Closing out a fun filled 2017, we are looking to grow our team by at least 30% in 2018. As we expand, we are taking the time to pen what you have told us is most important to you, our clients and our community, which has driven the 5 core things that we do, and will continue to do in years to come:
1. Our DiligenceVault brand is important
- Experiences build a brand: Our users help us build the DiligenceVault brand. They are our best marketers. Their experiences with both product, and client service are crucial. Continuous feedback and client driven iterations make the product and our client servicing better and better over time.
- Content and OpEd is integral: We are a team of people with opinions. Having an opinion is important, but the ability to express that opinion is equally important. We invest time in sharing our views, experiences and analytics. Each member of the team has to contribute in this goal of ours. Check out our blogs.
- Imitation is the best form of flattery: Some who might wish to compete with us have tried to gain access to our offering, not once but multiple times. We have learned to be respectful but also careful with how we share the firm’s core message. At the same time, we never want to engage in such practices ourselves, as they do not support long run growth and innovation.
2. Engineering the DiligenceVault product
- Quality of user experience: Platform performance is crucial, particularly in terms of speed, bugs and clunkiness.. We obsess over slow page loads and ensure that each request takes no longer than a few milliseconds. Further, we emphasize UX (user experience) vs. UI (user interface)… what may look pretty, may actually make the user work harder (illustration below).
- Enterprise controls: We focus on architecting a platform that is both secure as well as extensible, with a layered control framework for optimal performance.
- Depth of technology: We leverage the latest technology, and continue to upgrade the tech stack to minimize technical debt, and bring technological efficiencies.
3. Building the DiligenceVault pipeline
- Messaging: Continually refining our sales pitch and constantly redrafting the emails being sent to prospective clients. You have interrupted someone’s day, make it count!
- Dialing for $$$: The all-important phone script. Did you know that in 2007 it took an average of 3.68 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. Today it takes 8 attempts. (TeleNet and Ovation Sales Group) So when you get someone on the phone, make an impression!
- Invest in your network: Take the time to catch up over coffee, have a call, grab a bite. Help when you can, it’s a true privilege and also quite gratifying to be able to be of help.
- The demos: Cannot emphasize enough the importance of this opportunity. After a presentation, 63% of attendees remember stories. Only 5% remember statistics. If you cannot tell a story about someone’s pain points and how to resolve them, you have wasted both their time and yours. Prospects that buy have 58% more objections than prospects who don’t. Listen intently to what they are saying, as prospective users actually provide opportunities to solve more problems!
- The proposals: Personalize as much as you can. Yes, it takes a while to do that instead of sending out a boilerplate document in 20 seconds, but it is worth it!
- The follow-ups: 80% of sales require 5 follow-up calls after the meeting. 44% of sales people give up after 1 follow-up.
- Know your client: Be part of vendor diligence and contract discussions. Know your client end to end.
4. DiligenceVault working as a team
- Singular vision: We are not a tool, not a system, but rather, we are a platform. We are a mutualized platform that should be equally valuable for both the buyers (investors) and sellers (managers).
- Individual accountability: We thrive because of individual accountability, and that is the baseline minimum criteria for all members of the team.
- Communication is critical: Maintaining internal collaboration and communication is crucial, as we are a global team.
- Keeping it fun!: Having internal nicknames. For example, I am the Chief Penny Collector: Accumulating luck of all kinds, old and new, flashy and battered… building the momentum.
5. DiligenceVault loves these products
If you want to work with us, you’d need to love these products where we spend a lot of our time, or introduce us to better ones. These products help us be the most productive we can be, and also realize the highest return on investment of time and money. They are a source of inspiration, and make our lives so much more rewarding and fun!
Why these 5 areas?
Are we a deep tech AI firm? Are we the most aggressive sales team out there? No and No. But our success comes from focus on these 5 areas, which help us:
- Work extremely well as a team, and that is incredibly important for us as we grow our team size
- Develop partnerships with clients who help guide our growth
- Understand the industry problem that we are solving and leverage the right size technology to do so which includes API first and cloud based architecture, data centralization, structuring and analytics, and workflow and process automation, peppered with natural language processing algorithms.
So if you think you check at least 4 of the 5 boxes or know someone who does, please apply here. One way or another, thank you for reading, and we hope to grow with you in 2018!
