Andrew Pometun is an entrepreneur with a rich track record. His business portfolio includes a script builder, online shops, his own marketing consultancy agency, and over 100 marketing projects with major international companies. Today he is known primarily as a business speaker, the author of such books as “Business Relationships Digital Transformation” and “Marketing for Love”, and the founder and CEO of the targeting sales accelerator Selvery.
What is Selvery all about?
Good salespeople are few and far between. To sell, you have to keep a huge amount of information in your head, you have to be mindful of every product, every advantage. You have to know what to say and how to say it. You need to choose understandable words for each client. Today the Internet has become the buyer’s assistant. Here you can find reviews of the product, a full description of its advantages and disadvantages. But the seller’s assistant until recently did not have one. We corrected this omission.
Selvery is a digital assistant that helps salespeople understand their customers. It identifies the type of customer and generates a personal presentation for them, as full of value proposition as possible. It then tells the salesperson what to say and how to say it in order to make the deal happen.
But Selvery doesn’t just help the salesperson with the customer. In our app, both marketers and top managers work together with salespeople. Marketers get the opportunity to update product information instantly, so that it is immediately included in sales presentations. Managers of different levels get an opportunity to work with sales statistics and comply with corporate standards. One service unites everyone who works on the realization of a product, service or idea.
It is obvious that Selvery seemed particularly relevant for those companies that employ a huge number of salespeople, and the products are designed for a wide variety of consumer categories. That is why the first customers for our service were national mobile network operators, the largest international banks, and industrial enterprises.
Selvery is the next generation of digital assistants. Imagine several powerful engines with different fuels under the same hood. You’ve got criteria for customer segmentation, creation and modification of segments themselves, automatic generation of presentations for any number of products and segments, a database for storing information, instant opening of the desired presentation, mass editing of content in all presentations, testing of content hypotheses, plan-fact monitoring of salesmen’s work, statistics, training…
Selvery is an information environment for sales in medium and large businesses, that is, for selling a large range of products to a large number of audience categories.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your business?
The story of Selvery begins with an idea just as any innovation begins with an awareness of a common problem. There was a problem with communicating with clients, and I started to create my own sales methodology for my marketing agency employees. We started applying it to communicating with our clients and realized it worked. Then, in 2017, we offered to apply our knowledge to the largest bank in Eastern Europe. The offer was accepted, and I spent three years fine-tuning the methodology. This time helped me realize that we were not just finding a solution for one particular sales team. We found a common business pain point. In 2020, I turned the methodology into a service that is equally useful for any company in any industry.
How has the pandemic affected you or your new business?
I am sure that for the vast majority of companies around the world, the pandemic took place in two stages. The first stage was the panic stage. We launched Selvery almost simultaneously with the global lockdown, so for the first three months we worked not with customers, but with their panic.
Air traffic was being shut down, stores and factories were being sent home, and people were being locked in their apartments. All the companies at the time preferred to just wait. To wait for an understanding of what was happening, to wait for some prospect of further activity.
And then the panic ended. There was a clear understanding in the business that the coronavirus had to be dealt with somehow. This is where Selvery came in handy. If we look at it as a software product, we can say that by default it is a SaaS system, that is, a cloud service that complements the corporate CRM system. The company uses Selvery to work with its target audience on any of its devices and anywhere, just by connecting to the internet. On the other hand, when one employee updates and improves content in the system, his colleagues are instantly able to use the updates. The ability to work remotely has allowed us to get our dream customers: the largest European banks, manufacturing sites, mobile operators, institutions of additional professional education, and many others.
This popularity had a downside as well. We entered the market with the MVP and originally planned to spend no more than $150,000 over a year to improve the service. The high level of customers demanded a high level of dedication from us, and we had to triple that figure by investing additional funds of our own into the project.
What was the biggest problem you encountered starting up and how did you overcome it?
What is the problem? It only depends on one’s point of view. Some people think the slightest sneeze is a problem. Some even swim on a surfboard and think a nine-point storm is nothing. To me, a problem is something that causes irreparable damage. The amount of damage, therefore, determines the severity of the problem. Amputated arms? That’s a problem. A key developer quit? That’s not a problem, because another can be hired. In Selvery’s history, there were no problems, only tasks.
I treat all unpleasant events in life and in business first of all as tasks, brainteasers. Yes, there are no unambiguously right or unambiguously wrong solutions. But this is what life is all about. Each decision, each new step adds experience. If you consider each challenge as a task, life becomes more interesting, and business begins to bring not only profit, but also positive emotions from the achieved results.
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from it?
I consider myself a supporter of the Eastern way of thinking. In the West, they think that A is A. In the East, they know that A can sometimes become B. Even Yin and Yang, the two poles, have opposites within them. This also applies to business.
The mistakes we make are only opportunities to demonstrate our best qualities. Sometimes an occasional fluke suddenly turns into a weakness. And vice versa: what seemed to be a mistake brings you to a new level of development. Because a mistake makes you step out of your comfort zone, look at things differently, knock on new doors, grow above yourself.
