Posted on

BPO Talent To Be Groomed For Inside Sales In SaaS India

With ongoing expeditious advancements in communication, social media, cloud, mobility and related technologies – sales is on a continuous path for digital transformation. This is going to place inside sales teams at a strategic position in sales and marketing process, in terms of significance. A shift is being observed from field sales model to inside sales model which is attracting field sales guys towards inside sales jobs. Therefore, the Inside Sales industry is moving towards a revolution worldwide.

Inside Sales Teams to Play a Greater Role in Sales

Inside sales is quite strategic to India’s GDP growth. Indian BPO industry alone contributes 1% of India’s GDP where professionals are majorly involved in B2C processes including inside sales. IT/ITES and software companies have been early adopters of Inside Sales process for B2B leads generation. With digital sales transformation happening for the digitally dependent buyers, the inside sales teams are going to play a greater role in sales process, as more tasks of the marketing and field sales teams have come under the scope of Inside Sales teams.

SaaS India – Early Adopters of Inside Sales Technology

SaaS, Technology and Professional Services companies in the western world are the first ones to acknowledge a digitally connected buyer by adopting Inside Sales Technology. The traditional businesses like manufacturing companies in US are exploring how Inside Sales tech may add value to their sales process.

However, in the Indian market, mainly SaaS industry is at the forefront on trying their hands on advanced Inside Sales Technology for accelerated sales. The others in the technology industry are going to follow this trend in near future in India. Traditional industries are going to take some time to change their sales processes as their buyers are slowly becoming internet savvy for business purchases.

Inside Sales to Play Significant Role in SaaS India

As per Google Accel SaaS Report 2016 – SaaS India is expected to grow to $50 billion in next 10 years while Indian SMB SaaS is expected to rise from current $600 million to $10 billion in the said period.

SaaS_projection.png

Source: Google Accel Report – SaaS India, Global SMB Market, $50B in 2025

SaaS industry has a strong need for inside sales professionals. As per the report, strong workforce in the BPO sector gives access to talent pool of around 6,20,000 Inside Sales professionals, out of which 1,20,000 are inside sales ready and 5,00,000 are skill ready.

Workforce-1.png

Source: Google Accel Report – SaaS India, Global SMB Market, $50B in 2025

I personally believe that 6,20,000 from the BPO sector, who are assessed as ready for SaaS as per report, need to be groomed for making them sales skill ready as only telecalling skills don’t make a professional acceptable for Sales Development Rep’s role in SaaS Sales.

Inside Sales Talent – A Key Challenge for SaaS India  

SDRs are expected to understand the Sales Processes. They should have the knack of using Inside Sales Tools like Social Media, Email, Phone, CRM and other smart selling tools. The working environment of B2B Inside Sales teams is significantly different from BPO scenario, where the reps are much more controlled, the jobs are temporary, the performance metrics are more around calls numbers and talk time, the customer engagements are very short lived, and end consumers are served with products & services.

This vast difference would require a complete psychological shift in the skills of a BPO professional who aspires to work in the SaaS sales space. They would need to be trained on Inside Sales function from scratch to be helpful, empathetic, B2B marketing and sales process oriented, B2B product/services domain expert, and digital sales intensive to successfully become an SDR. SDR will progress to become an account executive with quota around end closures and finally managing SDRs.

Aspirants looking to fill Inside Sales Talent Gap

There is a need to align the professionals by training for B2B Inside Sales function to serve the evolving SaaS industry in India.

I am associated with AA-ISP, American Association of Inside Sales Professionals as the President for India Chapter. The mission of AA-ISP is to advance the profession of Inside Sales. AA-ISP Gurgaon and Noida Chapter is supported by Inside Sales Box to create an ecosystem for Inside Sales professionals for businesses.

If you are a BPO/ Inside Sales/ Marketing and Sales professional or a Technology Entrepreneur, who is aspiring to stay abreast with best IS practices, discover digital sales tools & technologies, and explore jobs and business opportunities locally and globally – I welcome you to be a part of AA-ISP India.

