize ROI, as well as for investors seeking an honest appraisal of a startup’s value. Predictable, data-backed growth will soon replace all outdated methods of planning, and XFactor.io will help organizations get there.

A few thoughts on the B2B tech / salestech-martech market and some predictions for these segments for 2023?

In 2023, sales and marketing teams must be able to prove the value their company and/or product provides its customers right out of the gate. Attracting customers and investors will require more than simply having a flashy product and big ideas. Companies will have to emphasize the necessity for their product and/or service(s) and how it can impact the bottom line for prospective customers and investors alike. Getting to this point will also require greater efficiencies within organizations. The companies that can quickly react and drive their decision-making based on data will be most efficient and successful.

About XFactor
About Mike

About XFactor

XFactor.io - Headquarters Locations, Products, Competitors, Financials, Employees

XFactor is a newly-launched company that provides technology and services for enterprises, startups and venture capitalists to modernize annual operations planning and eliminate unwarranted go-to-market risks.

About Mike

Mike Carpenter is the founder & CEO of XFactor.io, and Venture Advisor at Lightspeed Venture Partners. Formerly, Mike was the former President of Global Sales and Field Operations at CrowdStrike, where he was instrumental in expanding the sales organization worldwide and generating business growth at incredible scale, leading to their IPO in 2019. . Prior to CrowdStrike, he served as president, Global Sales and Field Operations at Tanium and is part of the Board of Directors for Armis Security.

Missed The Latest Episode of The SalesStar Podcast? Have a quick listen here!

Episode 150: The Future of Customer Success with Allison Tiscornia, Chief Customer Officer at ChurnZero

Episode 149: Sales Practices and Tips For Recessionary Times with Ed Hill, SVP – EMEA at Bazaarvoice

Episode 148: Core Sales Strategy Best Practices with Stephanie Vandenberg, GM and SVP Revenue & Growth at Verve Group

TrustRadius Announces Its Winter 2023 Best of Award Winners

STS News Desk

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February 1, 2023

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TrustRadius Announces Its Winter 2023 Best of Award Winners

TrustRadius announces the best technology for customer relations, feature set, and value

TrustRadius, the most-trusted B2B technology decisioning platform, announced the winners of the Winter 2023 Best of Awards in categories for Best Feature Set, Best Value for Price, and Best Relationship. Winners are selected based on data from user feedback on the attributes most important to their business needs.

“These aren’t pay-to-play awards. We recognize the products with genuine positive feedback from real customers. It’s the key to being the destination where tech buyers make confident decisions,” said Vinay Bhagat, TrustRadius Founder, and CEO.

Even in the same category, products can be quite different. They might serve varying use cases, fill unique market niches, or have different strengths or standout features. Depending on a buyer’s criteria, they might find one product or another to be a better fit. Many technology companies struggle to communicate their points of differentiation with buyers. The goal of our awards is to show why products are preferred. Showing this information in an award format makes it easier for buyers to make a purchase decision based on what’s important for them in achieving their business goals.

“Last year, our awards earned 5.6 million views on product profiles across our site. These recognitions not only benefit our vendor partners through increased exposure but also help elevate buyer confidence by making it clear which products are preferred in the market and will solve their business challenges,” Bhagat said.

TrustRadius Winter 2023 Best of Award winners

Technology providers have an opportunity to win all three categories. The Best Value and Best Feature Set Awards are based on the highest percentage of respondents who gave high ratings to the product’s feature set and value for the price. The Best Relationship Award is earned by measuring collective data from reviewer insights: “Would Buy Again,” “Implementation Expectations,” and “Sales and Marketing Promises.” The following products demonstrated excellence in their value for price, feature set, and/or customer relationships:

Miro Interactive Whiteboard wins Best Value for Price

Miro is a visual collaboration platform that allows users to work together in real-time on a shared digital whiteboard. It features a wide range of tools for drawing, sketching, diagramming, and prototyping, as well as integrations with other popular collaboration and productivity software. With Miro, teams can brainstorm, plan projects, design prototypes, and more, all in one place. Users can also join video chats or share real-time comments and feedback on boards to keep projects moving forward. 98% of reviewers say Miro delivers a good value for the price.

IBM Robotic Process Automation wins Best Feature Set

IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) helps organizations automate repetitive, tedious tasks. Data entry and document processing are two of the most common use cases. IBM RPA is designed to work in tandem with human employees, allowing them to focus on more complex and creative tasks while the software handles routine work. It is typically used in industries such as financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing to streamline processes, improve efficiency, and reduce errors.

