#064: Use The Hero's Journey In Sales Conversations, Digitizing a $500B+ Industry, Find An INDUSTRY Not An Idea

One vSaaS breakdown. One biz story. One 'how to'. In your inbox once a week.

Mar 18, 2024

Your Sales Pitch Should NOT Be About Buttons & Features…

Try the Hero’s Journey framework instead…

ACT #1: The Setup

Introduce the hero - their role and responsibilities, make them human and ensure they are just like the person you are talking to.

ACT #2: Challenge Confrontation

The challenge the hero is facing and how it perfectly ties into their organizations key objectives.

ACT #3: The Resolution

The Hero identifies a solution. The hero solves their challenge. The hero drives a tangible business benefit AND a SIGNIFICANT personal benefit.

One Biz Story:

ShopMonkey: All-In-One Software for Auto Shops

It's not very often that you see a $500B+ industry still largely running on pen and paper. The Automotive Repair Industry is poised for modernization, and this guy has raised $100M+ to tackle it.

This is the story of ShopMonkey:

Ashot Iskandarian, a Product Manager in Silicon Valley, and passionate car enthusiast, observed struggling auto shop owners using outdated tools or pen/paper to run their businesses. In 2016, he founded ShopMonkey, aiming to bring the power of the cloud to automotive shops.

The automotive repair and maintenance services vertical is MASSIVE. There are over 230K+ automotive shops in the U.S. It's also projected to grow to over $800 billion by 2026...

As with other large verticals, customers increasingly demand a more modern tech-enabled experience. So Ashot got to work. He wrote his first line of ShopMonkey code in January of 2017.

By July of that year, on his birthday, he left his comfortable and safe full time job to go all in on ShopMonkey. Ashot clawed his way to acquire his first few automotive shops as customers. With the momentum starting to roll, he raised a small Seed Round, grew the team to 10 full time folks, and begin really building out his team and product.

Shopmonkey's software includes:

One of my favorite parts of the ShopMonkey story, is VERY early on, 3 years it, they created their own foundation. Helping struggling single mothers by donating free repairs and vehicles outright. I've never seen this happen so early in a companies journey & I LOVE it.

With Shop Monkey approaching 1,000 auto shop customers, they raised a $10M Series A funding round in September of 2019. Index Ventures led the round, a leading Venture Capital firm behind iconic companies like Slack, Dropbox, Etsy, and Squarespace.

Good timing...

When COVID hit in 2020, they saw a surge in customers needing to implement contact-free workflow and ditch pen/paper. Shop Owner and ShopMonkey user Jesse Whitsell said, "Shopmonkey allow us to run the business with minimal to no physical contact with customers."

Less than one year after their Series A, ShopMonkey attracted one of the best vertical SaaS investors in the game, Bessemer Venture Partners. They raised a $25M round off of the COVID momentum and shortly after hit the 100+ employee mark.

Two years after hitting 1,000 auto shop customers, ShopMonkey crossed the 3,000 customer mark in 2021. What came with that? Well another MASSIVE round, with Bessemer doubling down with a $75M Series C.

Today, ShopMonkey says 5,000+ auto shops run on their SaaS platform. With public pricing in the $200 - $400 / month mark, I'd estimate they are in the $15-$20M Annual Recurring Revenue Range. With 200K+ auto shops in the U.S., ShopMonkey is still just scratching the surface...

I'm sure it's not all up & to the right for ShopMonkey. A few things I'd call out...

Auto Shops are very difficult to sell into.
Like any SaaS company that raised in 2021, I'd expect they have to really grow into their valuation given all the market contraction that's happened

I'm optimistic for ShopMonkey and excited to see how they develop over the next few years. It's obvious they've identified an underserved industry and are all-in on modernizing it. Cheers to @aiskandarian & the @Shopmonkeyio team. Excited to see what you all do next!

One vSaaS Breakdown:

Find an Industry. NOT AN IDEA.

Stop looking for a business "idea".

Start looking for an underserved industry.

The U.S. Census, Better Business Bureau, and G2 are all amazing places you can go to see a list of thousands of industries.

Find one, learn how it works, and solve a real problem with SaaS!

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