162 | How to develop trust and grow sales with Shruti Kapoor, CEO of Wingman

Growing sales is never easy and it is the hardest when you are in the early stages of your journey and do not have many (or any) clients, but you know others have done this successfully, and you are looking for the right framework to do it right.

Shruti Kapoor, is the CEO of Wingman, a software company that helps sales organizations have a deeper understanding of their sales process, and as a result, grow sales faster and more effectively than their competition.

In our conversation she is sharing:
💥 What are the keys to building trust in the beginning?
💥 How to get your first 10 clients?
💥 How to grow from 10 clients to 100?
💥 and much more!

Connect with Shruti on LinkedIn

Hi, It's Isar the host of the Business Growth Accelerator Podcast
I am passionate about growing businesses and helping CEOs, business leaders, and entrepreneurs become more successful. I am also passionate about relationship building, community creation for businesses, and value creation through content.
I would love it if you connect with me on LinkedIn. Drop me a DM, and LMK you listened to the podcast, what you think and what topics you would like me to cover 🙏

Transcript

Shruti: 0:00

I think revenue everybody understands is a funnel but it's also a leaky bucket. The reason why it's reducing from one level to the next is because things are falling off. I think In today's environment it's much more important to think of revenue leaks. And you have to think of revenue leaks from the perspective of what should I be doing better to plug those leaks.

Isar Meitis: 0:23

Hello and welcome to the Business Growth Accelerator. This is Isar Meitis, your host, and the person you listen to is Shruti Kapur. Shruti is the founder and CEO of Wingman, which is a business that she was able to sell recently that is helping sales people and sales organizations better understand the sales process. And in this episode, we're going to dive into how can you establish your first sales, what do you need to focus on and how do you scale it from there as a leverage to grow your business. Hello and welcome to the Business Growth Accelerator. This is Isar Meitis your host and we have a special guest today And again if you've been listening to this podcast for a while you know that in the beginning in the intro it says that growing a business is tough and it is tough And one of the toughest things especially in the beginning is getting clients It's a tricky thing right Getting your first clients and then growing clients and our guests today suggest instead of looking at this big huge mountain or like Okay how do I All these clients to my business breaking it into steps and focusing in different things in different steps When step one of the journey is just focus on build trust with your first time clients which is a lot less scary than thinking about I need a hundred clients to have a sustainable business but While it sounds less scary how do you do that How do you get your first clients How do you build trust with the first clients How do you go from the 10 clients to the next 90 clients to get the a hundred clients you actually need So we're going to dive into all of those both from a conceptual level as well from a practical level with our guest today Sru Capor Trudy has been in the business development and sales world for her entire career basically and in the past four years or almost five years now she was the CEO of Wingman A company that is a platform that helps sales people and sales organizations manage the sales process and helps the sales salespeople be more prepared and more effective in every step of their sales Communi Wingman has been a part of the Y Combinator program which is one of the most lucrative accelerators in the world and it was recently acquired by cl So she's not only talking the talk she also walked the walk and scaled her own business and got it sold So she knows what she's talking about and hence and especially when we're going into more difficult economical times getting sales and Maintaining in your existing sales are critical for a success of a business I'm really really excited to welcome Trudy to the show Trudy welcome to the

Shruti: 3:49

Business Growth Accelerator Thanks Isar Really excited to be here and thanks for the lovely introduction

Isar Meitis: 3:56

Thank you you know we we've been talking for a while and we finally get to do this So I'm I'm I'm really really excited about Let's go into your history You founded a company that helps sales people and sales organizations get better which means somewhere you went something is broken in the way we're doing sales right now Take us back to that moment or process where you figured it out or why this was critical and what was actually broken