Posted on

SaaS India struggles with Inbound Lead Response

As Indian SAAS companies are aspiring to make a global footprint, the sales growth can make or break their goals. Companies who respond fastest as compared to competitors always have first mover advantage to close sales. According to the Harvard Business Review, companies that try to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving queries are nearly 7 times as likely to have meaningful conversations with key decision makers as firms that try to contact prospects even an hour later.

We surveyed 90 funded SAAS companies; the observations were quite shocking as far as their inbound lead response is concerned. Only 26% companies (24 out of 90) companies cared to respond to inbound leads. Given the kind of investment companies make in their digital marketing, money goes down the drain if the inbound leads are not tapped efficiently. Even if the leads are contacted, the time to respond makes all the difference.

Inbound Digital Marketing – A must for Generating Leads!

Organizations rely significantly on inbound digital marketing for their businesses. B2B companies invest from $25 to $500 for generating an inbound lead while B2C companies invest from $5 to $25 for the same. The money spent goes down the drain if inbound leads are not responded in an efficient way. The important questions for you to answer are – How many of your inbound leads are never contacted as they get lost during data transfer to sales team? How many inbound leads are loosely passed on to Sales reps to contact with incomplete or wrong information? How many of them are contacted when the prospect have lost interest in you or chosen a competitor?

The answers to these questions will define the ROI of your inbound marketing efforts. However, the good news is that if you are effective in inbound lead response management you are on the top of your business as chances are pegged on higher side in converting inbound sales leads rather than outbound leads for which investments are even on a much higher side.

Time is all what makes a difference!

We (Texo Team) conducted a research on funded B2B SAAS companies in India to analyse the inbound sales readiness. 90 SAAS companies were identified as funded. Web forms on the websites of the identified companies were filled and the responses were logged. We made an analysis on the data and have come out with an interesting insight on the current state of inbound sales processes in these companies or any other B2B company which may be used as a reference point for improvement through process, people and/ or technology.

We found that 8 companies choose to directly call the prospects and 4 companies choose to directly send personalized emails without sending an auto response. 4 companies sent personalized emails along with an auto response. Overall, only 26% companies (24 out of 90) responded to inbound leads out of which 67% (16) adopted calls as the mode of contact and 33% (8) used email as the mode of communication.

Only 4 out of 90 companies responded in less than 10 minutes. And only 7 companies responded in an hour. Click here to download TEXO SAAS Inbound Lead Response Report- 2015 for free and get deeper insights of the research report including the best SAAS companies in India who scored high in lead response research.

Way to Efficiently Manage your Inbound Leads

Inbound Leads are the prospects who have shown any kind of interest in your products/services by making a contact at any of the buyer stage. Marketers and sales reps have to align their engagement strategies with respect to the buyer stage. But what can they do about the 70% of the buyer’s journey that they’re missing out on? They are not able to correctly judge the prospect’s buying stage when they make a contact and hence not able to employ an effective engagement strategy.

And how can a tool like Sales Engagement Hub integrated with Marketing Automation Tools help marketers and sales reps keep pace with their buyers? The level of interest may vary depending on the buying stage the prospect is in, and hence different prospects need to be addressed differently. Factors to be considered for engaging with inbound leads are Response Time, Mode of Communication, Information to be shared, and Frequency of follow-ups and so on. A prospect in the consideration stage would prefer information about products, solutions, services, and case studies, and would need longer follow ups over email (preferably) or call. However, a prospect in the decision stage would be more interested in having information on solutions and pricing, and would need consistent follow-ups (shorter) over call (preferably) or email. Sales Engagement Hub integrated with marketing automation tools help the sales reps and marketers in effectively engaging with prospects.

 

Posted on

Stop Wasting your Hard-Earned Inbound Leads

Inbound Digital Marketing – A must for Generating Leads!

