Last week, Tree Labs introduced its first class of five startups to the world at its inaugural Demo Day event in São Paulo. Among the projects presented was Agendor, a CRM tool for sales teams.
Agendor was founded in 2011 by brothers Gustavo and Júlio Paulillo. Initially, the project was designed as a set of solutions for the problems faced by their father’s company in team management and sales control. Soon, however, the Paulillo brothers recognized that they had developed a product with the potential to meet the needs of a much greater market.
Since that time, the Agendor team has worked to build a product that is completely in-tune with its customers’ needs. The company has put forth a concentrated effort to really listen to clients and tailor its solutions accordingly instead of copying features found on the existing platforms of its competitors. Currently, Agendor has roughly 2,000 users and is working towards gaining a greater share of a promising Brazilian market.
CRM tools are faring quite well in Latin America as a whole, with Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Venezuela leading the way. Influenced by IT outsourcing, free trade agreements and cultural alignments that favor Latin America, the sector is pushing forward new technologies aimed at local and global markets. Currently, Brazil is the regional leader in CRM software adoption.
Gustavo Paulillo, Agendor Co-Founder, told us about the startup.
Emily Stewart: There are numerous CRM solutions on the market right now, many of which are global in nature. What sets you apart?
Gustavo Paulillo: This is exactly what gives us our primary differential. We created Agendor to solve the problems of a specific geographical niche – Brazilian small businesses with a sales team that works long-cycle sales. Instead of what most startup founders think, we believe that Agendor doesn’t need to follow all the trends going on right now, such social features or millions of integrations, because our clients don’t need it.
Our approach is to first conquer this niche, creating a great product for our clients, and then expand to other niches, obtaining a great market presence and helping many companies that have never had a CRM solution reach the market.
ES: Some CRMs have added gaming and social elements to their products recently. Is this a strategy you’ve implemented? Why or why not?
GP: The great CRM challenge is popular culture. We believe that some gamification engines could improve people’s acceptance, but it has to be extremely tied to the main proposal of our CRM solution, which is controlling sales teams, centralizing client information and improving communications. That’s why our customers buy from us. A gamification engine could, therefore, enhance the main proposal, but only if it’s done right.
ES: In what specific industries have you been most successful? What adjustments have you had to make?
GP: Agendor is gaining significant traction with companies that sell high aggregated value products and services. They have sales teams that visit clients, send proposals and do follow-ups. It’s extremely important for their managers to extract personalized analyses from the process and have deep control over their teams’ accesses, privacy settings and permissions. Agendor features customizable reports and a thorough and simple access and control system with really easy-to-use interfaces. This is something we are proud of, because no other CRM is as simple to use as Agendor.
ES: What was your experience in working with Tree Labs? What will you do next?
GP: Tree Labs gave us an awesome opportunity to meet partners with additional knowledge as well as the chance to access networking opportunities with other startups, entrepreneurs, mentors and potential investors.
We will keep growing Agendor in order to achieve a strong presence in the CRM market, initially in Brazil. We are now investing in our mobile presence, an endeavor that will help us reach our ultimate vision of solutions that work independently of the platform.
