Lauren Goodell spent nearly a decade in enterprise sales, managing accounts for companies like Microsoft and Salesforce. When she left the sales industry, she wanted to create the tool she’d never had as an account executive.
In 2022, Goodell founded Zinnia, a startup designed to help account executives make sales by building human connection.
The idea for Zinnia stemmed from Goodell hosting events that brought sales prospects together, where information like fun facts would be shared about each attendee. When the events’ attendees said they wanted to be able to access this information for all of their clients and prospects, Goodell knew that Zinnia was viable to scale.
The sales world has been inundated with a variety of AI tools that encourage a spray-and-pray approach to sales, Goodell said. Within the resulting market of countless sales tools that use AI, Zinnia distinguishes itself by using the technology not as a way to automate sales on a larger scale, but rather as a way to strengthen human connections.
Building human connection in an AI world
Zinnia integrates customer relationship management platforms, digital calendars and inboxes into its platform, enabling account executives to view all of their accounts, prospects and daily meetings in one place.
At the core of Zinnia is the platform’s ability to present business and personal details on different prospects, which in turn helps account executives make personal connections that lead to sales. The information is pulled both from Zinnia’s internal data (including CRMs, emails and past meeting recordings) and from external sources such as prospects’ LinkedIn profiles and other social media accounts.
Zinnia uses this data to identify “fun facts” about prospects, such as where someone is from or what hobbies they enjoy. The software also analyzes and characterizes prospects within designated personality trait categories, such as “data-driven” or “bubbly.”
When an account executive is preparing for a meeting, Zinnia pulls and presents information about each of the attendees and their company—including details concerning what is most important to attendees and how an account executive’s product could help a company.
Zinnia also helps account executives reach out to prospects with personalized emails based on a those prospects’ fun facts and personality traits. This might mean a fun, catchy email opening for a bubbly person or a list of bullet points for a data-driven prospect.
As prospects go through countless emails brought on by the aforementioned spray-and-pray approach AI has fueled, Zinnia’s more personalized method helps account executives’ emails stand out.
“I think this whole mass automation of not just sales, but everything in life, people are really wanting that human interaction, and that’s really where we help people stand out,” Goodell said.
Selling a sales tool
Zinnia offers access to its platform through a monthly subscription. The basic subscription, priced at $99 per month, grants access to all of Zinnia’s core features. The startup also offers an enterprise subscription that ranges in price, which is fit for teams looking for features such as additional integrations or single sign on.
Goodell said the market for Zinnia is $85 billion, and that it has a 20% annual growth rate as companies continue to spend more on sales tools.
Zinnia currently has a couple hundred users, including a Fortune 100 company. The startup’s clients have found that using the platform has reduced time preparing for meetings by 80% and has increased first-call-to-close ratios by 20%.
QUICK BITS
Startup: Zinnia
Co-Founders: Lauren Goodell (CEO), Marco Dell’Olio
Founded: 2022
Team size: 5
Location: North Carolina (remote)
Website: www.getzinnia.com
Funding: Seed
Later this year, Zinnia will add a feature that will direct account executives to the right people to reach out to for prospects and provide their contact information.
As Zinnia continues to grow, Goodell said the vision for the platform is to develop a comprehensive software that allows account executives to focus on executing more than strategizing.
“The vision for Zinnia is we want to be that single pane of glass where we are the operating system, if you will, for sellers,” Goodell said.
