Closing the deal can be the part of the sales experience where a lot of businesses fall flat, leaving potential customers untapped.
Some local entrepreneurs think the answer is digital.
“It’s just about staying in touch with customers along the journey,” said Chris Bache, who with Bill Violante are the founders of Richmond-based technology start-up Hatchify.
Hatchify has created propriety software that allows companies to contact multiple clients in multiple ways simultaneously to follow up sales leads.
“We started the business in 2016. We actually build sales solutions that make selling really simple,” Bache said.
Their latest product, a digital platform called Hatch, combines multiple communication channels — email, text, chats, Facebook Messenger — on a single interface. Company sales teams then use that interface to follow up with customers who have shown some interest in a product or service.
“Bill and I, both of our backgrounds are in sales,” Bache said.
“We worked at Comcast together. We worked at Verizon together in the sales background. We worked together for about 10 years, and clients were coming to us on the side, so we were consulting.”
Violante said the interface is easy to use.
“They can pull it up and start driving conversations immediately, start engaging more customers immediately,” he said.
The company’s offices are in a 3,100-square-foot suite at 220 Hull St. in Richmond’s Manchester neighborhood.
There are 16 employees, including a full-time designer and new chief technology officer Will Hanson, who joined the company this year.
“Hatchify is the lab where we test ideas, incubate and hatch them,” Bache said.
Their Hatch product, he said, “sort of hatches and unleashes the potential of the company.”
“Because right now a lot of the companies we work are transitioning from sort of legacy companies into how do we become modern companies, how do we become digital, how do we speak to our customers in a way that they are going to want to continue to buy from us,” Bache said.
Raising money for kids to see ‘Black Panther’
Lance Cooper launched 804StreetMedia, a digital marketing firm, in 2014, after years of using social media to promote local musicians.
Since then, he has acquired a lot of followers on social media — more than 150,000 on Twitter and more than 5,000 on Facebook.
He is using his social media prowess for social good, too, recently raising money through crowdfunding to take local children to see the movie “Black Panther.”
“It’s more than taking kids to see a film about a comic book hero,” Cooper said.
“The representation within that film was beautiful, actually having them witness people of their color doing these courageous things. They were excited going in and coming out,” he said.
Cooper said any funds leftover from the crowdfunding campaign will be donated to charitable organizations.
Kudos for Richmond from travel guide
Richmond is No. 7 on Lonely Planet travel guide’s list of the top 10 “underrated, rejuvenated and out-of-this-world spots to visit in 2018.”
A lot of the credit goes to the buzz around Richmond’s rising neighborhood scene in such communities as Scott’s Addition and Church Hill, according to travel pros speaking Friday at the Retail Merchants monthly breakfast meeting.
Travel writer and Richmond native Amy Balfour describes the transformation of Scott’s Addition in an article in Lonely Planet magazine’s spring issue. The article’s caption: “how a “once-derelict neighborhood remakes itself in a new entrepreneurial spirit.”
“There’s this sense of cooperation between the businesses,” Balfour said of Scott’s Addition.
“Also, since it was a walkable neighborhood, I think that’s cool. We always like to focus on a lot of attractions in one area. You have over seven different places to go there — five breweries, two cideries, a distillery and restaurants opening up.”
Katie Barr Cornish, whose firm Eleven Six PR does work for Virginia tourism, said it’s gotten easier to sell media on doing travel features on the Richmond region. Five years ago, she said, pitches had to include a lot of introductory information.
“We really don’t have to do that anymore,” Cornish said.
“We can dig deeper on our pitches. We can really get into a deeper level with the food, the beer and the outdoor adventure. … There’s just a lot more understanding of what’s going on in the city.”
Trisha Ping, destination editor for Lonely Planet’s eastern U.S. coverage, said mid-size cities, in general, are having a moment.
“People are looking for a place, more low-pressure travel, somewhere they can easily go for a weekend and just kind of do the sort of things you would do at home, such as find a great coffee shop, have a delicious meal and not feel the pressure like when you go to New York City and must see the Statue of Liberty and go to Times Square,” Ping said.
“Richmond stands out even among mid-sized cities because of the variety of experiences it can offer visitors,” she said.
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