Company Celebrates Opening of New 125,000-Square-Foot Office to Accommodate Continued Rapid Growth

LEHI, Utah (August 15, 2018) – Inc. magazine today revealed that Podium, the leading customer communication platform for local businesses, is No. 13 on its 37th annual Inc. 5000, the most prestigious ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. With a three-year revenue growth of 13,645 percent, Podium is the highest-ranking Utah-based company to make this year’s list. To accommodate the company’s continued rapid growth, the company also celebrated the official opening of its new 125,000-square-foot office with a ribbon-cutting ceremony today in Lehi, Utah.

"This ranking is a testament to the Podium team and what we as a company have been able to do in just four short years," said Eric Rea, CEO and co-founder of Podium. "Addressing a segment of businesses that was being left behind by other service providers, our continued growth and future expansion shows how the demand for heightened convenience is finally being met with our platform for thousands of businesses across the country.”

Founded in 2014 and now working with 20,000+ businesses to create over 4 million customer interactions a month, Podium has quickly become one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in the U.S. The company’s new office will house its current 350 employees with plans to hire 400 more through 2020.

Reflecting the active and eclectic culture of the millennial worker, the new space was designed by Cory Sistrunk, who has designed offices for the likes of Apple, Adobe, Nike, GE, Dropbox, Google and North Face. Features of the office include:

● A 2,000-square-foot gym, complete with CrossFit equipment, free weights, treadmills, stationary bikes and space for yoga and pilates classes along with a locker room. This also includes onstaff CrossFit, pilates and yoga instructors.

● A high-end soft serve and Dole Whip station at the reception desk.

● An outdoor regulation-sized pickleball court, multiple spikeball courts, a bike storage area and maintenance shop.

● A floor designed as a bike shop, which pays homage to Podium’s roots starting out in an attic space above a bike shop in Provo, Utah.

“If your company is on the Inc. 5000, it’s unparalleled recognition of your years of hard work and sacrifice,” says Inc. editor in chief James Ledbetter. “The lines of business may come and go, or come and stay. What doesn’t change is the way entrepreneurs create and accelerate the forces that shape our lives.”

Not only have the companies on the 2018 Inc. 5000 (which are listed online at Inc.com, with the top 500 companies featured in the September issue of Inc., available on newsstands August 15) been very competitive within their markets, but the list as a whole shows staggering growth compared with prior

lists. The 2018 Inc. 5000 achieved an astounding three-year average growth of 538.2 percent, and a median rate of 171.8 percent. The Inc. 5000’s aggregate revenue was $206.1 billion in 2017, accounting for 664,095 jobs over the past three years.

Complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found at www.inc.com/inc5000.

About Podium Podium modernizes the way business happens locally with products designed to help businesses be found, chosen, and gain insight into their customers' experience. By conveniently facilitating millions of customer interactions, such as driving customer-generated online reviews and providing improved customer communication tools, Podium serves 150,000+ users across nearly 20,000 local businesses. Headquartered in Lehi, Utah, and founded in 2014, Podium is currently backed by IVP, Accel, Summit Partners, GV (formerly Google Ventures), and Y Combinator. To learn more, visit www.podium.com or contact us at press@podium.com.

More about Inc. and the Inc. 5000

Methodology The 2018 Inc. 5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2014 and 2018. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2014. They had to be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2017. (Since then, a number of companies on the list have gone public or been acquired.) The minimum revenue required for 2014 is $100,000; the minimum for 2017 is $2 million. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons. Companies on the Inc. 500 are featured in Inc.’s September issue. They represent the top tier of the Inc. 5000, which can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000.

About Inc. Media Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures, Inc. is the only major brand dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies, with the aim to deliver real solutions for today’s innovative company builders. Inc. took home the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in both 2014 and 2012. The total monthly audience reach for the brand has been growing significantly, from 2,000,000 in 2010 to more than 18,000,000 today. For more information, visit www.inc.com.

The Inc. 5000 is a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the nation. Started in 1982, this prestigious list has become the hallmark of entrepreneurial success. The Inc. 5000 Conference & Awards Ceremony is an annual event that celebrates the remarkable achievements of these companies. The event also offers informative workshops, celebrated keynote speakers, and evening functions.

For more information on Inc. and the Inc. 5000 Conference, visit http://conference.inc.com/.

