October 24, 2015. A Saturday after Dussehra, and 59th roundtable of awesomeness in lively office of Zapty.
Not only Sanjay (founder of Zapty) was great, offices of Zapty welcomed us with a lot of natural light. Then, introductions happened and people started to get comfortable around each other.
It was Samir, founder of Shop Socially, who flew from Pune a day before, was going to share the things that worked (and didn’t work) for him at ShopSocially when they built a team to sell to US companies from India.
PS: He also has sales people in US, but we will get into that as well.
We were scheduled to start at 11:00 AM, but kinda waited till 11:15 to start. I call this Bangalore Standard Time (not really late, but a little late)
Then I clarified certain things about Round Table and set the context to make sure everyone understands it’s more like a discussion than a lecture session. Also, it was clarified that its a safe place to share and nothing that is sensitive will leave the walls of that room. That made everyone attending it comfortable and also people were ready with their discussion hats on.
Then Samir shared some great processes which he has developed over 20+ years of experience.
Ohh man, if I could only describe it in words, you should have been there to feel the transparency we saw in an Entrepreneur. The goal of each function inside organization was clear, more like crystal clear. Tons and tons of questions were asked and we all shared some great insights.
Well, here is my attempt to put some of the learnings we had in words:
- Marketing is Lead Generation: From beginning, Samir made it clear. In his business, marketing is Lead Gen. Branding is a byproduct of marketing, but marketing is for one thing and one thing only, Lead Generation. So, all efforts are measured on this parameter.
- A simple Motto – Get conversations going: Samir pointed this out multiple times during discussion, getting conversation going is the single most important step in a sales cycle. Do whatever it takes to get conversation going, if your prospective customer is not responding to product/service/problem A, show them B, then C. Do anything to get conversation going.
- 5 min callback to warm leads: So, this is a 2 part lesson. Number one “define” as clearly as you can, what is a “warm” lead. And then making sure 5 minute callback to warm lead. Now, both of these tasks are important, and success of your “sales” department depends on this. You can define “warm” leads too loosely and your sales team would end up wasting a lot of their time. Or you could end up defining your “warm” lead to tightly, and end up leaving a lot of money on the table. So, constant feedback is super necessary and should be part of the process.
- For a product, IT HAS TO LOOK STUNNING..PERIOD: I don’t think this needs any explanation, but when he said this, he was really clear on one thing. No compromise on this, its HAS to look stunning.
- Where to start? Email List: We spent quite some time on how to do this in a scalable way and what are great do’s and don’t around it.
- Quora and LinkedIn Pulse are great places to start for B2B sales. If you can get one of your articles on LinkedIn Pulse, that can do some wonders in early stages.
- For inside sales – warm leads only: Samir was very clear on another thing, how anyone in the team spends their time. And inside sales team should be spending their time on “warm” leads only.
- Text only emails are best: You can surely try more formats, but whole group agreed on this, as pretty much everyone had experience with sending a lot of emails.
- For calling, make a script: If you get a chance to get on a call with customer, don’t go without a script. It’s like going to war without a plan..don’t do it. Make a script and rehearse it.
- Optimize lower end of funnel first: Samir made this super clear that it’s super expensive to lose sales at lower end of the funnel, so if you are optimizing start from bottom of the funnel.
- Case studies, no…Stunning Case Studies, YES: We according to Samir, anything that you put in front of potential customer (PPT’s, Case studies etc.) has to look great, nothing less than “stunning”.
- Retargeting – FOR EVERYONE: It doesn’t matter what kind of product you are selling, retargeting ads are for everyone..
- Video testimonials: If you can get video testimonials, they are the best. You can even put them on landing pages..they are expensive, but might be worth it
Tools / Service companies that we discussed:
- BuiltWith
- Datanyze
- DataCall (a company in Bangalore)
- Benchmark
- Yesware
- Pipedrive
- Localphone
- Ringo
- Express Writers – Bangalore
- Discover.org
- AgileCRM
Now, it’s quite possible that you want to know more about the process we learned in the RT, but may be that’s the reason you should attend next Round Table in your city..
PS: Here is another post about Samir’s round table in Pune..