Vertical Focus = Funds Raised.

The news that video collaboration company VSee took in an investment from A-lister Salesforce.com reminded me how powerful a vertical focus can be when going to market with new products. The theory is not a new one; but it is one that more companies fail at than succeed.

But take VSee. The company does does not lack for competition; giants like Skype and Cisco, and a whole bunch of others in between, are aggressively pursuing consumers and businesses of all sizes to adopt video for communications and collaboration. Yet while many of these have segmented their targets by size of business, in the last while VSee honed in on the sales vertical. As the CEO Milten Chen told me last year, this focus simplified building the company; decisions around product development, marketing, hiring and more could all be measured against its goal to be the go-to solution for sales people.

Sales is one of my favorite verticals. What sales manager or sales team is not looking for ways to sell more, each and every month. And with services like video in the cloud, the barrier to start is close to zero. When we talk in our consulting practice about ‘segmentation’, we do so because the nature of a segment is that those in it talk to each other and trust each other. Who talks more than a salesperson…particularly about success?

New services to market that involve voice or video can be pervasive across multiple segments, making sticking to a segment tricky. But focus works; it quickly allows you to understand and then potentially own a segment, something investors tend to appreciate.

PS. While posting this, coincidentally my invite to sample CrunchConnect from SalesCrunch arrived. A creative ‘social collaboration’ tool, this group is also very highly focused on the sales vertical. And also company that’s received A-lister funding this year. Like video, the legacy product segment (web conferencing) they are after is hugely crowded. But one can quickly appreciate that CrunchConnect is built for the sales person, surely simplifying the company’s product and marketing decisions. Can’t wait to try it.

Tagged as: funding, Vsee