The High-Turnover/Low-Productivity Vicious Circle

According to NADA the average salesperson’s productivity is slightly less than 10 units per month. The Rikess Group works with two of the largest volume dealerships in the country, and they need to have a minimum of 80 salespeople on staff to hit their volume targets. With customers physically shopping less than two dealerships, it would make sense that productivity per salesperson should be rising; but it isn’t! Why? It’s because of a vicious circle anchored by high turnover and low productivity:

As a circle, this sequence of events doesn’t have a specific starting or end point. Each element contributes to the others. But we must start our description somewhere:

Unappealing Work Environment

• The negotiating culture in many dealerships is a clear obstacle to hiring empathetic, “customer obsessed” salespeople.  Why would someone who likes people want a job where s/he has to manipulate and take advantage of them? Furthermore, an entire generation of Millennials raised on Amazon.com don’t understand why a dealership would employ a negotiating sales model when consumers have all the information they could possibly need.  A lack of real quality salespeople who have the right interpersonal skill sets are not being attracted to our industry.  

Wrong People

• So who is attracted to traditional dealership selling environments? Old warhorses who enjoy battling with customers and people desperate for any position until they can find a “real job.” The first group make sales difficult and time-consuming because consumers buy cars in volume from salespeople whom they like and trust; and the “sales gunslingers” aren’t that kind of people. The second group are not committed to a career in auto sales, so they don’t invest the time and energy to learn the product or nuances of the sales process. This group also extends the time it takes to sell a vehicle because they don’t have the knowledge or skills and therefore have to rely on a lot of management support.

Inadequate Training and Development

• The lack of a thorough and comprehensive on-boarding process is another productivity obstacle. When salespeople are put in front of customers before they have been thoroughly trained and immersed in the dealership’s culture they may never have the opportunity to be highly successful in selling volume. They get frustrated with their lack of productivity, including not earning enough to meet their financial needs. In many if not most, cases they quit before they can reach their full potential.

Managers Desire for Control

• In dealerships with high salesperson turnover, management tries to control as much of the sales process as possible due to the inexperience of their sales staff. This calls for mandatory “desk trips” and some form of a “liner-closer” model. This model hurts productivity as there aren’t enough managers to effectively try to “close” deals for an inadequate sales force; it just takes sales management too long to start deals over while trying to develop some form of relationship with the prospect. NOTE: In virtually every dealership there is one manager for every 2.5 sales people (this data includes GSM; SM BDC; F/I.) A very expensive model in an era of margin compression.
• When it takes easily 3 hours or more to sell a car in this kind of environment, salespeople have less opportunities to make sales as time is being wasted in the process. Also, the process can be pretty exhausting for all parties lessening the likelihood that salespeople want to start the process over with a new prospect, especially near the end of a shift.

A Disincentive for Managers to Empower/Train Salespeople

• An empowered culture where salespeople own the responsibility for true customer satisfaction and don’t have to rely on managers to “desk” or close their deals is what both customers and people-focused salespeople want.  But empowering salespeople works against sales managers wanting to maintain both their status and incomes. So there is a built-in disincentive for managers to empower and train their sales staff; the more empowered the sales force the less managers you need.
• Because they are required—and incentivized—to be deal managers, most sales managers ignore people development. So even if you have some high potential salespeople, no one is focused on developing them.

Low salesperson productivity generates at least five important costs:

• Lost sales due to a low closing ratio

• Sales management/personnel costs – you have at least one manager per 2.5 sales consultants. You pay your sales managers a premium because they have a unique skill set (negotiating) and there is a lack of supply of excellent sales managers further raising their compensation

• Less than stellar customer reviews due to the lack of value added by the dealership in the sales process
• The general overhead expenses/benefits to under-performing sales people
• The cost in time and energy of constantly needing to recruit new salespeople

The good news is there are a number of fairly straightforward ways to boost salesperson productivity:

1. Offer a minimum salary – not draw! – of $2,500 per month

2. Schedule 40-hour work weeks

3. Provide at least one month of on-boarding/training before letting new salespeople greet prospects
4. Eliminate negotiations from the sales process and empower your sales staff
5. Utilize tablet technology to further empower your sales staff
6. Have a significant portion of your sales managers’ compensation tied to salesperson productivity; this forces them to develop their sales staff
7. Change the definition of your sales manager’s role from being “deal managers” to “people developers.” This means they need to be trained to become better at coaching, leadership and training.
8. Put in a minimum sales performance standard. After the first 60 days of employment put in a minimum of 12 units per salesperson on a 60-day rolling average. If they can’t meet that threshold they are terminated.
9. Dedicate resources to accurately measuring closing ratio from all lead sources.
10. Never recruit salespeople out of need; always be recruiting!

One of the best parts of my job is to act on behalf of the dealers in the community and, at their request, connect them with the most successful people in the world and the subjects dealers are interested in. In that light, I was really pumped when Danny Sullivan’s name came up and was requested as a keynote for DSES 2013. Danny is someone I’ve personally been following and learning from for many years – he is one of the most brilliant minds in digital marketing and I’m stoked to announce him as a keynote at the DrivingSales Executive Summit this year.

