From RV Sales to Category Creation: How Zartico Reimagined B2B Sales During COVID

From RV Sales to Category Creation: How Zartico Reimagined B2B Sales During COVID

Imagine launching your B2B startup’s MVP in March 2020. Now imagine that your entire sales strategy revolves around trade shows. This was the crisis facing Zartico CEO Sarah Lehman. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, she shared how this moment of potential disaster became the catalyst for an unconventional approach to government sales.

The Trade Show Problem

“This is a travel tech B2B company that sold primarily at trade shows,” Sarah recalls of their initial strategy. By April 2020, with cash running low and no end to lockdowns in sight, the team faced an existential question: “How do you guys think we’re going to get some customers if the trade shows don’t come back?”

The RV Solution

The team’s response was radical: “We’re going to rent an RV, and we’re going to drive it cross country, and we’re going to bring the trade show to the people.” While other B2B companies retreated to Zoom calls, Zartico’s sales team “got together with a couple of folks, rented an RV, literally drove it to the parking lots of our customers, set up a small little trade show booth with a makeshift demo and some plants, socially distanced.”

This wasn’t just a creative sales tactic – it demonstrated deep understanding of their market. Sarah notes: “I am blown away at the passion and the commitment of the leaders of destination marketing management organizations… tourism in many instances is an underappreciated economic engine of our world.”

Breaking the GovTech Mold

The unconventional approach challenged traditional assumptions about government sales cycles. “While you think that Govtech, while that must be a twelve month process, we amassed a sales organization that had relationships in this industry. And so our average turn of a deal is between three to six months,” Sarah explains.

This speed came from understanding that government tourism officials aren’t typical bureaucrats. Their passion for their communities and desire for better tools made them receptive to innovative approaches, even during a crisis.

Product Evolution Under Pressure

The pandemic didn’t just change how Zartico sold – it transformed what they sold. “We launched under the premise of bring us all your data and we’ll put it nicely into a business intelligence tool to realizing during COVID what entities really needed was situational awareness, and they needed to know what was happening now, not what happened this past year from a reporting standpoint.”

This pivot from historical reporting to real-time insights proved crucial. Tourism organizations needed immediate data to navigate unprecedented circumstances, and Zartico’s ability to adapt their product quickly helped secure those early customers.

Building the Right Team

Key to their success was assembling a sales team with existing relationships and deep industry knowledge. This allowed them to close deals faster than typical GovTech companies and build trust during uncertain times. “Your processes, your people and systems don’t necessarily keep up with you,” Sarah notes, emphasizing the importance of having the right team from the start.

The Results

The strategy worked. Zartico signed their first several dozen customers during that summer road trip, laying the foundation for rapid growth. They’ve more than doubled revenue each year since, though they recently made the strategic decision to slow growth and strengthen their operational foundation.

For B2B founders facing their own market disruptions, Zartico’s story offers a powerful lesson: sometimes the most effective response to a crisis is embracing the seemingly ridiculous. When your standard playbook becomes impossible, the constraints themselves can guide you to more creative – and ultimately more effective – solutions.

The key is understanding your market deeply enough to know when breaking convention will be appreciated rather than rejected. As Sarah’s experience shows, even government buyers will embrace unusual approaches if they demonstrate genuine commitment to solving their problems.