My sports coach often said, “Don’t be excited when you win a fight. Be excited when you lose a fight. Because every time you win, you get more confident and weaker. And every loss makes you strengthen your weaknesses. And only mistakes make you stronger.”
Again, for me, there are no problems, including mistakes. Whatever you do, it’s important to stick to the decision you make and treat the consequences as tasks.
What was your first business idea and what did you do with it?
When I was still in high school, I completed a professional electric welding course. I could create something out of metal with my own hands. I said to my mother, “Let me put an ad in for window grills!” I thought my initiative would make her happy. But my mother didn’t think so. It was a period of time between the Soviet Union and modern Russia, the world was saturated with crime and lawlessness. Mom asked: “Hey, businessman, do you want racketeers to come to you?” I didn’t want to, and my first business idea remained unrealized.
But seriously, one of my first business ideas was an train schedules SMS help desk. This was at the peak of the popularity of SMS and MMS services. People were paying for ringtones, anecdotes, horoscopes.I wanted to create a useful service, thanks to which it would be possible to find out about the availability of seats in trains, tickets, and other important information. But while I was doing this, affordable smartphones appeared on the market. SMS services instantly became an endangered species. I lost about $14,000, but I learned how to follow trends.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
The other day I was talking with Miro founder Andrey Khusid about hypothetical advice from the future to myself from the past. Andrey said: “I would like to tell myself from the past that I should only hire the best professionals.You can’t waste your time on mid-level specialists. But I realize that’s sly advice. Because back then I couldn’t afford to hire top-tier specialists. And if I did, I would have gone bankrupt.”
Every piece of advice, every piece of knowledge is relevant to the entrepreneur’s current moment of development. What would a medieval knight have done if he had been given the blueprint for an internal combustion engine? How would he have been able to use it? In the past, we were all not yet ready to know what we know now. Knowledge comes when we are ready for it. The books I read then do not interest me now. The books I read now would have been incomprehensible to me then.
Knowledge is also experience. Attempting readers to try on my shoes may not be correct.Because what I know only works in the context of my life experience. And the only thing I can share right now is inspiration.
Anything you practice is possible. After all, practice is the path to development. If you take a step toward your goal every day, you’re bound to reach it. It’s just that everyone’s path is different.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I wouldn’t invest in a new business. At least not at first. I would get a job at a big corporation. But I wouldn’t do it to make money, although that’s important, too. I would have gone to work to find a new problem, a problem common to all kinds of businesses and still without a good solution. The kind of solution that would fit any company in any industry. Think back to the history of Selvery. Innovation begins with a problem we discovered at a large bank. Only by solving the problems were we able to find big customers. Marketers can’t get product data up to date in time? Selvery can help. Executives don’t know why salespeople are selling well or poorly? Use Selvery and you’ll understand. Product owners don’t get feedback from salespeople? Selvery will pass it on. Salespeople can’t remember the entire product range? Selvery will tell them. And so on.
You have to understand that solving consumer problems is the essence of any business. Finding the problem of one company or the whole industry helps to look from the inside. You don’t have to be afraid to work for hire if you want to do something really innovative.
What is your favorite quote?
The creator of judo, Jigoro Kano, is credited with the phrase: “It is not important to be better than someone else, but to be better than yesterday.” The point is this. Many people, especially in business, have the problem of comparing themselves to others. But comparing yourself with others, a person is always wrong. Comparing oneself with those who are worse, they calm down, but stop in development. Comparing oneself with leaders is also wrong. After all the leader started from a different position, the leader had other resources, the leader is on the market more time, and the market has not yet been formed, and so on. It is silly to be upset that you are worse than someone else. But there is reason to be upset if you are worse than you were a day ago. For a businessman, the only decent criterion of comparison is to compare yourself today with yourself yesterday.
How do you personally overcome fear?
In general, fear is a natural state of any person, and there are many reasons for fear, including in business. Only children and fools are not afraid. And the only way to deal with your fears is simply to do what scares you. Don’t try to overcome a fear, just overcome it.
It’s a CRM system because it helps you not lose a single piece of customer data. It’s a messenger that customers use because it helps them communicate, which means building a relationship with them. It’s Selvery because it allows you to sell more and not break the relationship. Communication is the most important thing in modern business.
How is running a company different than what you thought it would be?
I would be surprised if I could find a business whose development parameters could be described initially. Business is a very multifaceted structure. There is always something that goes according to plan, and something that changes those plans.
We thought that Selvery as a service would be in demand primarily by representatives of small and medium-sized enterprise, but it turned out that the first clients were large companies. We thought that the international markets would greet our offer with apprehension, but it turned out that even at the CustDev stage we were met with a great reception. That is exactly how business lives.
How can readers get in touch with you?
You can find by visiting my website Selvery and also on social media via Facebook and YouTube.
Random Interview: Tel K. Ganesan Founder of Kyyba Inc: My Top 3 Business Mistakes