“IBM RPA earned a Winter 2023 Best of Award for Feature Set as a direct result of user feedback on TrustRadius,” says Megan Headley, VP of Research at TrustRadius. “Reviewers on TrustRadius highlight IBM RPA’s bot scheduling capability, intuitive bot-building interface, and overall positive impact on productivity.”

SAP Concur wins Best Relationship

SAP Concur is a cloud-based travel and expense management platform designed to help organizations streamline and automate the process of tracking and reimbursing employee spending. The platform includes features for booking travel, tracking expenses, creating and approving expense reports, and reconciling corporate credit card charges. SAP Concur also integrates with other financial systems, including accounting software and corporate credit card providers, to help organizations manage their expenses more efficiently. SAP Concur aims to reduce the time and effort required to manage employee expenses and to provide organizations with better visibility and control over their spending.

“SAP Concur has earned a Winter 2023 Best of Award for Best Relationship in the Expense Management category on TrustRadius,” said Megan Headley, VP of Research at TrustRadius. “This award is based entirely on feedback from SAP Concur’s customers. On TrustRadius, 95% of SAP Concur reviewers said they would buy the product again. Additionally, reviewers highlight the software’s ease of use, excellent support, and good approval workflow.”

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Redslim and Interrodata Announce a Partnership That Will Accelerate Insight-led Sales Growth for the CPG Industry

STS News Desk

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February 1, 2023

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Redslim and Interrodata Announce a Partnership That Will Accelerate Insight-led Sales Growth for the CPG Industry

Redslim, specialising in solutions that turn fragmented data into analytic-ready datasets, and Interrodata, the software company providing next-generation analytic & guidance solutions, announced a partnership agreement. The partnership will allow players in the CPG and Retail industry to grow sales more quickly by giving each manager a personalized view of their business performance and opportunities, drawing insight from multiple data sources.

Redslim is laser-focused on providing gold standard data harmonisation services for global and local organisations. Its powerful market data factory transforms siloed data into connected datasets ready to feed business intelligence tools.

Interrodata developed the Investigative Decision AnalyticsTM platform to guide sales and marketing managers to action, without the pain of manual analytics. The service enables automated access to major trends and personalized analytics and narratives that make action-planning simple.

When faced with economic pressure and the threat of recession, organizations rely on multiple datasets for informed decision-making, while minimizing data-management resources. Data silos from multiple data providers create barriers and confusion, making it challenging for analysts to present tailored action plans to different audiences. The alliance between Redslim and Interrodata creates extended value by enabling multiple teams in CPG and Retail organisations to achieve automated insights which can be customised to individual scenarios.

“Turning data into business-critical insights has become essential for organizations in the fragmented market landscape.” said Alberto Alcaniz, Redslim’s Partner- Verticals and Partnership. “Redslim and Interrodata are leveraging our combined expertise and technologies to help businesses make data-driven decisions faster. We’re excited to collaborate with Interrodata and bring a powerful integration to our customers.”

“Our number one goal is to help clients unlock growth potential by revealing hidden insights. We are passionate about turning complex data into helpful, personalised guidance for every commercial leader in an organization” added David Boon, Founder and CEO, Interrodata. “This partnership with Redslim creates an unparalleled capability to guide business leaders to revenue-driving action, harnessing the full benefits of data harmonisation.”

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CallTower Wins Five9 Global Partner Rising Star Award

STS News Desk

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February 1, 2023

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CallTower Wins Five9 Global Partner Rising Star Award

CallTower is recognized for enabling and delivering success in helping organizations reimagine their customer experiences in 2022

CallTower has been named Global Partner Rising Star by Five9, a leading provider of the intelligent cloud contact center. The Five9 2022 Global Partner Awards recognize the achievements of the Five9 global ecosystem of channel partners, Systems Integrators, strategic alliance partners, and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs).

“We are excited to be recognized by Five9 as the Rising Star of 2022 in their Global Partner Awards,” says CallTower Chief Revenue Officer, William Rubio. “Our partnership speaks for itself – we’ve worked hard to make sure our unified communication solutions combined with Five9 Cloud Contact Center meet the collaborative needs of our global customer base, and that they can manage everything seamlessly with our CallTower Connect admin portal.”

Five9 brings the power of cloud innovation to more than 2500 customers worldwide and facilitates billions of call minutes annually. The Five9 Intelligent Cloud Contact Center provides digital engagement, analytics, workflow automation, workforce optimization, and practical AI to create more human customer experiencCallTower Wins Five9 Global Partner Rising Star Awardes, engage and empower agents, and deliver tangible business results.

The growing Five9 partner ecosystem reflects the company’s “build with” philosophy and the recognition that delivering customer engagement solutions of the future will require co-innovating with software and service providers that can extend Five9 capabilities, as well as its reach.

