- George Brontén — the founder and CEO of Membrain — provided these insights about being an effective leader
Membrain is a CRM company for B2B sales that helps teams implement effective strategies. And Membrain makes it easier for teams to executive sales strategies by actively guiding them through sales processes and playbooks. Below is an exclusive Pulse 2.0 interview with Membrain founder and CEO George Brontén.
Pulse 2.0: Could you tell us about your journey to becoming a CEO?
George Brontén: I started my first company at the age of 2001 and have always taken the lead role. My passion is to learn, grow, and to build software that improves people’s lives. I believe that a good vision, strong values, work ethic, and lots of curiosity make a good CEO.
Pulse 2.0: What does your business do and what value does it provide to your customers, clients, or partners?
George Brontén: Membrain helps companies to scale their sales efforts. We do this by developing software that guides salespeople to do the right things, with the right people, at the right time, while encouraging a culture of coaching and continuous learning. With partners, we make sure that their sales strategy and training goes from theory to practice and is not forgotten.
Pulse 2.0: What distinguishes Membrain from its rivals?
George Brontén: Our competitors are the traditional CRM systems built on the belief that “salespeople should know what to do and just log what they’ve done.” That is untrue and is why these systems are disliked and seen as “big brother” tools by salespeople.
We embody HOW TO SELL into informative and actionable workflows, with enablement content and structured analytics, to drive successful behaviors and a culture of continuous learning. We make the software easy to use and pleasant to look at for salespeople, while also giving leadership what they need to improve strategy and processes.
Pulse 2.0: What are some of the products or initiatives that you are most proud of?
George Brontén: I don’t believe that technology alone is enough. Nor is training enough. Or a strategy by itself. These components need to be combined to really make an impact. Therefore, I am most proud of the partnership we are building with sales development experts around the globe. Together, 1 + 1 truly equals much more than 2.
Pulse 2.0: What are some of the hardest challenges you faced as a CEO?
George Brontén: Saying no to short-term gains due to long-term pains. For instance, we’ve not taken any venture capital, although it could help us move faster in the short-term. This is because it comes with terms that are not aligned with our values and long-term goals of building a successful, profitable software company with a strong premium brand.
Pulse 2.0: What are some of the trends or insights are you expecting over the next 12-24 months in your industry? What are you doing to address those trends in your own business?
George Brontén: The large CRM vendors, who were once agile contenders to large, corporate giants, have now become what they once fought. Their now complex platforms promise “one ring to rule them all,” but cost a fortune in customizations, plug-ins, and maintenance. This increased complexity will open the market up for companies like Membrain, with more niched offerings. We’ll also see more consolidation in the sales and marketing technology space, where point solutions work to extend their product with new capabilities or get acquired by larger companies seeking to extend their portfolios.
Pulse 2.0: What is Membrain’s selling point?
George Brontén: The world of sales has changed over the last decades. Information is now everywhere, and buyers do their research without salespeople being involved. If you want to be competitive today and, in the future, HOW YOU SELL needs to become your focus. Beyond having a professional website, content creators, and marketing automation software, companies need to enable their sales teams to become more proactive and to sell value, or they will be in a race to the bottom.
Traditional CRM systems are great repositories of information, but salespeople need much more than that today. At Membrain, we build these additional tools – specifically tailored for companies involved in B2B sales environments, where multiple stakeholders are involved and it takes more than a few calls to win customers’ trust and business. We’ve seen clients double their win rates and achieve more than 100% quota attainments across their teams when they get their “way of selling right.”
Pulse 2.0: Thank you very much for your time!