Shruti: 4:24

Sure So before I started up you know somewhere in the middle of that journey of doing business development finance investing I was working at a company called Pioneer which is in the FinTech space and I was helping them figure out their go to market strategy in a new market for them that was India. And through that process what I realized was that it was really challenging for me to do two things. One because this was literally you know I was one of the first three people We didn't have clients We were trying to build all of this from scratch So in many ways it's you know finding product market fit from scratch. And that requires you know one a good feedback loop between sales marketing and product And that was really really hard because we had you know the sales team which was speaking with In India and then we had like a product and marketing team which was centralized and based in Israel And that was you know really difficult because there's a different cultural context You need to share the feedback There's a different competitive landscape and that was going in circles And what I realized was that it would Things a lot easier once we brought a product or a marketing person on a call with a customer you know they would instantly understand the feedback But you know the first part of it was much harder right Till you got that. And those feedback cycles were not scalable they were slower. So one challenge was that. The second challenge was that while I was hiring people and trying to figure out you know which segment do we sell to. You're running so many different experiments. You have so many variables. You don't what is working and why right. Like is it that the person I assigned a segment to you know that person on all these experiments at the same time. And so when I realized that you know different people in the team were you know had very different outputs right in terms of revenue. I wanted to know how I could help the people who are not doing well and It wasn't easy for me to do that because you know all the input metrics looked good.They were putting in the effort they were having the right number of customer calls but they were not converting. And for me to be able to give feedback on that again I needed access to those customer conversations. And so you know these two things together was just like Hey why is nobody Giving me access to all of the customer conversations you know it's useful for me as a sales manager but it's also so useful to share with product and marketing And you know I couldn't look at every recording end to end even if I recorded everything And so I started thinking about you know what would I do if I had access to these recordings How would I make them more useful And that's howman came

Isar Meitis: 6:59

Very interesting. So you really had a very practical need in the business you were in and you couldn't find something to solve it. So you developed it yourself That's basically what happened. Yes Awesome So I think this scenario describing is a very normal scenario for any business in one of two scenarios. Either when you're just getting started so like you're saying you you're not exactly sure who's your customer you're not exactly sure about your messaging. You're not exactly sure about what problem you're solving for them and you kind of try to finesse all of that at the same time. And the other option as you mentioned is when you try to go to a new market you try to go to a new market it's always a little different because the culture different because the need is different because the way they're doing business is different because they already have other systems in place. So it's always tricky that beginning. And yet you are able to crack that to a point that here's how you do different steps. Step one being the beginning. So let's really start with that What do you do in the beginning. How do you get your first 10 clients. What do you focus on What are the most important things getting started.

Shruti: 8:11

Yeah So you know I think a few things right. One is when we are speaking to our first set of customers right. You are going to get and especially if you're doing something dramatically new right. Something that Is it's not just about them understanding whether you do it but for them to even get comfortable with that problem and with that type of solution Right. So in our case for example a struggle that people would have is saying Hey okay so this is a completely different way of looking at performance management and coaching for my sales team. Is my sales team going to be okay with recording calls. Are my customers going to be okay with recording calls. And the reason I bring that up is that you know when you're starting a business you're going to get a lot of people who are going to be like Hey this is just not going to work Right.Like you know whether you look at Airbnb people saying Are you mad I'm going to let a stranger into my house. Or you know you can ATG and say I mad my customers are going to be okay with recording that call.So one is you're going to get lots of different types of feedback. It's important to Categorize that feedback Right And when I say categorize it's like saying Hey am I seeing a pattern between the people who are giving me a certain type of feedback Right. And continuing to fine tune that to say who do I actually go and speak to. Who's you know going to be more useful Right so one is constantly trying to refine who's your target audience and making sure that you're taking the feedback only from your target audience. The second step is once you you know begin to get some trends and some understanding of who the right target audience is for your product then what you need to do is you need to do two things right One is you need convince them that or you need to understand and make sure that that problem is real for them Right And two you need to convince them that you are going to be able to provide them that solution right.Now May may I pause

Isar Meitis: 10:06

you for a second I wanna take your step back Because I'm I'm I'm kind of like knee deep right now in in this whole topic of how to get qualitative insights from your customers or from people that you talk to right. So what are the signs That tell you you're moving in the right direction or you're moving in the wrong direction. When you're looking for that product market fit when you're looking for the exact specific client.When you're looking for the right messaging so you your product enables people to view recordings and snippets off of it to get that thing But what are you looking. So now there's a tool that allows me to look but what am I looking for to know Because it's not like Yes I wanna buy from you right now. Usually doesn't happen So there's other signs that you're looking for.What are these sign

