2023 In Review: Increasing Impact and Lowering Friction During Challenging Times

As we wrap up the final days of 2023, I wanted to take a few minutes to review the year and offer my gratitude to everyone who made this the best one yet. Despite a difficult economy that continues to drag on, we doubled revenues from two years ago, launched several major additions to our product, and got in deeper with our partners to deliver big wins for clients.

Our focus during this last year has been to lower friction and increase impact - internally and for partners and customers.

We Doubled Our Revenue from 2021-2023

Every year since our inception, Membrain has grown. We’ve added team members, partners, and clients. For us, every increase in revenue represents more companies and more individuals we are helping. Our mission to elevate the sales profession and focus on increasing sales effectiveness by driving successful behaviors for personal and business growth continues to attract the right team members, partners, and customers on our journey.

From 2021 to this year, our revenue has doubled. This has been a joint effort across the organization. Henrik, Anders, and our dev team have continued to produce the best, strongest, most streamlined, beautiful, and practical CRM solution for complex B2B sales.

Our head of marketing, Johanna Van Doorn, continues to get us in front of the right people in the right ways. She pulls a big load and does it well. She does so much with so little, and we have her to thank for continuing to support our growth this year and every year since she came on board.

Our focus has been to lower friction and increase impact.

As head of revenue, Paul Fuller has done an amazing job of training up our sales and customer success teams to serve our customers and prospects better. He introduced the VIBE methodology in 2021 that our teams use to continue to provide more value to our existing customers as well as bring more customers into the fold.

Our leadership team has engaged in personal development to embrace both challenges and success and work frictionlessly to row the company in the right direction. Brenda, our head of customer success, has led projects to improve all areas of our services to help customers improve their sales effectiveness with Membrain. Sebastian has streamlined our sales operations,  and, as always, Henrik has been the spider in the web with his all-encompassing understanding and passion for our offerings and people.

We Added Substantial New Functionality to Our Product in 2023

This year, we developed several big additions to our product, along with lots of smaller improvements. The coaching cockpit, new dashboards, and some new automations are among the highlights.

I’ve been dreaming of our coaching cockpit almost since the inception of the company. I’ve been talking about it on the blog at least since 2017. It’s always been a part of our vision to get closer to the individual salesperson, to be able to really see what’s going on for each one, so that we can help them be more effective and grow as professionals.

Coaching is one of the critical multipliers of sales effectiveness, but until now, there hasn’t been a tool on the market to truly support them in coaching what matters. The coaching cockpit is our answer to that, and I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished so far.

Again, we have Henrik, Anders, and the dev team to thank for making this dream into a reality, to be launched officially early next year. I also have to thank our partners who dove in and provided us with feedback, testing, and ideas. Dave Brock, Dave Kurlan, Brian Kavicky, and Frederic Lucas are among those who engaged in providing great feedback. Finally, we have an amazing QA team who are even now working hard to make sure we don’t ship anything with bugs in it.

Additionally, we’ve added a rich menu of new visualizations and dashboards, including bubble charts and tree maps, as well as improvements to some of our classic ones. And while we’re not heavy on automation for complex B2B sales, sometimes automation is golden. So, we’ve added some key automation features, and it’s fun to see our clients benefiting from them.

Of course, sales process capability has always been at the heart of how Membrain helps sales organizations be more effective. So, it’s no surprise that this year, we continued to improve our process capabilities. For instance, we’ve added progress bars for steps to visualize the progress for users better. Overall, our process capabilities are deeper than ever.

Our People Continue to Be the Heart of The Company

I want to take a moment and acknowledge that Membrain would be nothing without the amazing people who come together to make everything happen. I’m incredibly grateful for the team that works here, for their dedication, enthusiasm, excellence, and heart.

In addition to those I’ve already mentioned, I must speak about our head of people growth, Nina Werner. Nina has been absolutely instrumental in ensuring that our company lives by our values. She carries the flag for all our core values, but perhaps most importantly, our core value of being “full of heart,” making sure that everyone feels seen and understood. She is a cornerstone of our company in her role as the “guardian of our culture.”

I also want to thank our US team for continuing to carry our message into the US market, better and stronger than ever before. Our customer success team for taking exquisite care of our customers and partners, and helping them, and us, grow together. Our sales team for continuing to bring new clients and partners into the fold. Our development and QA teams for continuing to produce the best CRM platform out there. The marketing team for getting our message out there day after day. And our leadership team for continuing to lead the charge.

Our Partners Are Critical to Our Success

This year, we did a lot more co-marketing events with our partners, including a global road trip with SalesStar that was fun and wildly successful. Sebastian did some video series with Salesonomics, we attended a golfing event with Adviser Partner, and Paul conducted countless interviews on The Art and Science of Sales Podcast.

Additionally, I want to shout out Dave Kurlan and Ben Tagoe at OMG for their long-term partnership and especially for working with us to get their assessments into our coaching cockpit. Prima Ressource for how they package our tech with their services, always front runners doing cool things. And I want to thank Walter Crosby at Helix for all the outstanding work they’ve done as our partner.

Our Clients Are the Superstars

Finally, I want to thank the customers who join our platform for their contributions to our success. It’s a big decision to choose a CRM and it can be scary to choose one that’s not “the 800 pound gorilla” in the industry. We work hard to make it the right choice and we believe that for complex B2B sales, it is. We wouldn’t be here if a lot of folks didn’t agree with us.

Some of the most important clients we have are those who push us. Clients who ask for new features, demand more from us, and tell us where we can get better. These are the customers who push us forward and help us continue to be the most useful, most valuable, most effective, field-tested sales effectiveness CRM out there.

It’s hard to pick just a few to name, but I do want to speak the names of Greytip in India, Signet in the UK, and Crona in Sweden as some of our most demanding–and therefore most appreciated–customers. Thank you for making us better!

If I have left anyone out, I blame my holiday brain for the oversight and offer my sincerest apologies. There are so many people who make this company an amazing place to work and a valuable contribution to the sales industry. I’m proud to work here, and proud to be associated with all of you. Thank you, and happy new year!