“At Five9, we recognize that our partners play a key role in delivering excellence,” said Jake Butterbaugh, Senior Vice President, Global Partner Organization, Five9. “Our partnerships of all types and sizes are critical to our success. Moreover, our partnerships are critical to our mutual customers’ successes, and our 2022 would not have been the same without [Partner Company Name]. We congratulate and thank them, along with all our 2022 Five9 Global Partner Award winners, and look forward to many more reasons to celebrate in 2023.”

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FPT Software Europe Supports DAX Company Covestro With Cloud Migration

STS News Desk

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February 1, 2023

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FPT Software Europe Supports DAX Company Covestro With Cloud Migration

FPT Software Europe, a subsidiary of FPT Software – leading technology and IT service provider headquartered in Vietnam, has recently announced its strategic partnership with Covestro AG (Covestro). As a leading global manufacturer of polymer materials, Covestro is included in DAX stock market index among major German companies trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

“FPT Software Europe is always ready to help European enterprises drive large-scale cloud projects and lay a solid foundation for broader digital transformation initiatives,” said CEO of FPT Software Europe Le Hai

Entering a multi-year agreement with Covestro, FPT Software Europe is leveraging its in-depth experience, comprehensive services and best-shore model to support the DAX-listed group in the migration of 290 applications to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform, thereby accelerating its digital transformation journey.

Starting signal for the next generation of IT infrastructure

Within the next few years, FPT Software Europe will accompany Covestro’s entire transformation process. Starting with the assessment of customer requirements, the cloud experts analyze the chemical giant’s legacy systems; design and implement solutions adapted to the AWS infrastructure. FPT Software Europe’s core tasks in the migration process include refactoring legacy applications to preserve their functionality in the new ecosystem while leveraging the full potential of the new platform for the customer. By moving to AWS, Covestro AG is setting itself the goal of creating greater security for productive systems and business-critical workloads. Furthermore, by cloud migration, the company achieves additional benefits such as on-demand scalability of resources, increased productivity, and reduced capital and operating costs. With the move to the cloud, Covestro is laying the foundation for further digital transformation initiatives.

DAX company benefits from cloud migration expertise

FPT Software leverages its best-shore model, which is a mix of off shore, nearshore and onsite delivery to enable fast and cost-efficient processes to serve its customers like Covestro. As an AWS Advanced Partner with 600 highly qualified, certified AWS experts and around 20,000 highly trained IT specialists, FPT Software is able to implement the project in the shortest possible time and with the highest quality.

“As part of our promise to help Covestro accelerate its cloud migration, we have rapidly assembled project teams of cloud experts who work closely with the group’s contacts on a day-to-day basis,” said Le Hai, CEO of FPT Software Europe. “With the combined expertise of 600 certified AWS and 300 certified Microsoft experts, as well as thousands of other developers, FPT Software Europe is always ready to help European enterprises drive large-scale cloud projects and lay a solid foundation for broader digital transformation initiatives.”

Through its partnership with FPT Software Europe, Covestro benefits from the comprehensive expertise of the Vietnamese IT service provider, which has already successfully implemented extensive cloud migration and digital transformation projects for major corporations like Schaeffler, RWE, Innogy and E.On.

FPT Software Europe and Covestro are discussing about further future joint projects in other areas such as managed services, cloud services with advanced application development and SAP implementation services.

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Thought Industries Earns ‘Potential Leader’ Status in 2023 Fosway 9-Grid for Learning Systems

STS News Desk

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February 1, 2023

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Thought Industries Earns ‘Potential Leader’ Status in 2023 Fosway 9-Grid for Learning Systems

Recognition Reflects Ti’s Growing Success Across Europe Meeting the Complex External Learning Needs of Global, Enterprise-Scale Organizations

Thought Industries, the leading external enterprise learning platform for customer, partner and professional training, today announced it has been named as a ‘Potential Leader’ in the Fosway 2023 9-Grid™ for Learning Systems. This position in the 9-Grid reflects Fosway’s recognition of Thought Industries’ growing ability to address the complex enterprise-scale learning management needs of global organisations focused on external enterprise learning for customers and partners. Thought Industries notable strengths in this area include a focus on innovation and the support of a broad feature set.

The recognition by Fosway is the latest achievement for Thought Industries and External Enterprise Learning, which puts exceptional, profitable learning experiences at the centre of the journey for customers, partners, and professionals. The Thought Industries Enterprise Learning platform provides the solution to improve flexibility, reduce time to market, and create unrivalled learning experiences for organisations with complex products and training requirements – all with the aim of helping them grow revenue, increase product adoption, and scale their learning businesses.