Shruti: 10:58

Right So so there are two parts to it right One is you're trying to identify who relates best to the problem that you think you're solving right.And so what you're looking for is the resonance with the problem Right. And in that process you're trying to define that problem better Right. So an example in our case is you know when we started building this my first thing was Hey okay you know the problem that I'm solving is I will give you full visibility into your calls right now Maybe that's You know on the surface sounds like a good problem but then when I dig deeper I realize that that's not a burning need Right Like nobody's waking up or you know not being able to fall asleep saying Hey I don't have visibility into every call that's happening right

Isar Meitis: 11:44

There are Yeah It's not It's not a Monday morning problem right It's not gonna be talked about in the boardroom Why aren't we recording our calls

Shruti: 11:51

Exactly And so on one level you're trying to have those conversations to iterate on your own problem statement. And that is going to define what is the first thing that you build in your product right. The second part of it is trying to define the audience that you're speaking with and saying Oh you know I spoke to this person this person did not identify with the problem Who is that person right Like whether that is based on their their designation in the team the size of the team you know the tech savviness of the team all of those other properties so that you are doing a matching and you're learning based on patterns and you're not just learning based on a single person's feedback

Isar Meitis: 12:31

So if I have to summarize it it's a mix of qualitative and qualita qualitative and quantitative analysis where the qualitative comes from conversations and the quantitative comes from Okay I spoke with that person because he's in a company of 10 people who is generating 5 million a year who are in this kind of business So these two things now you start to see where where things start to align. And people and I love what you said I think you're not looking for people who want your solution You're looking for people who who agree with a problem Okay this is a real problem that we have and now you can start having the conversation Is this a good solution for them. But if they don't have if they don't agree that this is a main problem for them well they probably won't try to solve it. So I I think now we we understand So what what you're looking for Is the right segment of a company and within it the right people who will say Yes this is a problem that we have That's your signal to say Okay I'm I'm now zooming in into that world. Let's go back to your to your step So we were in step two and I stopped you so let's

Shruti: 13:35

go back to it Yeah So in step two once once you have that first set of match right in step two you're trying to then build conviction around your solution with people who can be your first you know first Five buyers first 10 buyers and all of the work that you do in step one right helps you in building trust with the person with respect to your understanding of their problem right you want to be able to speak their language when you go and speak to them because You know one of the proxies for trust at that point right the first thing that they want to know is Okay you are claiming that you are going to solve this problem Do you even understand the problem as well as I do. Right Like can you actually put yourself in my shoes. And therefore all of you know all of that first step is still useful because you're not coming in and saying Hey I had this problem And so I believe that you will too right even though I have lived that problem I go and speak to 30 different people before I start selling to anyone and then the second part is They need to know that you can solve this problem because you understand it so well right now How do they know that you can solve this problem and this is I think where a lot of companies you know kind of struggle to say you know I want to You know I have this great problem I have this great solution Now I want to get like my first hundred clients on day one So let me go run some ad campaigns Let me design a beautiful website Let me do all of those things but I think that there is a step before that especially if you're in a B2B business which is Building you know there is a lot of risk that the person who's buying the product is also taking Right it's a risk on their time even if it's you know even if the money is immaterial or even if you're trying to convince somebody that just take it for free and give me feedback Right There is a risk on their reputation There's a risk on their time There's a risk You know getting everybody else in the team involved And so you know you need to help mitigate that risk And you need to do that by building trust And the proxy for trust on day one is not you know the brand name of your company It is not that you know they know that this product is never going to have a downtime You know there's no page that shows them you know what the stats on those are right So you need to build trust based on your own reputation in some sense right So Which is why it becomes important to try and use your own network right And I'm not saying that you can only sell to your friends and you know that's a good way to validate your product but you should use your network as a proxy for building trust with those people So it doesn't have to be your immediate friends and family they might not be the right audience especially in a B2B context but you need to still leverage your reputation And of course you know as you grow as a founder you realize that putting yourself out there is not optional right Like a lot of times we feel that hey you know I'm the person who's going to be the brains behind this I don't have to be the face of it but as a founder that's you know you don't have that choice because you are you know the entity that they're building trust with and that's important till you get you know your first 5 or 10 customers Of course depending on you know whether you're doing enterprise sales or SMB or whatever

