10 Years for VA Partners

November 2016 marks 10 years in business for VA Partners. I liked to describe the early years as on the cutting edge of complete success and utter failure all the time. Since we started we have worked with well over 100 customers, help booked thousands of meetings, drove millions of pageviews, and closed millions of dollars of revenue. We have mostly worked with technology firms from Canada, but we have also worked with clients from Slovenia, Finland, US, and Ireland. Our business has taken us all over Canada, through the US, Ireland, and even to the UAE. It has been a great 10 years.

Getting Started

My cofounder, Steve Gruber, and I met in September of 1992. We shared the same residence floor, B2 Willison Hall, at Wilfrid Laurier. Steve and I became friends right away and also shared a love of sales. After University Steve left to work on a start-up near Boston and I started with a Fortune 500 company.  Over the next 10 years, I worked in a number of sales, marketing, and management roles at Lexmark Canada. Steve worked for a few startup companies out of Boston before moving back to Canada.  Steve and I worked together for a year and a half before VA Partners. That company did not work out and as we were leaving Steve had an idea for a business and that was VA Partners. We were a great match with Steve’s startup background and my experience with corporations and process. Our business consisted of Steve and myself, a couple laptops, a stand-up easel, and lots of sales expertise.
 

Growing the Business

For the first 3 years, it was just Steve and I working out of our homes. We hired our first coop student and moved into a shared office with imason, one of our customers in early 2010. Then we hired a number of co-op students from WLU and Waterloo. After that, we focused exclusively on sales consulting in those early years. We used social media, email marketing, and blogging in those early days. Our first blog was in 2009 on selling in tough economic times. Before we knew it, our consistent marketing efforts started to get some traction and inbound leads. At the same time, we were getting requests from clients to help with marketing. We added some marketing expertise and started working with clients. Today, we have about 60% of our revenue from sales related services and 40% from marketing services. Our own marketing efforts have now lead us to have 80 inbound leads a month. After moving offices a couple times, we bought an office at Dundas and Carlaw in March 2015. This has been great for the team and our business, and it’s been our home ever since.
 

Customer Success

Working with entrepreneurs is one of the things I enjoy most about my job. They are passionate, hardworking, smart, and most are open to learning new things. The greatest reward I receive is when we can help our clients be successful with their sales and marketing efforts. We have had many customer success stories, but here are a few of the highlights:

  • Helping an oil services firm land a sale for over $500,000
  • Providing marketing services to a training company that lead to a 3X growth in both web traffic and leads
  • With our first customer technology company, we closed 4 new customers worth over $300,000
  • Creating a $2,000,000 yearly annuity stream for an industrial service firm with sales and marketing

 

Great Employees

The key to having a great business is having great employees. We have hired some great team members that have developed into excellent employees. Often times, we hire employees that are recent graduates because what they lack in experience they make up for in smarts, hard work, curiosity, and the willingness to learn new things. Many of our former employees have left to take on sales and marketing roles with startups. It was sad to see them go, but it felt good to see them succeed in the community. We currently have a wonderful team and are excited about what 2017 has in store for us.  Steve and I look forward to more customer success and some fun with the team.
 

Giving Back

One of the things that working in the startup space has taught me is that there are lots of opportunities to help these growing firms. The team has been involved in training and mentoring at many of the technology Hubs in Southern Ontario. We get a lot of satisfaction in helping these growing companies and later seeing them successfully growing their businesses. This year we joined the 1% Pledge which formalizes our volunteering and donation activities. We have set aside paid team time to work with needy organizations.
 
What do the next 10 years hold for VA Partners? It will more of the same, helping companies with their sales and marketing efforts. There will be new tools, platforms, strategies, and tactics to be learned and implemented. You will also see us involved in more training opportunities, like our work with University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies. We are always looking for interesting businesses and organizations to work with. It has been a great 10 years for Steve and myself, and we look forward to the next 10 years.
 

10 Years for VA Partners