CommercialTribe lands $3 million to transform the way we teach sales

by Kate Rosow Chrisman
April 29, 2014

Sales will always be about hitting numbers and pulling in commissions, but Boulder-based CommercialTribe wants to transform the way companies teach the craft to better fit within the high tech world.

The company just announced a $3 million Series A round through what has been described as one of the strongest syndicated deals in the market in the recent past (funding came from Boulder Access, Grotech and Crawley Ventures.) The funding will be used to validate the market and further develop their product. In 2015, the company hopes to expand its commercial footprint.

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The CommercialTribe co-founders

Teaching Sales

CommercialTribe’s CEO Paul Ironside is a former sales manager. He watched as businesses saw slowing productivity gains from technology and other former key productivity drivers, but company’s still targeted 30 percent growth targets. Still, the old model of teaching sales managers how to sell just wasn’t cutting it.

“We are here in the information age, but we are in a very industrial age mindset,” he said. CommercialTribe was built to change that and give sales reps tools for a changing society.  

Ironside studied social learning theory, which describes the way people learn social mannerisms. Professional learning theory is predicated on that; the company built and modeled their platform around observation, imitation and repetition.

Humans are “very tribal in nature,” said Ironside. He added that “there’s no doubt about it, whether were conscious or unconscious, deliberate or non-intentional, we are always learning from one another.” His online platform takes advantage of that natural way of learning to give sales reps the tools they need.

This approach to learning – observation, imitation and repetition – is in contrast to large sales meetings where sales professionals are lectured to and expected to absorb and retain information. Ironside calls the old model an education conveyor belt.

He said he envisions a future that will be “more hyper-connected about how ideas spread across an organization."

Capture the Best

Ironside said his technology helps capture the best practices of the top 20 percent of sales reps and disseminates it to the rest of the sales team. “The whole concept is by reps, for reps,” said Ironside.

Their video-based platform taps into our “natural learning style.” Reps can use it to study from their accomplished colleagues and practice their own style, before testing it out on real clients.

Push for Sales Productivity

Having an effective sales team has always been vital for businesses, but its about to get even more essential, according to Ironside. He refers to a study done by the Corporate Executive Board (his former employer) that shows that while productivity over the past 6-8 years increased, those gains are reaching a plateau. With productivity slowing in most parts of organizations, but target growth rates still high, sales will increasingly take the brunt of that effort.

In other words, bridging the gap between slowing productivity and high target growth rates will be up to the sales force. CommercialTribe plans to be part of that transition.

First, CommercialTribe is directing its marketing efforts towards Colorado-based companies and companies engaged in B2B sales. The company is still new, having launched its product just last November. Ironside is soon planning to move his 12-person team from Boulder to Denver's LoDo as they continue hiring.

Jobs at CommercialTribe

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