Isar Meitis: 16:50

I love it Really I I want to touch on a few points and and and and also give some tips to people on how to learn more about this topic So one is there's a phenomenal book called The Mom Test and I don't know if you read it but if not you're gonna love it It's about how do you get qualitative data from potential customers and customers in the most effective way And it goes back to it's called the Monte because we're gonna ask your mom Mom I have this great idea about a business You're gonna say Oh yes honey It's it's awesome Yeah it sounds great Which is a total lie She didn't even understand what you're talking about and if you go and ask her like Okay this is gonna cost you know whatever a thousand dollars to buy this a month she's like Are you gonna spend that money Yeah for sure Sounds perfect And obviously she won't once it comes to actually spending a thousand dollars So the it's the whole premise of the book is how do you ask the right questions in order to get real answers in a non Business kind of way right It's not being salesy it's just a conversational environment So this is worth by itself because it ties to everything Trudy's talking about like how do you get that information from people in order to really get that feedback in. And kinda like the subjects of everything you said is in the beginning. You're not trying to sell. You're trying to learn you're trying to get feedback you're trying to understand. What is it that you need to sell What is it that you need to say in order to sell what you need to sell in order for people to actually resonate with that So I love the the way you've defined it I've done an episode recently and again not to shine a light on on the podcast but just on on the problem and how to do this It's with an amazing guy His name is Ryan Gibson It's episode 1 54 and he talks about how do you do client interviews and prospect interviews in order to learn. That's what he does for a living He does it for other businesses. And so another thing that's worth as another add-on of information to this conversation. And the third thing that ties back to this is if you really wanna build trust if you're just starting the journey and you know the direction you want to go start creating content around it. And it's not content about the product or the service you wanna do It's content about the problem that you're trying to solve Cause that will attract The people that then can give you feedback that will start segmenting you as somewhat of an expert on this topic which once you start talking to people you already have some credibility and trust that otherwise you wouldn't have so that's another kind of idea around how do you build trust before you have an actual product You can definitely definitely do that. And so just a few things from from my side What you're basically saying is step one is understand the problem Step two start building trust leverage your network your expertise whatever In order to do that then

Shruti: 19:43

Right So you know what you want to then be doing is two things right One is ideally you've found a way to solve that problem which on day one you know adds value to your customer. And the the second part of it and I'll I'll go back and elaborate on that And the second part of it is you want to now begin Scale that trust Right because you can't be the only thing or element of trust Right As as you try to scale things up so on the first part especially in today's world what happens is when we are trying to build a product we realize that there is you know either a lot of competition or there is a strong status quo Right there is you know whether or not you are in a diet competition you always have have competition right Whether that is status quo or inertia or you know whatever. So you have to as you begin to work with your first 5 or 10 clients what you realize is that not everybody is going to be successful with your product right And so you have to be super watchful with understanding you know why are people succeeding Why are they Succeeding and who's succeeding who's not succeeding so that you can then fine tune Right the second challenge that you have is you know what do I continue to build right.So an example is you know like say you are in the sales space today. There are so many tools that are doing so many things and you want to stand out so you are going to feel that I need to You know ABC that this tool is doing and then I need to do DEF right because that's the only way for me to stand out Now you if you decide to build you know ABC and DEF it's probably gonna take you a really long time. So you need to figure out and be very precise with what You know whether it is A plus D or B plus E that you need to build because you can't build everything. Or you are you are going to take much longer and you know you're probably going to run out of money if you try to do that. so that is where it becomes super important To treat competition as a friend right Where you kind of realize that if somebody comes and tells me that Hey I've already used a competitor or you know I know that solution well you shouldn't actually run away You should actually double click and try to you know understand what problems didn't that solve for you You know what were the challenges that you still had and try You know really nitpick on what is the one thing that I want to build right Instead of like building a package on day one on the second piece right How do you scale that trust So it starts with you know on day one of course it is you as the founder right And the ultimate stage that you want to reach is brand being the proxy for trust right today you don't care who was the founder of Colgate right You just go and buy that off the shelf because that is what you're familiar with. You You don't care you know what the specific features are You don't go read the ingredients either right So you wanna move from being individual to being brand but there are multiple steps to it right I would say that the proxy for it right is you then go and look at your clients as people who can spread the word for you and who other people can trust So you have to really double down on saying what you know how can I get testimonials from people who use the product. How can I showcase that you know it's perfectly okay especially in early stage to actually have you know offer reference calls with your existing customers right. As a way to build trust with new ones.So it's not just about glamorous marketing you know beautiful videos you know it's it's everything that you can think to scale that so first you know the second step is basically using your customers as ways of building trust right Third is

