Nominated 2016
Winner 2016
In early 2012, CommissionCrowd's Founders had owned and run the UK branch of a large (inc. 500) U.S. based digital Marketing company. Their first interaction with B2B commission-only sales agents began when they decided it was time to extend their company's reach in the Marketplace by partnering with self-employed sales agents.
That's where the problems started: Where do you start looking for experienced self-employed sales agents, who were these people, did they exist and if so, what did they expect from a company before agreeing to work with them?
And so began the trials and tribulations of starting to grow their independent sales team. Even as Sales and Marketing experts, they found it was simply too difficult to find great sales partners and when they eventually did, it was far too time consuming to effectively manage their remote working relationships with their independent sales partners. Unfortunately they lost many wonderful sales agents along the way.
Their sales reps also felt the strain of manually managing a remote working partnership and as a result of too much of their time being taken away from the ability to concentrate on selling, they began to leave in droves.
"We simply knew there must be a better way. You see, sometimes you have to be a part of the problem in order to become a part of the solution. The team knew that they had the resources and experience to set out to create something that would not only solve the problem for both companies and independent sales agents, but to go beyond that and create a revolutionary online service that would change the face of the B2B independent, commission-only sales industry forever."
Laura McGregor, CEO CommissionCrowd
CommissionCrowd's three Founders - Laura McGregor, Ryan Mattock and Alistair Robinson - made the decision to drop everything and set out on a challenging mission to save company Principals and independent sales agents time, resources, stress and money by building simple, awesome software dedicated entirely the B2B commission-only sales industry.
They also hated the outdated, stuffy, expensive, valueless, fleeting alternatives their (now) competitors provided and put their heads together to map out the future of the industry.
Working closely with many of the highly experienced independent sales reps they had met along the way, they carefully laid out grand plans for a game changing online service that would solve all of the pain points that both companies and self-employed sales agents currently faced.
The planning and development of CommissionCrowd was no rush job, the next two years were dedicated to working tirelessly behind the scenes to realise their grand vision. During that time they also continued to work closely and build solid relationships with hundreds of highly experienced B2B self-employed sales reps who provided guidance, feedback and supported them every step of the way. This is after all, what agents badly needed to make their lives easier also.
"The excitement was contagious and while the pressure was on to launch as quickly as possible, we knew it was vital to get it right. Our vision spanned much further than simply launching another online service. We were out to disrupt and shift an entire sub-section of the sales industry" Ryan Mattock, Co-Founder
In May 2015, CommissionCrowd was launched will full core functionality that made it super easy for companies and B2B independent sales professionals to find each other, connect and manage their remote working partnerships effortlessly.
The platform was seeded with hundreds of companies and self-employed sales agents who had pre-registered and supported us along the way.
Despite being a self-funded startup the founders made the important decision to vet every single company that wanted to join and partner with sales reps. This sometimes meant turning away companies whose sales opportunities simply weren't up to the expectations of the quality of sales reps we wanted to attract to our platform.
By ensuring that companies met strict minimum requirements and understood how to work with this specific type of sales professional, they were able to attract and retain the creme de la creme of the independent sales world.
As the company continued to push forward, CommissionCrowd started to gain the interest of the media. First appearing on influential sites like Startup Daily and Your Business Matters which originally published articles covering our plans back in 2014. The 'Scotland On Sunday' newspaper even ran a full page article on CommissionCrowd, Scotland being the home country of all three founders.
In February 2016 the founders were approached by Forbes who ran a full article on CommissionCrowd, which marked a truly defining moment for the team.
March 2016 also marked an important and defining moment during the early days of CommissionCrowd. We were invited to attend the Sales Innovation Expo - Europe's largest sales exposition - where the company was presented with the 'Overall Innovation For Sales' award despite being up against heavy competition from hundreds of companies in the sales sphere who were much larger and more established.
As CommissionCrowd continues to forge ahead and set the standard for the independent industry, we invite you to join us and become a part of our story.
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