Advancing the Chains: The Importance of Sales CRM Software to Airpush

“Advancing the chains on opportunities.” Garrett MacDonald – Vice President, Strategic Sales at Airpush – uses this football analogy to describe one of the many reasons that he relies so heavily on CRM software to do his job successfully at this rapidly growing mobile advertising platform company.

Airpush wants to redefine mobile advertising for publishers and advertisers.  According to the company, more than 100,000 publishers and 5,000 advertisers depend upon Airpush to deliver an array of effective ad formats and innovative targeting technology.  

Founded in 2010 by CEO Asher Delug, Airpush has approximately 140 employees and offices in Los Angeles and Bangalore. According to Airpush, revenue has grown from approximately $10 million in 2011 to the $50 million range last year, with projected revenue blasting towards the $100 million range for 2013.

MacDonald, who focuses on selling to advertising agencies and brand advertisers, reports to David Kawamoto – Senior Vice President, Sales and Business Development. Cindy Carr – Vice President, International Sales – is playing a leading role in the worldwide revenue growth of Airpush. Airpush's competitors include Admob, Millennial Media (which recently acquired additional competitor Jumptap) and InMobi.

The Airpush sales team relies extensively on CRM software solutions to turn revenue opportunities into accounts. MacDonald describes the key benefits of sales CRM as:

• Having access to key company, contact and deal information remotely, including documents and details about meetings and conversations.
  
• Knowing where you and the rest of the team are in the sales process / timeline, enabling better forecasting.
  
• Creating a collaborative sales team, sharing best practices and information and communicating in near real-time to determine how to get deals done.
  
• Getting to know your customers better.
  
  

Big challenges for technology providers like Airpush are the vast quantity of sales people selling to a shrinking number of prospects, and the reality that buyers are faced with too many choices, according to MacDonald. He adds, “Digital buyers have 300 reps calling them, do not have enough time and are often undercompensated for their efforts.” Hence, the importance of a great CRM software solution to get every possible advantage over the competition and bring in new customers.

“You don't get paid for how hard you work,” says MacDonald. “Just how quickly you close business.”