Participants in the Fosway 9-Grid™ for Learning Systems are rated based on their solution’s potential, performance and customer advocacy, market presence, total cost of ownership, and future trajectory (in relation to market trends). Potential Leaders provide sophisticated solutions with comprehensive suites of capabilities that are well suited to complex organisations but are recent entrants to the European market.

“This year our report has really highlighted extended enterprise, including partner and customer education, as a critical area of the Learning Systems market,” said David Wilson, CEO, Fosway Group. “As an extended enterprise specialist, Thought Industries continues to innovate its offering to help corporate customers extend their focus to train their external stakeholders online.”

“We appreciate Fosway recognizing the importance and growth of the External Enterprise market in Europe, and the unique needs of enterprise-scale learning businesses,” said Barry Kelly, CEO, Thought Industries. “Thought Industries is well positioned to partner with organisations looking for innovation, scale, and a competitive advantage in the marketplace.”

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Five Questions To Ask Before Making Direct Mail a Part of your B2B Sales Prospecting Cadence

Paroma Sen

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February 1, 2023

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Five Questions To Ask Before Making Direct Mail a Part of your B2B Sales Prospecting Cadence

Direct mail has been a proven ROI driven marketing and sales touch point in B2B over the years. When used with the right tactics and at the right time, direct mail can help drive more results from a typical B2B sales prospecting process. The challenge lies in knowing what to send when and learning how to capitalize on the potential ROI that this channel can offer.

While most B2B sales leaders today support the idea of a direct mail step, not every brand is able to garner the expected goal and result from this mode.

For sales people or sales teams who are still at the cusp of decoding whether or not direct mail can enable their sales prospecting objectives: here are five questions to ask before setting out and implementing it:

What Goal Do you Want To Achieve?

Some brands and sales leaders or business heads might want to use direct mail to nurture and stay in the good books of their top customers. Top customers could mean those who offer repeat business and those that contribute to most of the brand’s income in a given fiscal.

It is common place in B2B to have providers gift special hampers and packages to these top performing customers.

Using direct mail to drive forward a prospecting cycle though is another ball game.

Direct mail can be used as a touchpoint across so many stages in the B2B buying cycle. Identifying a goal first based on aspects like: whether the brand wants to:

–Win a meeting

-Get a prospect onto a discovery call

-Get the prospect to confirm a demo are just some questions to help align a goal to the direct mail outreach.

Knowing what you want to achieve can help integrate a better process by allowing sales teams to then double down on which part of the prospecting step they want to send a gift out at (and why).

What Does your Budget Look Like?

Direct mail automation tools allow admins to set budgets for each sales rep. Before this happens, business leaders across functions need to align on a total budget they would allocate to the direct mail process for a particular quarter or year.

This can further be broken down to allocate slightly higher budgets to top performing sales reps while reducing budgets for others.

Based on the budget, sales people and sales leaders can then decide as to whether this amount should actually be used to drive a direct mail step or whether it can be used for something else

Does Direct Mail Work For your Industry?

Anything that works well for another brand may or may not work just as well for yours. Understanding whether direct mail has proven ROI in the past for brands in your industry is one of the first steps to assessing whether or not to include it as part of your prospecting cycle.

Sales leaders in B2B tech do often rely on direct mail to drive prospects to agree to a meeting or call. But the onus lies on you to understand whether it can work for you based on your industry and size as well as stage of your business.

BONUS LISTENING: Catch Episode 115 – Direct Mail and its Impact on B2B Marketing and Sales: with Kris Rudeegraap, CEO and co-founder of Sendoso

Is There Something More Effective Than Direct Mail?

For leaner teams with lower budgets, direct mail cadences can include simple e-gifts and vouchers. For slightly larger sales teams, bigger gifts including wine bottles) are commonly relied on.

Understanding budgets can also allow sales people to know what kind of gift they will be able to send as part of their prospecting. But before taking a step, evaluating other options is crucial to ensuring you are in a position to drive true ROI from the whole direct mail send and effort.

Will your Prospects be Okay with Direct Mail?

Often times, to enable actual gift deliveries when the direct mail does not include an e-gift or voucher, sales teams need to use their direct mail automation to get the prospect to share their physical address.

At other times, a gift choice (like a wine bottle) would maybe trigger a negative emotion in a prospect that is a complete teetotaler!

Before implementing direct mail as part of a typical prospecting cadence and more importantly, before choosing what gift to send and at what stage of the buying cycle it should be sent, it is important to understand your prospect: would they be okay with direct mail? Should you send something more neutral? These type of questions can help minimize negative feedback too and prevent prospect churn.

