The discussions continued post-lunch in the Playbook Roundtable led by Girish Mathrubootham, CEO and founder of Freshdesk, organized at the Freshdesk office in Chennai. During the extended session, Girish outlined the sales and marketing structure in a SaaS business. While this may be only taken as a pointer to setting up the sales and marketing teams, each business owner needs to focus on the...
In today’s world, there are a few realities that every sales professional is acutely aware of. The first is that there are many alternatives available for every prospect you have. Not only are there alternatives that are competitive to your solution, but you are often fighting for capital to even have your solution on the purchasing agenda in the first place. The second reality is that in most...
As we build (software) products, the competition is something that we need to stay ahead of, but how? Especially building products for different markets, you always have others building similar products for probably same or different markets. There are already established products that you have to compete with, there are other products that are getting built as you build your product...
If we only understand sales, we’re just salespeople to our prospects and nothing more. We can’t just be experts in selling. We need to be experts in our customers’ industries, too. When we understand the overall industry, prospects’ business, and their specific issues, we become business experts. That’s the key to selling value, and that’s when a sale can start to happen. Sometimes we get so...
Given the slow worldwide economic recovery, it’s an appropriate time to review our core tactics. Many of us are finding our clients and prospects are risk averse. Here are some effective strategies you can proactively use to increase your sales, no matter what the economic climate brings. You might be asking “Who will buy from me now?” when so much seems to be at risk. The ValueSelling Framework®...
Like many other technology entrepreneurs in India, I am the founder CEO of a software product company. We make a Global Human Resources SaaS product EmpXtrack and have over 300 customers in 20+ countries. Many of us face challenges to scale up our US Sales and explore options such as relocating to the US, hiring a US based sales team, offering free trials, converting the product to a freemium...
As sales professionals, you probably know a lot about the capabilities of the products and services you represent. However, being a “solution expert” alone is not enough to differentiate you from your competition. If you are perceived as a trusted advisor AND a solutions expert, you are in much better position to win their loyalty and business. And gaining that trust means demonstrating that you...
My kids attend a public speaking course called “Think and Speak Up”. The main idea behind the class is that in order to be an effective public speaker, you need to think before you speak i.e. be prepared before you speak. A recent conversation with a very action oriented CEO who wants to launch in the US got me thinking that the “Think and Speak Up” approach applies to companies as well. It takes...
You’ve labored for months with a prospect who seemed interested in your services. She returned calls and replied promptly to emails. Everything was moving right along and then … nothing. Nada. Radio silence. No more returned calls. No more email exchanges. And no explanations. Frantically, you mentally retrace your steps and re-read email threads to find clues behind this maddening silence...
Today’s slangy emoji text culture may have you thinking that formally written communications are a lost art. Don’t believe it. When it comes to professional communications, poised and precise prose rules over the casually misspelled messages passing between colleagues. This is especially true for sales professionals, since selling is fundamentally a communication process. No one wants the strides...
