Quick Summary:

Salesmsg just made the Inc. 5000 list for the fourth year in a row. Here’s how we did it the hard way—and how we’d do it differently if we were starting today.

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Salesmsg just earned a spot on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies for the fourth year in a row.

That’s a milestone worth celebrating. 

But if you’re thinking that we made the Inc. 5000 list through polished marketing playbooks and a finely tuned growth engine from day one… that’s not how it happened.

We took the hard way.

The Hard Way: Building the Product While Building the Company

From the very beginning, Salesmsg has been a product-led company.

That’s not a tagline. It’s a way of operating where the product isn’t just one part of the business, it is the business. The product leads the growth, shapes the strategy, and pulls the company forward.

For us, that meant our Salesmsg platform has been our focus from day #1.

We obsessed over every detail of our texting-and-calling platform. Our relentless product team lived in the trenches with our Salesmsg customers—listening, asking questions, and constantly shipping new texting-and-calling updates. 

We built Canny boards so customers could tell us exactly which features they wanted.
We set up interviews to understand their pain points.
We asked for feedback—and we got it, sometimes raw and unfiltered.

Then we acted on it.

• Step by step.
• Feature by feature.
• Upgrade after upgrade.
• Week after week.
• For years.

That’s how we grew.

718% Growth, Without a Marketing Engine 

The first time we made the Inc. 5000 list—back in 2022—Salesmsg had grown 718% in just three years.

How? Simple. Word of mouth. 

At the time, we didn’t have a marketing team. We didn’t run elaborate campaigns. We didn’t even use our own product for marketing, because we were too busy building it for customers.

Every ounce of energy went into making Salesmsg better—more reliable, more measurable, more automated, and more integrated into the tools teams already use. We weren’t crafting clever taglines. We were building features customers needed yesterday.

And it worked.

Customers started spreading the word about what Salesmsg could do—especially when paired with their favorite integrations like HubSpot and Slack.

It’s the kind of advertising you can’t buy—only earn. And it’s the reason we grew so fast.

Fast Forward to Today…

Eight years in, Salesmsg looks very different. 

• We have an award-winning support team solving problems in real time.
• A customer success team that walks every new customer through onboarding and sets them up for success.
• A marketing team who not only understands Salesmsg—they use it daily to connect with leads, customers, and partners.
• A sales team that doesn’t just run demos—they craft complete texting and calling solutions designed around each customer’s workflows.
• And yes, the same award-winning product team who still ships features and upgrades every Thursday without fail.

The foundation is still product-led, and we’re still growing fast (275% in three years). But now it’s supported by teams who can scale the vision.

If we had to do it all over again… we’d still build the product relentlessly. But we wouldn’t wait for years to add a marketing engine to that product growth.

Instead, we’d also use Salesmsg from day one to textize every part of our business.

What It Means to “Textize” Your Business

This idea of “textizing your business” came from our CEO, Chris Brisson. He created this strategy based on his work with thousands of businesses over the last 15 years.

When you textize your business, you add texting—powered by AI and automation—into every stage of your customer journey.

It means you’re not just texting. You’re building a two-way, high-response channel that:

• Captures texting leads the moment they find you
  
• Connects instantly with personalized follow-up texts
  
• Converts at the right moment with the right offer
  
• Cares for customers long after the sale

Textizing isn’t about sending more texts. It’s about creating better-timed, better-targeted conversations, so you’re always present in the places where customers actually respond. 

If we’d done that from day one, we could have grown even faster. 

What We’d Do Differently if We Started Over… 

Now that Salesmsg exists, we’d use our own product to grow even faster from the beginning. For example, we would…

1. Grow a Texting List from Day One

We would start by capturing texting leads.

From the day we put up our site, we would be collecting textable phone numbers alongside email addresses on every web form. (And we'd get their permission to text them too.) Why? Because everyone you can get to raise their hand and say “yes you can text me,” is gold. These aren’t random contacts. They’re a direct-response channel you can tap any time.

How Salesmsg makes this work: We built end-to-end integrations with the top CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, ActiveCampaign and others. This way, you can easily sync your contacts to Salesmsg, and start texting—once you have their permission.

Takeaway: Emails get ignored. A clean, opted-in texting list is a growth asset that compounds from day one.

