Weblife Inc.
We were introduced to Weblife in January 2017 by a leading venture capital firm, Weblife were a Cyber Security Software company based in California on the west coast of America.
Weblife had been trading for three years and had just three US based clients, all of which were sold by the owner David Melnick, there were no sales team just 17 technical employees and no office. $3 was invested in February 2017 and the company at that time was valued at $6m.
After evaluating the US sales history and analysing the strengths and benefits of the product we reviewed the UK market looking for some quick wins. We looked at the potential of leveraging the existing client base, local vertical markets, as well as understanding the new European compliance requirements for GDPR. The GDPR compliance issue created a great compelling event for organisations needing to buy and implement Weblife before the 25th May 2018. European companies not complying with GDPR requirements can be fined up to 4% of their global revenue which helped create what we like to call a fear factor!
So in February 2017 we set about creating a UK Sales strategy which targeted a number of vertical sectors. We put together a lead generation team to run campaigns and hired new sales executives to work alongside the Weblife presentation team. We also used a SalesForce.com CRM system and other tools such as Client Profile Reports to track and monitor new business prospects and Steps to Close plans. We also provided Weblife with weekly sales, pipeline and forecast reports.
After just 10 months we had successfully closed 11 new enterprise sales deals increasing the client base from 3 to 14. We closed a number of the top 10 UK Law Firms and won a contract for the largest group of Hospitals in the NHS being the largest employer of people in the UK.
Not only did we increase turnover for Weblife, we reduced the cost of sale and increased profit margins. We had established Weblife as a true international business with sales in the UK, Belgium and New York and developed an ongoing £12m pipeline from scratch. It was at this point the business was sold to Proofpoint for £66m, 11x its valuation 10 months earlier. This is the real value we bring to our clients.