Today we’d like to introduce you to Ryan Schefke.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Ryan. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
In three years I graduated from Michigan State University with an Electrical Engineering degree. After working for six years at Texas Instruments, I went off to pursue a masters degree. In seven months I received an MBA degree with a concentration in Finance from New York Institute of Technology. I love getting things done in short order. When I put my mind to something, I make it happen – call it determination, call it grit, call it what you want…I’m all about execution.
I always felt I was a leader, and destined to “do my own thing”. After spending 20 years working in various sales roles in the high-tech industry, I felt like I had enough experience to start a software company. I had several motivating factors. I had a CEO saying he’d pay $3,000 a month for software that would tell him what businesses visited his website. I had a best friend who successfully started his own business. And I love to prove people wrong – especially people that believe you can’t build a business without taking funding.
We built an initial version of our software around 2010 that helped companies track businesses that visited their website. After reaching six figures in sales, I knew it was time to expand. In 2013 we broadened the software’s features, turning it into a marketing automation platform. Now, we’ve got so many awesome capabilities to help marketing teams that we’re able to expand our focus to help sales teams, too. The idea of helping companies automate lead management from the very top of the funnel to the bottom is very exciting! Since my background is mainly in sales, I’m excited to get to this next phase of company development. With solid funding from our customers, we’re ready to reach new heights.
We’ve been growing the business every year. My favorite part is that we get to drink our own champagne – by using our own software to improve our sales and marketing. It’s incredibly exciting to be part of this journey. We’re innovating, beating competitors, and refuse to become stale, old, or a “flash in the pan” business.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
There have definitely been struggles along the way, but we’ve been able to overcome most of them. We were a bootstrapped business from day one, with only a few sources of investment. Now, we have the best funding in the world – our customers! Our clients directly benefit from it, too. The majority of their subscription fees are reinvested back into the platform.
Another struggle is with competitors. When we first started we were up against companies like HubSpot, Pardot, Marketo, Eloqua. All but one of them (Marketo) are public now. They’ve got more money to throw at sales and marketing, so building the brand name is a challenge. However, we’ve been fortunate to focus on two things – innovation and our customers. We’ve found that when we take care of both of these things we get referrals, we build a strong name, and the business grows through word of mouth.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Lead Liaison – what should we know?
Lead Liaison provides cloud-based sales and marketing automation solutions that helps businesses accelerate revenue by attracting, converting, closing and retaining more prospects. We specialize in software that helps sales and marketers do their job better, and more efficiently, and look like all stars to their management team as a result of using it! Automation is at the heart of what we do, and is what we’re using to build software solutions for what we like to call the three legs of the stool: sales, marketing, and users.
I’m most proud of our team and their ability to produce and sell what is now a very mature automation platform – on its third generation.
We’re different from other providers in that we’ve got very compelling and complete sales and marketing automation stack that has better features than most of our competitors, without a big price tag. It truly is enterprise-grade software, but unlike our competitors, we tend to focus on medium-sized companies instead of large enterprises. This enables our mid-sized companies to get incredible value out of the platform, without draining their bank account.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
I think motivation surrounds me every day. If you’re not creating an environment that inspires you, encourages you, gets you excited about the day and the future – you’re not on track as a leader. We make sure to bring in the best people we can into this company to keep their drive, and my drive, going. I’ve certainly had other mentors that I’ve worked with in different capacities too. If you think about it, everyone can be your mentor in a certain way. You can always learn something from everyone! What’s important is that you also let your clients be your mentor. We’ve got 100s of companies that we work with on a weekly basis that provide the most amazing feedback on our platform.
They tell us what they love – and more importantly, what they don’t love. We listen. We address it, and get better from it. We don’t view ourselves as a vendor to clients; we view ourselves as partners. With that mindset, we’ll continue to do all the right things.
Contact Info:
- Address: Allen TX 75013
- Website: https://www.leadliaison.com
- Phone: 888.895.3237
- Email: info@leadliaison.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadliaison
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/leadliaison
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/company/573074/
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