2. Qualify Leads Instantly with AI Agents

Starting from day #1, we would employ AI Agents to respond for us. When a new lead fills out a form, AI Agents would text back immediately. Not a “Thanks for reaching out,” but a real qualifying conversation. AI Agents ask the right questions, and book demos in minutes.

How Salesmsg makes this work: Our built-in AI Agents use your business documents and saved replies to make each conversation relevant. We built an AI Knowledge Base into Salesmsg, so you can upload these documents and train your AI Agents to respond accordingly. That’s how AI Agents qualify leads in seconds, even while your human team sleeps, so you never lose a potential customer because you didn’t respond fast enough. 

Takeaway: Speed isn’t a “nice to have”—it’s the dealbreaker. Respond in under 5 minutes, or someone else will. AI Agents make it possible to do this from the beginning.

3. Don’t Wait to Send Reminder Texts

‍‍Before every meeting, demo, or webinar, we would write a short, open-ended reminder text that’s impossible to ignore: “Still coming to our meeting today?”

For demos, this gives your would-be clients a chance to reschedule. For webinars or meetings, this encourages them to show up on time and ready to learn what you’re teaching.

Small, personal check-ins like this reduce no-shows by 20% or more.

How Salesmsg makes this work: Automated texts trigger directly from CRM workflows—so every booked meeting gets the right incentive without manual scheduling.

Takeaway: If you’re putting in the work of running webinars, meetings, sales appointments or demos, you should be sending text reminders to make sure people show up.

4. Send Automated Texts with Every Email Campaign

Email alone is easy to miss. But when paired with 1–2 timely text messages, response rates spike. A quick “Just sent you the details by email, did you see it?” drives opens and replies.

If you’re textizing your business, you don’t wait to add texts to your email campaigns. You build in texting to your email campaigns from launch day. 

How Salesmsg makes this work: With our Salesmsg widget, you can quickly add text messages to your workflows inside HubSpot, Salesforce, and ActiveCampaign. It only takes a few clicks once you’re set up. Or, you can also use our Salesmsg workflows to build this right inside our platform.

Takeaway: Multi-channel isn’t about adding noise—it’s about sending the right message in the right channel.

5. Close Deals Faster with the Right Text

Why bother sending random offers when you can send the exact message your customers need to see to buy?

That's what you can do with texting. With Salesmsg, you can send targeted offers only to leads and customers most likely to say yes, based on actions, history, or pipeline stage. It’s the easiest way to send specific offers or just close deals faster.

How Salesmsg makes this work: Trigger messages from specific events in your CRM like HubSpot. For example, “If the deal is stuck for 14 days, send a limited-time offer.” Use merge fields to personalize with first names, company names, and even custom CRM data.

Takeaway: Targeting isn’t just for ads. The right timing makes texts feel like a personal one-on-one text. Not an advertisement. 

6. Reviews, Referrals & Radically Better Support

‍‍Customer care is everything you do after the sale: answering questions fast, sending onboarding tips, checking in, and asking for reviews, case studies and referrals. You can do all that with texting.

How Salesmsg makes this work: Run your support, sales, and marketing from one shared Salesmsg inbox—or several. AI Agents handle the first response and hand off seamlessly to humans when needed.

Takeaway: Retention is marketing. Every delighted customer is a future referral who will help scale your company.

Why All This Matters

None of this alone will land you on the Inc. 5000 list, but it will remove one of the biggest growth bottlenecks: getting the right message to the right person at the right time, in a way they’ll actually see and respond to.

When we started, doing all of this required multiple tools, multiple teams, and a lot more manual work. We didn’t have that luxury. We focused on the product and grew slowly but steadily through customer trust.

Today’s teams don’t have to choose. With the right systems in place, you can focus on product, market, and positioning, while building a direct, high-response connection with leads and customers from day one.

Four Years Running and Just Getting Started 

Making the Inc. 5000 list once is an honor. Making it four years in a row proves our approach—listening to customers, building for them, and creating real connections—works.

But this isn’t the finish line.

The next five years will bring bigger shifts in communication. AI Agents will become standard. Customers will expect text-first interactions. And the businesses that adapt fastest will win.

That’s what we’re building at Salesmsg.

To our customers, partners, and team—thank you for trusting us, challenging us, and helping us grow. Here’s to doing it the simple way from day one.

If you’re ready to skip the hard way and “textize” your business from day one, start your free trial of Salesmsg today. See how much faster growth can be when every lead and customer gets the right message at the right time.