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Devon Seacrest from ScoutSheet sat down with Brian Lee from Silicon Prairie News after his pitch at the Pipeline Entrepreneur Innovators Awards to talk about forming relationships and growing teams.

Seacrest first heard of Pipeline while out for sushi in downtown Lincoln. Coincidentally, it was the night before the application deadline and Blake Lawrence Joni Cobb from Pipeline were both in the restaurant. He met with Cobb at their table and was encouraged to apply. Seacrest says his last year in Pipeline has been hard to describe.

“You’re almost always just in the moment, jittery, ready to go.”

Seacrest isn’t a stranger to the stage, though. He spent his youth in the performing arts.

“I’ve kind of done some of this before and I like getting up there and being on the stage,” said Seacrest.

He definitely brought showmanship to his pitch, going against the advice of others and taking his chances with a live Facetime demo on stage–or so it seemed.

“I actually have to be honest with you, we staged it all,” said Seacrest. “We threw some magic in there and made sure we selected the right person and prerecorded it.”

What ScoutSheet does

ScoutSheet performs relationship mapping primarily for sales prospecting. Salespeople can map out their professional relationships and the people they know, and then find out who they don’t yet know that would be beneficial for doing business.

“The days of selling have changed with CRMs and the amount of information on the internet. Sales people are getting caught up and spending all their [time] searching online for things and it’s a very slow process,” said Seacrest. “Once you find the things, you can’t see how they connect to each other.”

ScoutSheet helps to build a friendlier process of selling and growing businesses.

“That’s our passion, helping startups and small businesses grow their business,” said Seacrest.

Forming the relationship

Relationships are important and having a middle person between a salesperson and a prospect is helpful. ScoutSheet’s tools help to assist with that introduction in a time when people aren’t likely to answer their phone if they receive a call from a number that they don’t recognize.

“We’re constantly getting blasted with all these emails, with all these phone calls and we’re not picking them up,” said Seacrest. “Conversion rates are decreasing.”

Once that initial relationship and trust is established, a sale is more likely to happen.

Sharing advice and experience

Seacrest is taking his experiences in Pipeline and listening to the advice available to him.

“One of the best pieces of advice that we got was from someone here in Pipeline that said we as humans are not dependent on the success or failure of our businesses,” said Seacrest. “Regardless of whether our business is great or it ends up failing, our friends will still love us, our family will still love us.”

His advice for other people starting businesses is simple: just do it and learn to appreciate the failures as much as the successes.

“I’ve probably [been] more blessed with the failures than I have the successes because we’ve learned what not to do and we’ve learned that even if you fail you keep going,” said Seacrest.

Having  already started 5 businesses  himself, Seacrest has plenty of first hand experience to share with other entrepreneurs.

“I think the more important [thing] is to take the time to build up a team,” said Seacrest.

He says that businesses take a long time to build so founders have to be in it for the long run. He sees businesses as long term ventures and not just products, and that people are important.

“Take the time to surround yourself with the people that you want to be with for the next five years.”