Founding story

Alex sold his previous company and got interested in buying laundromats. The deeper he got into the industry, the more he realized something was missing.

"There was no solution to help me run and scale the businesses," Alex says. "So I thought it was better to build for the operators than do one myself."

That's how Cents started. An all-in-one platform for garment care retailers in the US.

The first round feedback

When Cents raised their first round, investors gave Alex direct feedback: "You don't have a scalable business until you can sell them and yourselves and actually walk into the stores and show the value."

So Cents made it a company requirement. Every employee goes to stores, runs the counter, acts as an operator, an employee, and a customer.

"There's no better high than selling your system, especially to an SMB," Alex says.

It's personal. Sometimes operators call your baby ugly. But that firsthand experience matters.

The trade show still works

SMB operators like genuine connection. They also deliver their share of "hang up, F U, don't talk to me again" responses.

Trade shows work. "When we can go to trade shows, when we can be personal to our operators, it goes a long way," Alex explains.

In a world obsessed with remote selling and automation, Cents shows up in person. That's where their customers are ready to talk.

The question they're still solving

"How do we reach out to as many operators as possible while conveying the kind of business that we are?"

Alex calls this the million-dollar question. Maybe billion-dollar.

"A lot of people come to Cents because of our product, and they stay at Cents because of our people."

The BDR or salesperson is the first human experience. That first interaction sets the tone, and what works at $10M in revenue looks completely different at $100M or $500M.

"We're always trying to think about and improve on" how to scale personalization without losing what makes customers stay.

The five-person team was one person

Early on, Alex needed to build customer confidence without having an actual team yet.

His solution: "You have five AEs, five support reps, five CS reps, and five different phone systems that say 'press one for this, two for this, three for that,' and they all go to my phone. They all are me with different photos and different things like that."

Customers thought they were calling into a full team. They got incredibly personal attention from one person who knew everything about their account. They felt confident they weren't betting their business on a tiny startup.

"Maybe the inverse of scaling personalization," Alex says. But it worked.

We haven't nailed it

Most founders won't admit this. Alex does.

"I don't think there has been a point where I'm like, 'We've nailed it.' The thing I've learned from every scaled sales organization is there's always something that they're not doing well enough and should be improving."

There's always something on a spreadsheet that shouldn't be there. Someone doing something that could be done better.

"We're always trying to improve and get better, and hopefully every year we look back and say, 'Man, we were so much better this year than we were last.'"

That's the reality of SMB sales. The operators calling your baby ugly are the ones keeping you honest.

What this means

People matter. Conversion rates matter. Efficiency metrics matter. 

But Alex's approach shows what else matters in SMB sales: showing up where your customers are. Staying close to the business. Being willing to answer five different phone lines with five different personas if that's what it takes.

Local operators buy differently. Cents sells differently.

Selling to field service SMBs?

Orbital covers the field service businesses - the laundromats, garment care shops, and local SMBs that platforms like Zoominfo or Apollo can’t reach. Book a demo.