Isar Meitis: 23:31

so so before you go to third again I just want to add two things again from other people and other sources to that conversation Two aspects that you touched that I I'm a huge believer in one is the concepts of category design right. So figure out what is the category you're trying to create If you're gonna create the same thing that somebody already created going back to your competition thing you're probably not gonna do anything because they're already been there. They have their clients they have marketing they have finances that they secured either by having good cash flow or by raising money and you're starting with nothing. So if you will try to do what they're doing you will fail. If you'll try to A smaller category within the bigger category and B a complimentary product that solves the problem they don't solve. Now A you have something you can sell and B there's a clear somebody that may wanna buy you out in the future because you compliment what they do. So that's one aspect. The other thing as far as going from the founder being the brand or the brand being the brand another great book is called Founder Brand. And Founder Brand is a book that talks How exactly how you build the founder in the beginning as the brand And then as it grows people get to know the product so just another another reading this becomes like a book of the day kind of conversation but it's really well connected to everything that you're talking about What you're basically saying before we go to step three is in order for this to work you have to be a hundred percent committed to having really happy customers in the beginning Right So if you cannot deliver on your promise you cannot go to step three because nobody or I don't know if nobody but not enough people will raise their hand and saying Yes I will absolutely share with whoever you want me to share that this is effective working changed our business changed my life whatever the case may be Am I correcting that That that's a core sub step in there that has to

Shruti: 25:29

Absolutely You have to make sure that you're delivering that customer delight for your early customers. You're working with them closely for them to be successful.And you know just another step to that is that it doesn't All have to be about the product right Like that customer delight for your early customer can come from you know your team you yourself you know it could be manual reports that somebody's creating for them because again you can't be building everything on day one and you can't wait to build everything to deliver value and delight for your customers

Isar Meitis: 26:00

Yeah So it's we call it in our business we call it relationship driven growth right So how do you go Your initial growth for sure And by the way in B2B businesses even most of your growth period comes from strong relationships Strong relationships are more referrals lower acquisition cost higher lifetime value All of this comes from building strong relationships And if you build your business around the concepts of how do I continuously look to build more and deeper relationships with my clients you will Because you will get more feedback than anybody else You will have better understanding of the customers than anybody else and so on and so forth So all the stuff you touched about So I love it so much step three So so now I have clients that I can leverage to to grow from there What do I actually do Like what are the practical steps I can do to go from step two to

Shruti: 26:54

Sure and I think maybe just one thing right to the books that you mentioned and especially with respect to category design there's a great book called Play Bigger Yep

Isar Meitis: 27:03

That's the that book That's the Bible right

Shruti: 27:06

Yeah and I think like you know the one the one line summary of it would be you know be different Not Yeah right so so yeah I think leaving that aside so step three right now step three is essentially saying that I'm no longer depending on you know testimonial from a single customer or To scale this up And so you're looking for ways to scale those testimonials and feedback whether that is in terms of ratings on peer review sites or you know having those testimonials be a part of communities et cetera where your customers align Right so essentially spreading the word not just through your own megaphone through your own channels but also trying to use existing megaphones to amplify that

Isar Meitis: 27:54

I I agree a hundred percent I think part of the trick that more and more companies understand that building your own community from the very very beginning is an amazing way to do that because if you have your own community around your business with all the stuff that we're talking about helps you do that If you're doing this Intentionally you'll get there Meaning if you're starting with people that are closer to you if you're making them happy they would gladly share If you're having conversations that are valuable around the problem and not around your product then that will attract more people who will then be open to sharing their solutions and so on Your solution being one of them So communities in general are incredible That allows you to avoid the noise in the marketing world today because it's a closed community with trust in it And if you can build your own community even better because then it's your own community People are there because of the value that that you and the people around you are providing to each other Brilliant I love

Shruti: 28:51

that And I think step four is exactly that right Like where you are no longer reliant on other megaphones you have your own megaphone right You have your own way to amplify your voice whether that is having you know a strong community a strong community event or whatever it is right Like developing those channels to amplify those voices and then of course you know I guess step five is relying on having a strong brand All of that then as leading towards

