How DeckLinks is Making {b2b_sales}
More Human: An Interview with Co-Founder & CEO Lidia Vijga
DeckLinks is a SaaS tool that helps B2B sales teams connect with the buyer on a human level earlier in the sales pipeline via engaging video decks. They’re currently fundraising to help achieve their vision of making B2B Sales more human.
In 2021, VCs poured over $5.5 billion into B2B Sales SaaS companies. The average mid-market company spends over $5k per year per salesperson on Sales technologies. It’s a $35 billion market. DeckLinks breaks the mold by focusing on making the buying experience more personal, compared to other sales enablement tools focused on automation, optimization, and organization.
I recently sat down with Co-Founder & CEO Lidia Vijga, to learn more about her inspiration for starting DeckLinks, her decision to “build in public”, her experience pivoting, and what she thinks makes DeckLinks stand out from the pack.
Lidia, what do you enjoy most about being an entrepreneur?
For both of my Co-Founders Kevin and Ravil and for myself — the best thing about entrepreneurship is creating jobs that people enjoy. It’s really one of the most rewarding things you can do. You impact people’s lives in such a meaningful way. Our colleagues are able to buy houses, afford their dream weddings and vacations, and we are able to experience their lives right alongside them.
DeckLinks wasn’t your first startup. Can you tell us about your initial idea, and how it lead you to DeckLinks?
My first was called BriefBid, a procurement platform in the media space. For 3.5 years, we processed 1000s of proposals from over 500 media companies. Initially, we thought that providing buyers with an objective vetting tool would be highly valuable for them. But we learned that the sellers who engaged the buyers the most and offered them the best buying experience had the highest closing rates. It turns out that buyers need that human factor.
The buying experience is the most important thing in Sales. It outranks price and product.
And that brings me to the time when I was working in sales.
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received was from my CRO — Richard A. Jones at StackAdapt — “Lidia, JUST BE YOU.”
But I realized that in the first 95% of the sales pipeline, account executives don’t have an option to get in front of the buyers. It’s only in the last 5% where buyers would get to meet the salesperson — at the intro meeting or at the demo.
So, then you pivoted and started DeckLinks?
Through all of our research and learnings through BriefBid, we decided to lead with the idea of engaging the buyer earlier in the sales process. We decided to create a tool that specialized on creating the most personalized buying experience.
We did what is called a Zoom-In pivot. At BriefBid, we built a lot of capabilities (procurement, analytics, media planner, flowcharts), but our customers were clamoring for us to make our proposal tool available outside of our marketplace. Then it was time to Zoom-In, and we decided to become specialists in personalized buying experiences.
Why is DeckLinks special? Or to steal a Sales phrase, “why do you win?”
Sales talent is the most important and scarcest resource in Sales. Most sales enablement tools don’t enhance the talent. Companies throw millions away on automation, integrations, tracking — 95% of the time these are faceless and about the company, not the buyer. These tools improve sales workflows, but don’t improve the buying experience.
You have to get in the mindset of the buyer. Buyers first decide what they think of YOU (after all people buy from people). And only THEN, what they think of your company, your offerings and the value prop.
DeckLinks get you in front of the buyer earlier in the Sales pipeline.
We bring together the best of two worlds. Personalized experience with video and robust analytics.
Can you tell us about your decision to “build in public”? What were some of the challenges and benefits of the experience?
I define “building in public” as building together with our customers. We invite our power users to join a shared Slack channel, where they can talk directly with our team. We also collaborate with our users and create content together for social media.
The reason we decided to do this is because the customers are the answers. If you’re in doubt, talk to your customer. Our customers give us energy and motivation to become the top sales enablement tool on the market.
You achieved #2 Product of the Day on Product Hunt this March. Did that feel like you were gaining traction?
It gave us a lot of ideas for our roadmap. People were asking us “do you have integrations for Google Slides” or “can I upload my existing PowerPoint”? It was another opportunity to reprioritize our roadmap.
What’s next for you and DeckLinks?
Based on our data, we see that video narrated decks get a much higher engagement compared to the static decks without video narration.
With that knowledge, we want to expand to other industries, other than B2B Tech Sales, where personalization is the key to making a deal happen.
If you want to learn more about Lidia and DeckLinks, feel free to reach out to Lidia on LinkedIn or Twitter!
