Bring structure to growth.
Deliver sales strategy, pipeline discipline, accurate forecasting, and practical leadership tailored to your business stage.
Fractional sales leadership · Cape Town
Commercial clarity for the messy middle of growth.
Zestli helps founders, CEOs, and revenue leaders turn sales complexity into a clearer, more repeatable growth system.
Senior commercial support. Practical execution.
The experience behind Zestli
Built from the inside.
Nicky Allen co-founded 33 Degrees, one of South Africa’s first digital agencies; managed the launch of Vodacom’s pioneering prepaid service; and became Yoyo’s first Head of Sales.
Today, she helps founders turn promising products into a more structured, effective commercial operation.
What is fractional sales leadership?
The senior sales leader you need, for the stage you are actually in.
Zestli offers fractional sales leadership, giving you senior sales guidance and structure without the commitment of a full-time hire. We help improve sales process, pipeline, forecasting, and team capability so your business can grow with confidence.
A strong fit when you need
Experienced direction with practical momentum.
- A seasoned outside perspective on sales strategy and execution.
- A practical bridge between founder-led selling and a professional sales function.
- Commercial operating rhythm before committing to a permanent executive hire.
- Accountability, coaching, and momentum without unnecessary hierarchy.
In practice / Instarc
Building the commercial foundations around strong technology.
Instarc builds technology that helps regulated businesses manage customer onboarding and compliance. Its leadership had deep technical expertise and needed to build the commercial structure around the product. Nicky worked with the team on its sales playbook, early marketing, CRM and pipeline discipline.
Client perspective
As CEO of a startup with deep technical expertise but limited sales experience, Nicky has been invaluable in helping us build our commercial capability from the ground up. She has worked closely with our senior leadership team to understand our product and target market, and brought the experience, structure and practical advice needed to turn that into a functioning sales platform.
Her work has covered everything from our sales playbook and top-of-funnel marketing to our website and marketing assets, CRM implementation, and establishing the structure and discipline needed to manage our sales pipeline and new hires effectively.
Nikki brings a no-nonsense, concise approach to everything she does. She is high energy, highly productive and, importantly, gets things done quickly. She has made a significant contribution to helping us turn a technically strong business into a more commercially focused one.
Jonathan Revell · Instarc CEO and former Managing Director at Morgan Stanley, London
How Zestli helps
Clear direction.
Practical commercial support.
Support across sales leadership, marketing, team development and useful AI workflows.
Connect marketing and sales.
Establish early-phase marketing to align commercial conversations and drive focused growth.
Make more time for customers.
Implement AI-driven workflows to minimize repetitive work in research, preparation, follow-up, and CRM updates.
Help your people sell with confidence.
Provide coaching, training, and ongoing support to build confident, high-performing sales teams.
Set your team up for success.
Design and implement CRM platforms such as HubSpot and Pipedrive to empower your sales team.
Attract and Secure Top Sales Talent
Interview and vet candidates to help you hire high-caliber sales professionals with confidence.
You may need Zestli if
Your people are working hard, but the commercial system is not working clearly enough.
Your founder is still the best salesperson in the business.
Your sales team is active, but the pipeline is not convincing.
Marketing and sales are working hard, but not working together.
Practical AI for sales teams
AI should make your sales process sharper, not stranger.
AI is most effective for automating repetitive, information-intensive sales tasks such as research, preparation, follow-up, CRM updates, and proposal support. These activities often consume significant time for sales teams.
Zestli enables teams to pinpoint optimal opportunities for AI integration within their sales processes, leading to clearer insights and greater efficiency.
Map the workflow
Document how commercial work actually happens, not simply how the process says it should happen.
Find the friction
Identify repeat work, quality gaps, slow handovers, missed follow-up, and unclear ownership.
Prioritise useful cases
Focus on the workflows with the biggest impact and least disruption for the team.
How we work together
A practical path from clarity to action.
Understand
Start with the business, the people and the growth challenge.
Focus
Agree which commercial priorities matter most.
Structure
Clarify the plan, responsibilities and ways of working.
Execute
Work alongside the team to put the plan into practice.
Refine
Review progress and adapt as the business develops.
Meet Nicky Allen
Commercial operator. Founder.
Sales leader. Problem solver.
Nicky is the founder of Zestli, a boutique commercial advisory practice based in Cape Town. She helps businesses sell new ideas, build commercial teams, open enterprise conversations, and turn early opportunity into structured growth.
Her work crosses telecoms, digital media, fintech, SaaS, edtech, rewards, loyalty, enterprise sales, channel sales, and international business development. She brings sales experience, marketing fluency, founder empathy, and a coaching instinct into the commercial moments that matter.
Practical commercial support
- Sales leadership
- Sales enablement
- Sales team coaching and training
- Sales candidate assessment and interviewing
- Sales processes and CRM evaluation and adoption
- Early-phase marketing setup
- AI sales workflow processes
Experience and proof
Commercial experience across Telecoms, SaaS, Fintech, Edtech and Digital Advertising.
International Strategic Account Executive
Kami
Managed international growth across EMEA and Asia, developing reseller, channel, and international school markets.
Founder
33 Degrees Digital Advertising
Co-founded 33 Degrees, one of South Africa's first digital advertising agencies. It later became Gloo and is now Oglivy Interactive.
First Head of Sales
Yoyo
Grew the enterprise client base for rewards and cash payment APIs during a high-growth phase.
Launch Product Manager
Vodacom Prepaid
Product managed the launch of Vodacom Prepaid, a world first, at the time and presented it as a global case study to the entire Vodafone group in London.
In their words
Experience built on relationships.
“Nicky led international partnership efforts with an impressive blend of strategic insight, deep sales experience, and swift operational execution. She loves connecting with people, has an amazing ability to talk with anyone about anything and has successfully built relationships with channel partners, resellers, and education networks across diverse regions, including Dubai, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong. Not only was she skilled at navigating complex procurement environments and varied compliance requirements, but she also approached every interaction with cultural sensitivity, authenticity, professionalism and long-term vision, and fun.”
“There is no doubt in my mind that I owe my career in Product to the multi talented Nicky Allen. You saw something in me and you took me under your wing. It was real. We had fun. Thank you. Happy woman's day.”
Let’s talk
Start a conversation.
Tell me a little about your business and what you would like to move forward. The simplest way to reach me is by email.