Danny has helped marketers understand how search engines work for nearly 20 years. Back in 1996 he led research on how search engines work, and published his study as “A webmasters Guide to Search Engines.” That effort became Search Engine Watch in 1997.

Today Danny works as the Founding Editor of Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and SMX - Search Marketing Conference. Just to give you an idea about how knowledgeable he is regarding search engines, Matt Cutts of Google considers his work as “must reading” for "web Marketers” and Tim Mayer of Yahoo called it the “most authoritative source on search.” The bottom line, Danny doesn’t mess around – this guy is brilliant and knows how to dominate in digital marketing – and he will rock our digital marketing world at DSES.

As always, DSES will be awesome this year. We put our entire focus on bringing in the best speakers from inside and outside the industry. The DrivingSales Executive summit is the only event that lets dealers select the speakers (as opposed to others who let vendor sponsors decide the content – which is why you get massive sales pitches at those events.)  

Our goal has always been simple: Help dealers fill in the gaps that exist within their dealerships to improve performance. Danny Sullivan will be another incredible resource to help you understand what’s happening now and stay more than just a couple of steps ahead of your competition.

Danny's keynote presentation, Racing to Keep Up with the Fast Pace of Digital Marketing will cover: 

• Current state of search marketing strategies

• What Google is doing to help brands & consumers

• How marketers need to respond to the new rules

• Content marketing strategies - how the auto industry needs to be thinking 

Presentation Overview:

Danny Sullivan (the internet marketing journalist, not the race car driver) will deliver a turbo-charged keynote, bringing the audience up to speed with the latest trends in SEO and search marketing strategies. Covering a wide range of marketing opportunities on Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter and beyond, automotive dealers will learn how to prioritize their digital content marketing strategies and reach qualified customers through local search, mobile and social media marketing efforts.  Attendees will walk away with a greater understanding of cross-platform content opportunities and best practices for search and social media that can be implemented immediately in their marketing campaigns.

The 2013 DrivingSales Executive Summit will be held at the Bellagio Las Vegas from Sunday, October 13th through Tuesday, October 15th. Every year DSES has sold out and this year will be no different.  So, don’t hesitate and register now. We have even more great keynote surprises coming out in the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

See you in Vegas!

One of the best parts of my job is to act on behalf of the dealers in the community and, at their request, connect them with the most successful people in the world and the subjects dealers are interested in. In that light, I was really pumped when Danny Sullivan’s name came up and was requested as a keynote for DSES 2013. Danny is someone I’ve personally been following and learning from for many years – he is one of the most brilliant minds in digital marketing and I’m stoked to announce him as a keynote at the DrivingSales Executive Summit this year.

Danny has helped marketers understand how search engines work for nearly 20 years. Back in 1996 he led research on how search engines work, and published his study as “A webmasters Guide to Search Engines.” That effort became Search Engine Watch in 1997.

Today Danny works as the Founding Editor of Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and SMX - Search Marketing Conference. Just to give you an idea about how knowledgeable he is regarding search engines, Matt Cutts of Google considers his work as “must reading” for "web Marketers” and Tim Mayer of Yahoo called it the “most authoritative source on search.” The bottom line, Danny doesn’t mess around – this guy is brilliant and knows how to dominate in digital marketing – and he will rock our digital marketing world at DSES.

As always, DSES will be awesome this year. We put our entire focus on bringing in the best speakers from inside and outside the industry. The DrivingSales Executive summit is the only event that lets dealers select the speakers (as opposed to others who let vendor sponsors decide the content – which is why you get massive sales pitches at those events.)  

Our goal has always been simple: Help dealers fill in the gaps that exist within their dealerships to improve performance. Danny Sullivan will be another incredible resource to help you understand what’s happening now and stay more than just a couple of steps ahead of your competition.

Danny's keynote presentation, Racing to Keep Up with the Fast Pace of Digital Marketing will cover: 

• Current state of search marketing strategies

• What Google is doing to help brands & consumers

• How marketers need to respond to the new rules

• Content marketing strategies - how the auto industry needs to be thinking 

Presentation Overview:

Danny Sullivan (the internet marketing journalist, not the race car driver) will deliver a turbo-charged keynote, bringing the audience up to speed with the latest trends in SEO and search marketing strategies. Covering a wide range of marketing opportunities on Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter and beyond, automotive dealers will learn how to prioritize their digital content marketing strategies and reach qualified customers through local search, mobile and social media marketing efforts.  Attendees will walk away with a greater understanding of cross-platform content opportunities and best practices for search and social media that can be implemented immediately in their marketing campaigns.

The 2013 DrivingSales Executive Summit will be held at the Bellagio Las Vegas from Sunday, October 13th through Tuesday, October 15th. Every year DSES has sold out and this year will be no different.  So, don’t hesitate and register now. We have even more great keynote surprises coming out in the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

See you in Vegas!