Isar Meitis: 29:22

I think what's interesting is a lot of people start a business and develop a product or a solution before they do all the first steps right Like I literally had a conversation yesterday with a startup from Israel as the kind of like consulting to them is that have built a really interesting product and they don't know who it's for And I'm like that's kind of weird But they don't know like they don't know who to sell this to They have a really cool product It is really cool but they don't know who to sell this to'em Like So why did you build this And they built it because they had a need Right So kind of like you But they did it when they had a need without really going and saying Okay who else has such problems that we can that this thing will actually And so I think and I think it happens more frequently than not that people have an idea that they think is great and before doing serious research they dive right in and they go and start developing solutions around them which may or may not be actually needed So I think the steps that you've defined are so powerful because if youd if you skip step one You you can do step two three and four but you will never grow a business because the need and your understanding of the need are not there Which means at a certain point you're like Okay that's it There's 10 people who want this thing and and nobody else I wanna take you to connect this to current times right So these are ideas on how to start and scale and grow business Now you have a business it's up and running You have sales What are the things you need to focus on with a sales organization as the business is running to keep existing business grow the business and what do you need to focus on now that the economy is turning south and it seems for the next foreseeable future so it's not like a quick turnaround you know in a quarter will be fine We're most likely going into a global recession that will last for the foreseeable months What are the things you need to focus on as the leader of the organization the leader of the sales organiz

Shruti: 31:35

Right So I think two things Right and to some extent a lot of people today feel that they're well equipped with the first one because we went to the pandemic and that seemed like a big change Right the first thing that I think about the most is You know this is not a one time process right Like especially the first part of it which is understanding what is the problem that you're solving and you know who are you solving it for and what is the best way to solve that problem You know of course one of the biggest reasons is the business environment keeps changing right Like you know you have the pandemic today suddenly everybody becomes remote if you're building a product for a sales team which was you know initially fully in the field and today fully remote then you know you need to kind of itrate on that product Right So whatever it is that you're building and the second part is that your competition is always going to be catching up Your competitive landscape is going to be changing right So you need to always keep a close eye on that and I think with the recession you know some of that therefore remains the same Right since we Analyze so many sales calls right Like there are certain things that we've learned right which have evolved with the recession so yeah this seems fairly basic but one of the things that is working well today is instead of talking about budgets talking about our Right because there is still value that people want to deliver and create in their own businesses And if you can tie whatever it is that you are you know creating as a solution to the value that they're trying to drive with their business you know that's going to help them make a case for it prioritize it and create better timelines for And we've seen that you know bringing in ROI creates you know a definitive 30% plus increase in In deals right the second part of this is thinking about not you know who is my customer but a step ahead which is who is my customer's customer and how how do I influence you know in that value chain right If you think of that in that context and you know phrase your solution et cetera with that light you are going to be much more successful especially in this environment because nobody wants to be at the helm of a business that is not growing Right And therefore you you know that's that's a big value that you can deliver I think the second piece of it is just overall right Like I think revenue everybody understands is a funnel but it's also a leaky bucket right. the reason why you know you are you know it's reducing from one level to the next is because things that you know things are falling off Some of them for the right reasons some of them for the wrong reasons and I think In today's environment it's much more important to think of revenue leaks. Right And you have to think of revenue leaks from the perspective of Hey this is revenue that I've already in some sense earned or staked a claim on and I'm not able to convert that into the bottom line And what should I be doing better To plug those leaks and I think there's a lot of research to say you know how much value companies lose because of these leaky buckets you know anything between 15% is what you know a good guess or you know our estimates are from a Try Wingman perspective But you know there are also lots of external consulting company studies on billions of dollars that are lost with now it's important to be much more mindful you know whatever tools you use whatever data you have with understanding why these leaks exist right So and how do they exist in your own business of course people understand that Hey I might lose revenue because the economic downturn exists But you'll realize that different companies even within the same segment selling to the same type of customers are failing differently and that boils down to making sure that you are looking at You know you're leading indicators You're not just looking at you know your final revenue number you know whether where things are slowing down Is my team doing a much worse job of you know showing value early on Are they doing a much worse job of negotiating contracts you know and making sure that you're therefore focused on that Otherwise you're going to kind of use a blunt knife to try to hack through everything and that's going to be like Hey let me just you know drop my prices but if you haven't you know fixed how you're showing value and running demos and maybe that's not necessarily going to help can you give examples

