Every good sales pitch starts with a story and Ingage understands that the best stories need to draw in clients with memorable and interactive presentations, so it created a suite of tools to help sales teams create, customize, and deliver on-brand sales content. Users do not need any technical training or design experience to build highly engaging presentations and Ingage automatically measures and tracks each viewers interaction with the presentation so sales teams can receive another layer of insight.
AlleyWatch chatted with founder and CEO Alan Braun about how Ingage is unleashing the power of storytelling through interactive presentations and the company’s future plans
Tell us about the product or service that Ingage offers.
Ingage offers a suite of tools that help sales teams create, customize, and deliver on-brand sales content that boosts engagement at every stage of the sales process.
The company is best known for its Ingage Presentations, a sales enablement platform that allows for the rapid creation of dynamic sales presentations that increase conversions by making presentations interactive, measurable and memorable.
How is Ingage different?
Ingage Presentations makes it possible for users, without any technical training or design experience, to build interactive and measurable sales presentations.
More specifically, key differentiators include the following:
Simplicity: Sales teams can quickly create highly engaging sales presentations or customize existing presentations for different clients using drag and drop tools.
Analytics: Each viewer’s engagement with the presentation is tracked automatically and presented in an analytics dashboard, allowing sales, sales enablement, and marketing to learn from every presentation given.
Real-time updates: Ingage Presentations makes it easy to push new or update existing presentations to every member of the sales team or select groups of users. Teams always have access to the latest and greatest content and don’t have to spend time searching for assets or creating rogue decks.
What market does Ingage target and how big is it?
Ingage is a leader in developing the best tools for sales enablement. In 2017, Sales Engagement Platforms (SEP) were a $780M/year market and “expected to be worth $5B by 2021” (Aragon Research).
What is the business model?
Ingage Presentations is available as a free download in the iTunes App Store. Users can upgrade to Ingage Pro to add company branding, share to the web, get access to Ingage Insights, and export to PDF for $19.99 monthly or $199 per year.
We also provide enterprise platform offerings to enable teams to better manage, distribute and measure their Ingage content.
What inspired the start of Ingage?
Ingage made its foray into digital storytelling in 2008 as the first company to take children’s books and adapt them to the iPhone.
In 2016, Ingage pivoted to put its extensive expertise in digital storytelling to work for sales enablement professionals and developed the industry’s best tools for sales enablement, interactive sales presentation, and customer engagement.
Who do you admire in the business world and why?
During my time at Apple, I came to know and admire John Brandon, Head of Enterprise Sales. John commands a room fully and both leads and inspires those around him. He’s also an amazing storyteller and working with him made me realize that storytelling and leadership go hand and hand. I suppose it is no coincidence that I am now running a company that is building a platform enabling the very best storytelling.
What are the milestones that you plan to achieve within six months?
There are three milestones we’re firing on cylinders to achieve in the next six months:
- Get the word out on our great software, which includes a sales enablement and content platform.
- We’ve entered two new spaces – real estate and home improvement – and we’re excited to bring on new partners in both industries
- Continue to release new products and features that will delight our customers
What is the one piece of startup advice that you never got?
People are your most valuable asset and culture drives people forward. Don’t underestimate the time you need to spend on creating, building and fostering a culture.
If you could be put in touch with anyone in the New York community who would it be and why?
I realize this isn’t an obvious choice, but I would love to talk with Alex Rodriguez. He faced a great deal of adversity in his baseball career (much of which was the result of his own choices), but he persevered, and he is now building a business that I predict will be even bigger than his baseball career.
Additionally, I’d appreciate a chat with Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase. Jamie navigated tremendous adversity through the banking crisis. He’s incredibly smart and has decades of diverse experiences to draw from. As the CEO of a startup, I would love to ask him questions and hear his advice.
Why did you launch in New York?
NY is a growing tech hub that is attracting top-notch tech talent, as evidenced by the local and growing presence of Google and Facebook. What’s more, we’re a content company and we are continually inspired by newspapers and magazines. Some of the top publishing companies in the world are based here and it made sense for us to be in close proximity to them.
What’s more, we’re a content company and we are continually inspired by newspapers and magazines. Some of the top publishing companies in the world are based here and it made sense for us to be in close proximity to them.
What’s your favorite restaurant in the city?
I really like Becco on Restaurant Row in the Theater District. It offers an amazing, all-you-can-eat pasta special and three different homemade pastas every day. It’s delicious and affordable!
