It is not the year we’d want over again, but we did take some significant steps forward as a business and are proud of what we achieved during the unusual year that’s been. These are 7 positives Skynamo took out of 2020.
The year didn’t go exactly as planned. Or, let me rephrase that: the year didn’t go at all as planned. Measured against a ‘normal’ year, 2020 couldn’t be called successful and beyond that, we’ve all been conditioned to think negatively about this past year.
News, social media, events around us, and our own inner-dialogues are constantly reminding us that things aren’t too great. It’s no use denying that much has been lost, but when we take a step back and reconsider what happened last year, there have been gains.
The good, the good, and the good of 2020
We were forced to think outside the box and look at the future a little differently. We expanded our capabilities and learned valuable lessons entering the new decade.
We’re looking back at 2020 to remind ourselves and our customers about what was gained over the course of the year, and to invite you to take stock of your company’s wins before moving into 2021.
1. Skynamo secures $30 million investment from Five Elms Capital
Even outside of the pandemic, last year started off very differently. than usual. After opening our UK office in 2017, we decided to cross the pond to explore our options in the US in 2019.
What we called American Dreaming on this exploratory tour of the US became a reality in January 2020. Securing Series A funding from a leading American software investor meant we could begin showing off our brilliant field sales platform globally.
“We’ve backed Skynamo because we are convinced it has the perfect combination of strong value proposition and a relentless culture of delighting both customers and employees to become the leader in field sales technology,” Fred Coulson, managing partner of Five Elms Capital, explained at the time.
2. Business as “Newsual”
Yes, then it happened. Everyone had to figure out what working and doing business in the COVID-19 economy might look like. Trial and error became the new normal, but because of our CPO, Sarah Rice, and her brilliant team, it all happened relatively seamlessly.
After first succeeding in making working from home, work as usual, our People Team planned The Great Unlocking to help Skynamo employees transition back into their offices. This “little exercise” meant that Skynamo is now much better geared to continue serving customers when disruptions or lockdowns come along.
The most significant lesson for us was that we’re not a remote company. We need each other and need to spend time with each other. Although we’re distributed globally and remote working can happen, the in-office, in-person experience is critical.
3. Atlanta is selected as our North American headquarters
Following the Five Elms investment in January, we decided on Atlanta, GA as our US headquarters where we appointed Stan Deak as GM.
“Atlanta provides us with a lower than average operations cost compared to other major cities and there is a very supportive business to business SaaS community we can tap into for knowledge sharing,” Skynamo CEO, Sam Clarke, explains.
4. Health & Safety feature added to Skynamo mobile app
Skynamo exists to help outside sales teams be productive in the field while staying in touch with their office-based colleagues. Safety restriction meant that things became trickier. We had to help our customers visit their customers while helping them to stay as safe as possible.
This led to the release of our in-app COVID-19 Daily Clock-in Screening Form. We recognized that while field sales teams want to be out visiting their customers, because of the competitive advantage that it gives them, it’s also important to adhere to safety regulations.
This form allows businesses to provide their outside sales teams with a custom checklist that helps them to adhere to safety guidelines on the go, and when visiting customers. Not having to worry about the additional regulatory admin frees salespeople up to focus on checking in with customers and selling.
5. Interactive webinars are a great way to connect with customers and prospects
Customers don’t only have product-related questions and enjoy connecting with other businesses managers to talk about issues or opportunities in the industry. Skynamo brought in experts from the public health and data security sectors to address these important matters while also sharing business stats to help customers interpret industry trends.
We learned that this is an effective way of speaking into issues many of our customers are concerned about and another way to communicate directly with them through the Q&A sessions that usually followed these sessions.
6. Online customer training greatly improved
Prior to March 2020, roughly 85% of our training was done at one of our office locations and only about 15% online.
This year we successfully moved all our training content and resources online and discovered that it is more convenient for our customers, seeing that they can train in their own time, at their own pace, and it allows them to only focus on the features or areas that they require to perform their role.
This also allowed us to focus more time on improving the Skynamo Academy, our online training platform, into a user-friendly learning management system that has a course for every part of both the field application and the web interface. We have created quizzing, where our users can test their knowledge, and earn badges for the courses they have completed.
Going forward, we expect that the demand for online training only will continue, with in-person training only being requested on occasion.
7. Skynamo launches The Field Sales Software Buyer’s Guide
Skynamo is an all-in-1 field sales platform designed primarily for outside sales teams. It is a cloud-based mobile-first software with offline capabilities and GPS functionality. It has all the basic features of other sales software but created with salespeople on the road in mind.
We recognize that different businesses have different needs and processes, and buying new software shouldn’t be a rushed decision. That’s why we compiled The Field Sales Software Buyer’s Guide: to help business owners and sales managers choose the sales software that is right for their company.
Download your free FIELD SALES SOFTWARE BUYER’S GUIDE now
