A new Microsoft ISV partner on the block, Wych Money helps customers optimise money and manage savings, investments, and spending more effectively. The platform is available on phones and smart home devices, helping people understand where their money goes and how to reduce fees.
The company promotes its 7 steps to financial success as a way for customers to take control of their future.
Wych Money CEO Dermot Butterfield recently completed the Partner Elevate SalesPlay On-Ramp™ program, so we virtually sat down to hear about his experience.
Before joining the program, Wych Money did not really have a standardised or shared sales process within the business.
As a start-up, the team had a lot of experienced people with ideas, but needed the right processes in place for its level of maturity. Fostering people and their ideas while also creating more structure in the way the business developed was important.
The leadership team also had very different ways of communicating the message. Depending on who you spoke to, the messaging could sound technical, business-focused, or sales-led. That made it difficult to deliver a consistent message about the product’s value.
We knew that the information we were producing was valuable, we just needed to distil that message to the right audience for it to have an impact.
For Wych Money, it began with creating a more shared process and a more consistent way to communicate product value internally and externally.
Because Wych Money was already speaking with its Microsoft Partner Manager about listing on the Marketplace, the first assumption was that the program would be technical and Marketplace-related.
After talking it through, it became clear that the program was much more business-focused, which came as a surprise — but also made it more interesting.
Yes. The biggest hesitation was the level of time commitment.
As a CEO, Dermot was concerned about losing large blocks of time from the day-to-day running of the business. Previous experiences with other programs had created concern that this could turn into a much bigger commitment than expected.
In practice, that did not happen. Once the work was broken down into checkpoints, the program only required around one or two hours per week, which felt very manageable.
One of the biggest impacts Wych Money saw was around process and communication.
Dermot explained that, with a technical background, the technical conversation felt natural. But when it came to sales conversations, there were clear gaps. Going through the SalesPlay On-Ramp program highlighted those gaps and showed that while the business had valuable information, it could be communicated much more effectively.
Now, we have built a more structured approach to communicating our product and its value, and we have a clearer understanding of the message we are communicating.
Wych Money’s experience suggests it starts with a more structured sales process and a clearer, more consistent message about what the product does and why it matters.
Because the product was not live yet, the team used the program to prepare to hit the ground running.
That preparation paid off.
Now as we approach launch, we are lining up potential customers. We are much further along than we could have ever expected in such a short period of time. From the chaos of COVID, to having a pipeline of our core customers, we are in a very good position.
Wych Money also attributes much of its growing relationship with Microsoft to its improved ability to communicate value as a business. The company says it moved from having a non-existent relationship with Microsoft to having access to key people who helped facilitate the partnership.
For Wych Money, it came from improving value communication, clarifying the message, and preparing the business with a more structured sales process before the product was fully live.
For Microsoft ISV partners that are struggling to create a framework around how to best communicate unique value, Wych Money’s experience shows the benefit of putting structure around process, messaging, and customer communication.
The biggest lesson from this case study is simple: when a business improves product value messaging and standardises how it communicates, it becomes easier to build confidence, strengthen partnerships, and create a pipeline of core customers.