Why we invested in trumpet
Whether working for a small or a large company, we have all experienced how complex a B2B buying journey can be. A lot of information (sales decks, demos, technical specs, pricing info, legal terms, etc) gets shared through different interactions, people and formats. Several teams and stakeholders have to be involved in the decision-making process and of course this gets more complex the bigger the organisition and the longer the sales cycles. Enters trumpet whose mission is to build better buyer journeys with collaborative workspaces.
The B2B buying and selling journeys have indeed become very fragmented and complex. On the selling side, companies are using a plethora of tools and systems in their sales stack, such as outbound prospecting software, CRM, sales enablement software, conversational intelligence tools, customer value management tools, video hosting, and e-signature tools. There is then an additional set of tools available for the post-sales journey. On the buying side, there are now also more stakeholders, and therefore more coordination, involved in decision making, which is compounded by the difficult macroeconomic environment. Overall, this has led to a diluted buyer journey: 77% of buyers say that purchases have become too complex, there are on average 11–14 stakeholders involved in a purchase, and there has been a 22% increase in sales cycles in the last 5 years.
There is also a shift in buying behaviours occurring. 60% of buyers are now digital-first millennials who prefer asynchronous communication. 84% of buyers say the buying experience is as important as the product, and 33% of buyers would prefer a totally digital first sales journey. This has led to the rise of digital sales room software, and Gartner says that by 2026 one third of B2B sales processes will be happening in digital sales rooms.
Trumpet has created a digital sales room and collaborative workspace for sales and customer teams to manage journeys and communication with prospects/customers/partners. The software centralises all tools and materials in the sales process into a single link for the buyer (‘pod’), which makes information easier to navigate, share and process. The buyer does not need to navigate multiple emails, links, and attachments as everything in the journey is contained within the pod. Whereas the seller can create a personalised/branded, customisable, and collaborative space, that also contains analytics to enhance the sales process. Trumpet can integrate with many tools in the existing sales stack (50+ integrations are already live), but they have also built their own version of tools like Loom, DocuSign, and Forms, meaning that customers can consolidate tools should they want to.
Trumpet is currently primarily used by revenue teams to improve buyers’ experience, differentiate vs competitors, reduce sales cycles and increase conversion but the potential use cases are endless. Some founders are for instance using trumpet to manage data rooms while some consultants use it for project management with external stakeholders. We were generally very excited by trumpet’s roadmap of adding further proactive insights, intelligence and AI into the tool. Beyond its digital sales room, trumpet’s bigger vision is to build the platform for any B2B external collaboration. They have also managed to create a consumer-like brand with organic distribution and customer acquisition flywheel, which is quite unique.
Overall, we were impressed by trumpet’s product and GTM execution and the fact that they quickly managed to attract 250+ customers, which rave about the solution. Trumpet is also already recognised by G2 and others as the leader of this new digital sales room category. This is a testament to the strength of the founding team, which consists of 3 complementary Co-Founders: Rory Sadler (CEO), Andrew Webster (COO) and Nick Telson-Tillet (CMO). Rory is an expert in B2B sales and experienced sales leader with great founder-market fit while Andrew and Nick are repeat founders who have previously bootstrapped, scaled and successfully exited hospitality booking platform DesignMyNight.
AlbionVC is extremely happy that trumpet has selected us to lead their $6.4m seed round. We are super excited by the team’s ambition to build and lead a new category with their vision of becoming the platform of external collaboration for B2B interactions. Onwards!