Isar Meitis: 36:21

so of of leaky buckets Like one of it is churn Okay That's the obvious one Okay People are leaving so Yes I understand Even there Well you gotta understand why are they leav Like are they leaving because they really don't have the budget Are they leaving because they're living to a different product that maybe is more expensive than yours It's just better So I understand the churn side What other holes are in the bucket

Shruti: 36:41

Make it Sure So you know there could be a hole on your website right with respect to you have a hundred visitors coming in and you expect you know two and a half percent of them to convert into you know your mql but out of that two and a half percent if you're seeing that only one and a half percent are actually converting to your mql then you know that you know something on your homepage isn't working well for Got it Similarly what might be happening is that a bunch of people are not setting up time to speak to a salesperson Right And therefore your leak is that these people have come in they're interested in solving that problem but somehow your solution hasn't convinced them that you know your website hasn't convince them that you have the right solution Right Or maybe you haven't built Through the website So you have to kind of go back and look at those a lot of times what happens is that our biases are based on feedback and things that we hear from people who've gone all the way through the Sales cycle right people who've dropped off you don't have a voice for them as to why they dropped off and therefore you need to be much more watchful about how do you build proxies how do you also make sure that has something dramatically changed right Because of course not every visitor to your website is going to you know book a demo so you know that that that's not necessarily a leak from that a hundred to 2% but you know that 2% to one and a half percent that is a leak

Isar Meitis: 38:18

Understood And I agree I think there's a lot of steps in the funnel that where you You expect to see something or the industry benchmark is something and you see lower than that and that's stuff that you gotta fix because like you're saying you already invested the time the money the resource to get people to the website to talk to your sales people and so on And that continues into the sales conversations themselves right If you expect to close one in every 10 sales conversations and you close one in every 20 while Wasted another 10 calls not really selling anything so yes there's different steps along the way on that I think that goes back to what we talked about before If you're able to generate content create a community be other communities and build trust that will dramatically increase Your level of success moving forward in each and every one of those steps right In people coming to their website in people actually booking demos in people actually buying and so on because they already they came there because they've seen you they heard you talk about these things They've understand the value that you're providing before they even went to the website They come to the website because they wanna work with you And so that mindset of I want to become an authority figure I want my sales people to be known for these things And drive them to to generate content as well is a great way to improve those ratios across every single step of the of the funnel And and by the way the same thing of reducing churn because if people really believe in what you do because they've been listening to you for the past six months either on a podcast or on a show or in a community or on a forum doesn't matter Wherever it is you can provide value to them then they're more likely to stay with you than to turn off after Truly this was a really really important conversation Like we touched on I can't even believe on how many key points we touched that are dear to my heart between you know category design and qualitative information as the baseline to making strategic decisions and how to build trust and how to scale everything I really really appreciate you taking the time If people wanna hear more from you connect with you learn about you work with you how do they do that What's the best

Shruti: 40:30

Absolutely I think LinkedIn is always easy so you can look for sti Kapu and Wingman on LinkedIn and you should find me our website is you know www.triwingman.com And yeah you know the company also posts lots of interesting content and stats on how you know The patterns that we see across sales calls what is succeeding what is not and how this is changing with the downturn so yeah I think go ahead follow me or follow the company and you'll get to see some of that content as well And thanks so much this is wonderful and I'm I have to go and read some of the books that you recommended Would be great to get that book list

Isar Meitis: 41:13

Thank you so much Rudy This was like I said it was really invaluable We touched on a lot of points and I really appreciate your time Thank you. What a great conversation with Shruti. She is obviously knowledgeable in this topic and it's not a surprise that she was able to develop and sell a company that focuses on improving sales processes. If you're interested in sales topics, I recorded a very interesting episode on this topic recently. It was episode 142. It's called four characteristics of the Most Successful Sales People based on Disney's customer centric approach, and it's with Rob Durant, who is a sales consultant. That has helped multiple sales organization completely transform their sales process to a much more successful one. So check it out, and until next time, have an amazing week.