Organizations rely significantly on inbound digital marketing for their business. One of the most popular marketing channel used is Pay-Per-Click Campaigns, wherein inbound leads are captured as soon as a visitor clicks on sponsored landing pages/Google Adwords links and fills the details to access specific resources/offers. Direct inbound traffic leads are generated through Newsletters, Blogs, Contact Us, Demo Pages, Case Studies over website/ social networking sites where the visitor expresses an interest by filling their details over website to access the required information or request for a personal contact. Another way to generate direct inbound leads traffic is through organic content publication, SEO.

Getting an ROI from your Inbound Digital Marketing?

B2B companies invest between $25 to $500 for generating an inbound lead while B2C companies invest between $5 to $25 for the same. The money spent goes down the drain if inbound leads are not responded in an efficient way. The important questions for you to answer are – How many of your inbound leads are never contacted as they get lost during data transfer to sales team? As per the latest research done by Texo for SAAS companies based in India, close to 70% companies didn’t respond to inbound leads. How many inbound leads are loosely passed on to Sales reps to contact with incomplete or wrong information? How many of them are contacted when the prospect have lost interest in you or chosen a competitor? Based on Texo research, only 3.7% companies had a lead response time within 10 minutes and only 6.5% companies responded within an hour. How many prospects block you after your first sales contact?

The answers to these questions will define the ROI of your inbound marketing efforts. However, the good news is that if you are effective in inbound lead response management you are on the top of your business as chances are pegged on higher side in converting inbound sales leads rather than outbound leads for which investments are even on a much higher side.

Way to Efficiently Manage your Inbound Leads

We’ve all heard this popularly-quoted statistic: 70% of the buyer’s journey is complete before a buyer even reaches out to sales (SiriusDecisions). What are buyers doing during this time?

Prospect gain awareness about their own need, and the vendors available in the market who may cater to the specific need. Buyers are usually looking for educational material, customer reviews, etc., at this stage. Prospect then considers the narrowed down companies and their products and services based on their requirements. They then perform a second level of research on company’s specific offerings to see how the companies can address particular pain points. This involves comparison of shortlisted companies’ products and services. Buyers generally consume MOFU content around features, case studies, and comparison charts. Prospect finally decides to choose a vendor. Prospect looks for more practical and on the ground stuff to substantiate their decision. They look for demonstrations, customer testimonials/ references, reliability of customer support to assess which solution suits their needs and budget. BOFU content drives the prospects to make a final contact for placing the request for buying interest. Marketers job involves understanding what their buyers are doing, and how they can engage with their buyers and help them move from one stage of the cycle to the next.

Inbound Leads are the prospects who have shown any kind of interest in your products/services by making a contact at any of the buyer stage. Marketers and sales reps have to align their engagement strategies with respect to the buyer stage. But what can they do about the 70% of the buyer’s journey that they’re missing out on? They are not able to correctly judge  the prospect’s buying stage when they make a contact and hence not able to employ an effective engagement strategy.

And how can a tool like Sales Engagement Hub integrated with Marketing Automation Tools help marketers and sales reps keep pace with their buyers? The level of interest may vary depending on the buying stage the prospect is in, and hence different prospects need to be addressed differently. Factors to be considered for engaging with inbound leads are Response Time, Mode of Communication, Information to be shared, Frequency of follow-ups and so on. A prospect in the consideration stage would prefer information about products, solutions, services, and case studies, and would need longer follow-ups over email (preferably) or call. However, a prospect in the decision stage would be more interested in having information on solutioning and pricing, and would need consistent follow-ups (shorter) over call (preferably) or email. Sales Engagement Hub integrated with marketing automation tools help the sales reps and marketers in effectively engaging with prospects.

Posted on

Are You Ready to Take up the Entrepreneurial Challenge in Technology?

There has been a rise in technology entrepreneurship as a movement since last 10 years in India before which new technology businesses were essentially due to business expansion by corporate and business communities in India. Now, we are witnessing the rise entrepreneurial community at grass root level comprising of technocrats driven by innovation and passion to make a strong impact on socio-economic development of India. A number of constraints which previously acted as a road block to India’s Entrepreneurship Story have been overcome by paradigm shift in technological, business and political environment. India is producing more number of quality engineering and technology professionals than ever before who are empowered with technology and information to solve problems at the regional, national and global level. Capital which is one of the key factors for starting and running business is not a barrier now because of better availability of funding than ever before.

