Hummer Winblad Invests in XANT
PROVO, Utah, Aug. 9, 2012 – XANT, Inc., the leading SaaS-based, sales automation platform for inside sales professionals, announced that it closed a funding round led by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and several SaaS industry leaders. Co-investing in the round was Josh James, founder and CEO of Domo, and co-Founder and former CEO of web analytics powerhouse, Omniture.
The XANT platform is the leading technology for the high velocity sales model, the new data-driven approach to sales. The platform increases results by improving productivity, visibility and analytics. This cloud-based technology is at the forefront of the movement away from the expensive, face-to-face, outside selling model toward the more efficient, metrics-based, inside sales model.
The preferred inside sales model leverages rapid lead response qualification and cold-calling teams paired with experienced closers who conduct sales using the phone and Internet technologies.
“The traditional sales model is evolving,” said Mark Gorenberg, Managing Director, Hummer Winblad. “Companies have become very Internet savvy, investing in marketing automation tools that enable a highly analytical process related to lead generation and tracking, ensuring that a company’s marketing strategy is succeeding at the highest level of efficiency as possible. We believe XANT is well positioned for a leadership position in bringing predictive analytics efficiencies to the sales operation.”
On the Inc. 5000 list in 2010 and 2009, XANT has been self-funding since 2005 and cash flow positive since 2007. Currently, the fastest growing market for the XANT PowerDialer and related enhancement products is the Salesforce® CRM user base. XANT’s clients range from SMB to enterprise-class companies, including ADP, BMC Software, Cisco, Dell, Gannett, Marketo, McKesson and Seagate.
“SaaS-based applications are the most powerful way to empower any workforce, providing unmatched efficiency and flexibility,” said James. “We’re seeing the SaaS-model continue to replace traditional software at an unprecedented clip as customers’ priorities shift from building enterprise IT infrastructures to extracting real business value from technology. XANT is extremely well-positioned to capitalize on this trend as it continues to deliver advanced features and functionalities that bring powerful capabilities to the inside sales force.”
“CEOs and CFOs across many industries don’t realize they are wasting huge amounts of marketing and sales budget due to poorly managed leads and sales processes,” said David Elkington, CEO and Chairman, XANT. “Our company discovered this problem through pioneering research conducted with Dr. James Oldroyd in 2007, later updated and published in Inc. magazine, HBR and Forbes.com. The XANT software platform pinpoints the most efficient sales processes for making first contact, setting appointments and managing a lead through to close.
Hummer Winblad has been investing in Utah-based software companies since 1995 and is the only venture capital firm to be a “Super G” sponsor of Silicon Slopes, the leading online networking hub(www.siliconslopes.com) for Utah’s 5,200 technology companies. One of the firm’s more successful investments in the state was Orem-based Omniture® (co-founded by Josh James and John Pestana), which was acquired by Adobe in 2009.
About Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
Hummer Winblad, a leading venture capital firm in the Bay Area focused exclusively on software investments, manages over $1 billion in cumulative capital. Since the firm’s inception in 1989, it has launched over 100 new software companies. For more information, visit www.humwin.com.
About XANT, Inc.
The XANT platform supports a High Velocity Sales model, enabling inside sales representatives to respond to Internet generated leads in five minutes or less. The product was designed for business-to-business and high-end business-to-consumer sales environments. It has been one of the most popular applications on the salesforce.com AppExchange for over four years. The company was recently recognizedas Service Provider of the Year in the CRM category by the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (AA-ISP). The company has been accelerating inside sales operations since 2004. To learn more, visit: www.insidesales.com.