In this “what have you done for me lately” world of sales, we typically live for today and rarely dwell on or reflect on the past.
It’s wise to keep your eyes on the future, but it’s also helpful to take stock of your accomplishments once in a while. I am often amazed at what our organization achieves and this year is no different. The following are some 2013 Acquirent highlights that we are extremely proud of.
THE YEAR AT ACQUIRENT2013: GROWTH, GIVING, AND GREAT PEOPLE
Inc. 5000 Recognition: Two Years Running!
Acquirent has had the good fortune of being recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing businesses in the United States for the second year in a row. Over the past three years, we have experienced a growth of 255 percent. During this time we crested the 100 employee mark and created 54 jobs for many extremely talented sales professionals.
Investing In Our People
We hired an outsourced human resources organization (we kind of believe in that whole outsourcing thing) in efforts to help us continue to focus on the growth and advancement of all our teammates. Market Staff has been a tremendous partner and will serve a key role at Acquirent as we continue to grow and improve on our Inc. 5000 ranking.
Enhancing our Mentorship program
Along the same vein, we continue to focus on investing in our people through our Mentorship Program. The mentorship program has been a tremendously popular program that started when we launched ten years ago. The program’s core goal is to provide employee development at a personal and professional level to every single one of our employees. We continue to enhance and refine the program as it has proved to be tremendously valuable.
Depth at Management
In my 2012 Acquirent in Review Post, I wrote about building out our management team’s depth. This year we continued to enhance our management team as we brought on five additional managers to provide our teams with tremendous support to help them sell more for our clients. We are a stronger business due to this move.
Philanthropy
Acquirent has always had deep philanthropic roots. We get a kick out of giving back to our communities. This year we participated in many events which benefited our local Evanston and Chicago communities. Some of the events that we participated in included a partnership with the Evanston Fire Department to feed twelve Evanston families for Thanksgiving, sponsoring the Ricky Byrdsong Memorial Race Against Hate, continuing to build on our relationship through donations to Connections For The Homeless and Hilda’s Place Transitional Shelter.
Technology Enhancements
Acquirent continues to be on the cutting edge of technology in sales. We have hitched our wagons to Salesforce.com as our CRM system of choice. We have contracted with some amazing Salesforce.com consulting companies in effort to help us leverage its robust features. In addition we have started down the path of rolling out a marketing automation and lead scoring system called Pardot (a Salesforce.com company). This solution will help our sales professionals connect with prospects who interact with our marketing efforts – allowing us to fish where the fish are biting.
We also built out our inbound calling capability and PCI compliant network to handle inbound response to direct mail and credit card processing. We did this in response to one of our longest standing client’s request for us to broaden the services that we could offer them.
Special Thoughts
The end of the year is also a good time for me to reflect personally on how lucky I am. I have an amazing, beautiful and supporting wife, three gorgeous girls (twins this year), and a phenomenal group of people at work that I deeply care about.
That said I want to keep two of our teammates (Joe Green and Nick Morici) in our thoughts as the new year begins as they continue to battle with their current health issues. You both are in our thoughts and your family at ACQ love you.
I wish everyone the best in 2014 – let’s make it a great one!
Happy Selling!