Now as one can expect conducive conditions in India to start and run his business, the question arises; Is today’s technology professional ready to take up the entrepreneurial challenge in such a highly competitive business environment? This question intrigues us to ponder upon the key skills professionals should particularly develop to face the common business challenges and emerge as a successful entrepreneur.

Developing a solution that solves problems

The best entrepreneurs don’t come up with great ideas, they solve market needs. Unless a technological innovation doesn’t satisfy a substantial need, it doesn’t make any business sense to start business on that idea. Engineering and technology professionals are trained to solve problems. New businesses are born when technology solves the problem being faced by the public and corporate. Hence, the success of every business is management’s ability in taking the solution to the market and selling the same which is bound to happen if solution fills a void. Professionals should develop marketing skills to assess the market needs and commercial viability of the solutions in the real time market.

Know when to detach from engineering function

A not so perfect technology solution is not among the common reasons for business failures. Technologists as entrepreneurs need to know when to detach themselves from engineering function and focus on business aspects. You need to focus on customers first before maximizing the functionality. Technocrats engrossed with the engineering tend to lose business focus. I could observe business failure from my personal experience with a solar power consulting start up* in India where due to excess focus of the top management on engineering function as they themselves used to spend considerable time in engineering job that they lost time for focusing on customers and developing new business. Technical person can’t expect to do an engineering job themselves all the time. However, you need to focus on business and mentor the technical professionals you employ to increase functionality gradually. You should understand and learn to prioritize and manage diverse business functions like business development, project management, human resources management etc.

The hardest part is the ability of taking the solution to market and sell

There is a famous old adage by engineers, “If we build it, they will come”, doesn’t hold true today. However, today’s reality is that unless the value is proposed appropriately to the targeted customers, customers will not get connected to the offerings and even if got connected but the offerings are not communicated aggressively through multiple channels available customers will be swayed by  competitors’ offerings due to effective marketing and customer engagement. With excessively available information these days, selling is always required. You need to understand the marketing channels (print, digital, radio, tv) to select apt channels and use them effectively. Secondly, you should learn selling aspects related their industry, effective selling process, negotiation skills and related analytical and sales support tools like CRM, BI, web analytics, social media analytics for prospecting, making sales closures and serving customers.

Relationships matter

A common personality attribute particularly observed among engineering and technology professionals is introversion which can be quite detrimental to the business success as no business survives without relationships since it’s of utmost important to get out there, build relationships with suppliers to supply goods and services to serve your customers, financiers to fund you, employees to help you attain business goals, customers to trust you for buying your goods and services, mentors to give you strategic direction and corporate & government agencies to support your business and partner with you. The good new news is that introvert professional can turn into extrovert one by taking proper training and practicing. You need to understand the value of relationships in business and develop related skills to develop a mutually beneficial relationship with the stakeholders.

Keeping your control to keep your idea alive

As an entrepreneur, you would never like to be in the situation as faced by Steve Jobs where he was asked to leave the company he founded by the board of directors. Outside funding causes loss of control and excessive pressure to deliver. Funding is quite indispensable for a start-up during the growth stage to scale up the business. Investors’ interest lies in earning returns from the money invested in the growth of company by scaling a proven business model of entrepreneurs, and they tend to avoid funding for R&D. You need to learn business, financial and legal implications of funding to able to bring in the right amount of funding from the right kind of investors to achieve common business interests to keep the idea alive for which the venture was started.

Today stars are in your favor to be entrepreneurs. In this well connected world by technology where everybody has easy access to information, the skills can be developed and insights can be gathered quickly by already trained professionals like engineers and technologists to face the toughest challenges thrown by highly competitive business environment at national, regional and global level. With the economy on the growth stage in India, we need more and more technology entrepreneurs to satisfy our rising demands and solve the basic as well as intricate problems using technological solutions. It is time for you to make a real contribution to India’s socio-economic development.