I know this sounds weird. Explaining your product to your grandma? What? Every time my grandparents ask me what is this thing that I do for a living, I find it almost impossible to explain it to them. So, I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to explain them the complexities of a big data or SaaS startup…
However, according to Adi Azaria, an inside sales evangelist and co-founder of Sisense who is joining us next Tuesday for a Masterclass at Beta-i on Inside Sales, “if your grandma understands your product, everyone else will.” What truly matters is for your message to be clear and short, and you should do this before talking to customers, as this is key for any sales pitch.
But, the sales tips and advice don’t end here… We spoke to Adi Azaria earlier this week to talk about how entrepreneurs can perfect their sales pitch and process, in order to close more and more customers (and not just pitch to your lovely grandma).
Getting the message right in sales
Besides talking to your grandma, you need to talk your customers, test your message and adapt accordingly.
“The key here is to always be relevant, always have a context” says Adi. Understand who you’re talking to. Do your research and understand who your potential customer is before contacting them. “With which companies do they work with? What are their current challenges? Just don’t be a stalker, if you tell them you know where they live that’s just creepy”.
But how do you know what’s going wrong with your message? How do you improve it? Look at metrics before making any decision.
Adi recommends to keep track of Open Rates, and to do A/B testing before sending a mass email to make sure you’re sending the best combination to more people. If you’re Open Rates are low, you probably need to change your email subject.
To understand how your message is doing in terms of engagement, look at Click Through Rates. “You should add 1 or 2 links in the email, to make sure you have a call to action and then understand which ones are converting.”
Also, as one last tip, try to add something unusual to the email, something out of the ordinary. “This creates attention, so don’t be afraid to test. People receive thousands of emails every day, you just gotta stand-out from the crowd. Add a funny picture, things that nobody else is doing. It is a risk of course, but that’s what the startup life is all about, taking risks.”
Timing and transparency
Nonetheless, sales is really about timing, transparency and creating a unique experience.
Adi gave us a really great example from a big customer that they closed at Sisense, going through all these steps. The company he mentioned, registered directly on their website and 20 seconds later, even before downloading the free trial, they got a call from one of Sisense’s sales reps. “You know that term to punch or not to punch? Well, in sales, just like in boxing, you need to punch as soon as you can”. And this is exactly what they did at Sisense because “someone who just registered on your website is more open to receiving your call simply because it’s the right context”.
But, how did this potential customer react? “When we called him he said: Oh my god, I didn’t even have time to click on download and you already called… And you know what we replied? We said: Yes, we are fast but our product is even faster – and in that moment we really caught his attention ”. Sisense ended up closing that inbound lead, of course, but the story doesn’t here…
Later on, that same company was struggling because they had a lot of data in different places. Because of this, they started experiencing slow-downs, which affected their competitiveness, putting Sisense in a difficult position. However, according to Adi, because Sisense had a transparent process from the beginning, that worked much better. “They told us they were having problems and we called right away. You need to tell your customers about the whole process like, we’re gonna schedule a meeting to start with the demo and tell you all about pricing, then if you like what you see we’ll start with the proof of concept, after that we’ll discuss if the annual fee makes more sense for you, etc.” In other words, if you guide your customers through the whole process and prove them that they can have any kind of question and that you can answer pretty quickly, you’re on the right track.
Adi really emphasises the fact that you’re not just selling a product, it’s all about creating an experience. “If you show your product to your customer they won’t really care, but, if you show the value of your product and say that by using it they will save time and money, that’s a whole different story”. In this case, Sisense saved this particular customer 200 million dollars, in just 2 weeks. Impressive right? “They just identified issues that they couldn’t before. Nobody can say no to saving 200 million dollars. When it comes to sales, we don’t really sell the product, we sell the experience. It’s your data, your mindset, we’re just giving you a tool.”
In the end, it’s not just about closing leads but also keeping them. “If they’re not happy with the whole process, if you don’t pay close attention to your customers, they will never renew their contracts.” In other words, you need to provide a smooth on-boarding and care for your customers and their problems.
P.S.: Join us for Adi Azaria’s Masterclass next Tuesday (12th of April) at Beta-i. Get your ticket right now.