Final Note

Direct mail has been proven to boost response rates and overall ROI. But it’s not just about having the right tool or process in place. Understanding your own business challenges, running a couple of trail direct mail campaigns (for instance: by just having top sales performers run it as part of their cadence for sometime) can help ensure a more tighter result driven output down the line.

Direct mail has been a go-to for many ABM leaders and experienced B2B sales heads because it helps brands cut through the noise and initiate a reaction from a prospect, thereby potentially shortening the sales cycle.

AVANT Amplifies Focus on Vendor Engagement in 2023 to Drive Greater Success for Trusted Advisors

STS News Desk

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February 1, 2023

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AVANT Amplifies Focus on Vendor Engagement in 2023 to Drive Greater Success for Trusted Advisors

Additional investments in people, processes, and technology work to elevate the alignment between AVANT, its Trusted Advisors and vendor partners

AVANT, a platform for IT decision-making and the nation’s premier Technology Services Distributor, today announced more investments are being made in people, processes and technology to net greater efficiencies, add more value and increase alignment between its Trusted Advisors and vendor partners.

“The economic uncertainty around the global economy is creating both challenges and opportunities within the channel,” said Shane McNamara, AVANT’s Executive Vice President of Engineering and Operations. “As the world adjusts to the realities of a looming recession, we see the role of Trusted Advisor continuing to be increasingly important as businesses seek out expert guidance in selecting best-of-breed cybersecurity, CCaaS, UCaaS, Connectivity and Cloud solutions for their hybrid and remote work environments. AVANT is the connector for the Trusted Advisor to the vendor community and through the investments we are making in our vendor engagement team, combined with our Pathfinder technology decision-making platform, we are enabling our Trusted Advisors to stay ahead of the pace of change and helping them grow stronger together with us, both now and in the future.”

Industry-leading Talent Optimizes the Trusted Advisor and Vendor Experience
Adding to its award-winning team, AVANT has hired Samantha Zuniga as Vice President of Vendor Engagement and elevated Jaime Matoba to a newly created role as AVANT’s Senior Director of Business Development. Together, Zuniga and Matoba will leverage their combined experience in sales and business development to guide AVANT’s Trusted Advisors in making the right investments in the vendors, technologies, and services that will unlock more revenue opportunities and drive business growth. Their responsibilities will include developing and executing vendor strategy, driving vendor engagement with AVANT’s Sales Engineering and Channel Manager teams, improving vendor alignment with the AVANT Trusted Advisor community, and managing a new vendor selection and onboarding process.

“Samantha and Jaime both play a critical role in the future growth of AVANT, the success of our Trusted Advisors and our vendor partners,” added McNamara. “Samantha’s passion for customer service and culture have been huge drivers in her success with her teams and in the channel. This combined with Jaime’s proven expertise in sales and business development will ultimately help to strengthen the alignment between our Trusted Advisors and vendors.”

Zuniga comes to AVANT with more than 20 years of experience in the indirect channel working for technology solution distributors in various operational roles, at all levels, building out programs and streamlining businesses processes. Matoba brings more than 20 years of sales experience to her new role, with a strong emphasis on technology sales. She has held various positions within the industry, ranging from direct sales to channel sales, and dedicated much of her career to evangelizing the benefits and opportunities of cloud and CCaaS technologies.

New and Enhanced Vendor Resources Make Doing Business with AVANT Easier
In addition to the expansion of its vendor engagement team, AVANT is offering several resources to drive success for its vendor partners and Trusted Advisors. These include AVANT Analytics, training and educational events, AVANT Technology Insights, and Pathfinder.

“Our Trusted Advisors have told us that AVANT’s ecosystem is one of the best in the business. Our robust vendor portfolio includes over 300 vendors across countless legacy and next-generation technology solutions servicing more than 38,000 opportunities a year,” said Zuniga. “Working to enhance the knowledge and expertise of our Trusted Advisors when it comes to engaging with our vendor partners in developing go-to-market initiatives will enable them to win new business and close deals, while solving the unique business challenges faced by their customers.”

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Welcome to this SalesTechStar chat Mike, tell us about yourself and what inspired XFactor, how has the journey been since starting up.

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Back to XFactor, tell us more about your future plans for the platform.

A few thoughts on the B2B tech / salestech-martech market and some predictions for these segments for 2023?

Missed The Latest Episode of The SalesStar Podcast? Have a quick listen here!

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Write in to psen@itechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

Write in to psen@itechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

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Final Note

Additional investments in people, processes, and technology work to elevate the alignment between AVANT, its Trusted Advisors and vendor partners

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