Skaled Celebrates 10 Years Serving Revenue Organizations

350,000+ hours of strategic leadership and tactical revenue operations experience. 1000+ companies transformed. 

This is what Skaled is proud to have accomplished in the last 10 years.

Skaled came to life shortly after CEO & Founder, Jake Dunlap, noticed a need for expert sales support services working as a VP of Sales. He saw that accounting, finance, marketing, and other parts of the organization were able to quickly pull an expert when in need – except for sales.

“I wanted to solve my own recurring problem as a VP and form the type of firm that I thought could really help tomorrow’s revenue leaders.”

Today, we’re looking back and celebrating this 10-year milestone.

In addition to that, we’re celebrating Jake’s commitment to helping tomorrow’s revenue leaders.

In the last few years, Skaled has kept a pulse on a rising problem across orgs that Revenue Operations can solve. Technology and nuances in Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success have evolved so rapidly, silos have resulted between each, causing material problems that inhibit revenue growth.

As of today, Skaled is becoming a plug-in-play Revenue Operations as a Service company to help identify these gaps and close them. 

Our mission moving forward is to optimize recurring revenue for businesses by implementing repeatable and scalable methodologies across these three siloed teams.

What inspired you to start the company 10 years ago?

As a former VP of Sales, one of the things that I found time and time again was the need for expert support services. I looked at my counterparts in Marketing, Finance, other parts of the organization, and consistently what I saw was their ability to bring in teams of experts around whatever the challenge might be. It could be auditing and finance; it could be paid marketing; it could be web design. And I saw a real need in the market for the same type of expert support systems for sales. 

And so when you look at things like sales enablement, interim sales leadership, sales operation, and all of the expertise that is needed for Sales organizations to function today – where we have 1500 plus sales technologies – you really need the ability to bring in the right people at the right time with the right expertise. And so, as a former VP of Sales, I wanted to scratch my own itch and try to form the type of firm that I thought could really help tomorrow’s revenue leaders. 

What were some key decisions that helped drive the company’s success over the last 10 years?

Early on, you have to start to think about who you want to be and who you don’t want to be.

As the company grew, as the company scaled, one of the biggest learnings for me and lessons was not just who do I want to be and what the vision is, but also who aren’t we? And I would look at other organizations in the market that did very specific things that were tried and true revenue-generating topics: trainings and workshops. 

And a lot of the early learning was, who are you going to be, and how does that differentiate? And so very early on, I realized I wanted to do two things. I wanted to be able to provide strategy and help organizations see around corners that they haven’t seen around before. And this is really where my passion lies, and what I wanted the firm to be is also the tactical execution support to pull it through. 

What I found time and time again is when I worked with other consulting firms, they would give me a to-do list of 50 pages, and I didn’t get that tactical “wow” to help me to actually get this over the finish line. So from starting the firm and from learning more and more about the market, I really wanted to create something where we could help companies with both.

How have your customers and partners contributed to the company’s growth and success?

Customers

So obviously, for any business, customers are everything. And for us in particular, one of the biggest learnings, as we evolved as an organization, is just the different type of support that organizations need at different phases of growth. You know, you might need more foundation building early, more optimization. What we really tried to do is bring in the right resources at the right times to help companies with that journey. And many times I think people look at a consulting firm as people wh come in, they give us a shot in the arm, and then we go on about our business. The reality is what we’ve been able to do is create very long, strong customer bonds by continuing to stay at the forefront. By continuing to help them to see around corners, around technology, around modern methodologies, around changes in buyer behaviors – to where our customers really view us as a resource and not just a partner or a vendor. 

I think a lot of companies talk about that. You know, they like to refer to themselves as a partner versus a vendor. But the reality is today’s customer is looking for someone who’s going to help them see the future. Who’s going to know what they already need to know and help them to get there. And I think that we’ve done a really good job of making our customers happy and keeping them happy for years because we’re able to continue to be that value-add resource. 

Partners

Another big part of scaling is partners. And I think many times people look at partners as competition early on. They could be, you know, immature, maybe not have a partner motion at the time. And one of the things that we did really, really early on is (1) make friends with all the people that were our competitors. We went had beers and smoked briskets and, and really developed ecosystem relationships. And I really believe that the pie is big enough for all of us. And as we continue to find an our niche and they continue to find theirs, we’ve actually been able to grow and help each other scale. 

And (2) over the years on the technology side, we saw very early on who we thought were going to be some of the major players there and established partnerships earlier than anyone. And so we continue to partner with cutting-edge sales technology organizations going into revenue technology and marketing technology and organizations that are thinking about how do we meet customers where they are today? 

Customer behavior is changing very rapidly, and we partner with technologies that are really thinking about not just what does the sales organization need, but is this going to help improve my customer journey and my customer experience? And so, I think our ability really early on to identify the right kind of group of services and partners where we’re all growing together and to identify some of the top sales technology companies was a valuable component of our ability to scale early and into today.

How do you feel about Skaled reaching its 10 year anniversary?

So 10 years. Wow. I think I knew in the very beginning I didn’t want to start a one-man shop. I didn’t want to just go and be a consultant and charge a ridiculous amount from a monthly standpoint or from a coaching session. I knew I wanted to try to build something, and you know, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say there were tons of learnings along the way and fantastic years and tough years. But as I look back I feel very excited and proud of what we’ve built. 

I feel like we really are kind of at the beginning of all this hard work and all those extra hours, and the market kind of meeting us where we’ve been and where we’re going. And I think we’ve been very early to sales technology trends and very early to partnerships in this space. And what we’re seeing now is the payoff around that starting to actually hit. And so I’m really proud of what we’ve done. I think I’m even more excited for the next 10 years. 

Can you share any exciting plans for the future of the company?

As we’re continuing to grow our business and evolve, we’re constantly looking at where our consumer behavior’s headed and where B2B buying organizations are headed. And so when we think about the future of the company and where that’s headed, we need to make our content more accessible, make sure that we are continuing to stay at the forefront of sales technology and how that interacts with sales organizations. That we’re looking at modern processes and changes to methodologies, that literally have been in place for 30 years, to create these not necessarily linear qualification purchasing processes, but instead, how do we adapt to modern customers and meet them where they are.

And so I’m really excited about where we’re headed to address those three areas in particular, because I’m telling everybody, over the next five years, organizations with the best product are still going to experience a loss if their sales experience is too difficult. 

People want less friction. And we will consistently choose an inferior product for a better experience. And if you don’t believe it, go back and look at how you purchase things in your consumer lives and how many times you’ve made that exact same sacrifice. And all of those trends are coming to B2B, and I’m excited that we’re at the forefront of that.