This year we launched this blog and I thought that a year’s end is the perfect opportunity to take a look back at what we’ve accomplished and a look forward to what’s going to happen next year.
2015 has been a great year for Sellf. I think we made it, and in the best possible way. In December 2015 we released the multi-level team feature, which is a the core of our brand new Sellf Business subscription. The most requested, yet the simplest to explain, i.e. “I do not want everybody in my company to see all the info in Sellf” – a clear need. We usually work with external collaborators but also in the smallest company we do have a structured organisation where it’s not appropriate and sometimes it creates problems if all the info is shared with the entire company. Early this year we had released the possibility of collaborating in Sellf and we made this super-simple by simply sharing everything within the same team. We thought that it was enough and we pushed the idea that positive competition is good for any company, but we only offered what we called flat collaboration, i.e. everybody in the company was able to access any data.
We learned that positive competition is actually really appreciated but that the need for filtering information that people in your company see is actually critical on so many different levels, and more importantly this is actually necessary with external collaborators. It took really a lot of effort for the entire Sellf team to implement it, we knew from the start that we would have had to touch basically all the parts of Sellf to make this change. Simplicity is hard to implement.
Next year we’re going to refine Sellf Business keeping a close eye to empowering also the experience of the single user version Sellf Pro that so many people are using every day!
Many other facts lead us to believe that 2015 was a great year for Sellf.
When we launched the flat team collaboration back in March 2015, Apple chose Sellf as best new business app worldwide – needless to say this was our biggest achievement yet. After that we focuses on developing the native iPad version of Sellf – providing a native mobile experience is a must for us – we believe that mobile devices are really the most important platform for software.
Finally another surprise at the end of the year: Apple chose Sellf as most innovative app of 2015 for iPad in our country Italy – we were featured next to apps like Airbnb and Netflix which we consider as role models to follow in terms of user experience and usefulness.
In the summer we also released Sellf for Android which even if it still needs some refinement we feel had an enormous acceleration from what we learned by developing the iPad and iPhone version of Sellf. Next year we will also release a version of Sellf for Android tablets, keeping also a close eye to phablets. We feel that this is really important for many of our users given the quality of such devices.
A really important achievement for our Android app was that it got selected by materialup.com as one of the best 2015 material-design apps, which are the new guidelines for designing user interfaces provided by Google in their latest Android versions.
2015 was the year in which our community grew beyond our expectation: there are now more than 70.000 people using Sellf!
The variety of people using Sellf everyday goes from professionals like photographers and consultant to sales agents and solo-preneurs. In addition many companies are choosing Sellf every day for closing more deals by better collaborating together. Creative agencies find Sellf really fit for their needs and in addition many companies selling products or services to both businesses and consumers find Sellf really great for helping them achieve their business goals. In particular, if they have a sales cycle which involves a series of different stages which can last from a few days till a few months. Insurance and real estate agencies are clear examples of such companies – and they are indeed using Sellf a lot!
We decided to share a few of this use cases on our Editions section on our website which explains how a few of the great companies who are using Sellf are improving day to day sales activities and collaborating better. We also started this amazing blog a few months ago and we think this is a great place for us to share our progress and as in this case take a look back at what we’ve done thanking you for the great feedback you’re giving us by using Sellf every day. Next year we are going to share more stories about the things we care the most: selling! In particular we will try to make this blog a place where you can learn how to better use Sellf to stay more productive with your sales and where you will be able to learn more about selling better by taking advantage of all the new tools that the digital era can give you.
Thanks to all these successes we managed to grow the Sellf team to 11 people, even if we lost someone as it naturally happens in all the companies, we acquired many great people too. Marino (Android dev), Giovanni (Backend dev), Alessia (Head of Customer Happiness) and Daniele (Metrics & Marketing automation) were great additions to the team, they do bring a lot of experience and I believe that altogether we can do great things in the year ahead. In specific in conjunction with the great skills of Rita (Design & UX master), Matteo (iOS dev), Enrico (Android dev) and Marco (front-end web dev) which were our first collaborators since 2014.
Finally a word about the four founders of Sellf, including myself. We started Sellf back in 2013 to revolutionise the stale world of sales software by developing an app which would help you be more productive, collaborate easily on sales activities and at the end helping you reach your business goals. We think that Filippo, Franco, Fabio and I have never been so better aligned in terms of our vision for Sellf. Going forward into the next year we do have a great vision of what Sellf can be and we strongly believe that with the help of our team and most importantly each and everyone of you – the heart of our amazing Sellf community – we are going to achieve it, turning Sellf into what we really think it can be.
We’ve got a lot of things coming next year, it’s many of the things you’re asking for but with the addition of so many more!
Here’s to a brilliant 2016!
Best wishes from all the Sellf Team.
– Diego Pizzocaro
