Selling to Developers: A Journey into Tech Sales
I have had the experience of working in the tech side of things as a developer, and recently I made a bold career move to move towards the business side of the equation, which led me to Hevo. While starting my career in development provided me with the foundation, moving into the business side of things under Hevo’s wings has provided me with an eagle-eye view of the tech industry. This is a short story of someone with no tech sales experience currently thriving at the heart of the SaaS space.
Who am I? I am Amruta — A Hevoite!
Let’s start with a quick snapshot of what my role broadly looks like:
- As an Inside Sales Manager, I own the end-to-end lifecycle of customers who come through an inbound enquiry. This means I am naturally responsible for driving conversions.
- I dive deep into my customers’ sea of technology needs to find the pearl for them from their oysters by doing deep discovery and guiding them towards the right solution.
- I act as a bridge between multiple departments like the Solutions Team, the Support Team, and the Product Team, ensuring my customers get all they need to succeed.
My Journey into the SaaS space:
Understanding the changing trends is of utmost importance in any market space and especially in the SaaS space. Hevo enabled me by providing me with a platform that enriched my business acumen in the SaaS space right on day 1 of my joining. The process also helped me understand what my clients would need, how they view the world, the current procedures, their respective roles within the organization, and how all of these aspects could interact to meet their organizational objectives.
My induction to tech selling:
Working in Hevo, a tech company at heart, I have found the people here to be inquisitive, innovative and extremely helpful. I found the support provided by colleagues and peers daily, by sharing their insights on core subjects, beneficial for me- especially in the early days of my joining. This helped me to settle into the tech selling environment without any struggle.
At Hevo, we follow a product-led growth strategy. I learnt that the prospective customers have heard, seen, or experienced enough of the product to discover its actual value on their own. Hence, their purchase likelihood is higher when they enter the sales funnel. The company is hence more sales-assisted than sales-led. In this way, the product effectively sells itself, making tech sales unique and the role of sales associates very interesting. While the sales representatives focus on being the face of the organization and doing deeper discovery to understand customer requirements in-depth and qualify their use case, they are supported extensively by various teams such as Product Development and Solutions to ensure a smooth customer buying journey. These teams have frequent collaborative check-ins, which has helped me as a salesperson to understand the technical nuances of the product with ease.
Sales Process at Hevo:
At Hevo, we use sales analytics to assign lead scores. This helps our sales team channel our efforts on the best accounts with a better prospect of conversion.
Hevo’s established CRM platform helps sales teams follow up with customers to understand how things are shaping up at their end. This allows the sales team to understand user behaviour and gives insights into their buying process, making selling more effortless and effective. This also helps us know if their expectations are being catered to, get feedback on the product and build a strong rapport with the customers.
Every salesperson joining goes through a thorough onboarding program supported with a detailed SOP, videos about the product landscape, and a dedicated sales excellence team watching over the new joinees and their technical clarifications. Going through this onboarding program gave me so much confidence to handle customers when I got out to the field. The support system created and the process structured helps everyone, irrespective of their background- tech or non-tech.
What I’ve Learnt on my Journey:
There are many ways that I have grown professionally since the beginning of my journey in Hevo. Every day is a new day in my line of work, and that means every day is a learning opportunity for me. Beyond the tech landscape, Hevo as an organization opened my eyes to business processes and strategies by exposing me to the way product development caters to the dynamically changing, ever-evolving data industry.
In the book “Never Split The Difference”, the writer talks about the beauty of hearing ‘No’ in sales. Usually, when you ask the customer close-ended questions that are rhetorical in nature and demand a ‘Yes’, it is more often than not converted to a ‘No’ at the time of closure. It is best to work with the customer and understand their pain points in a deeper perspective and develop trust and transparency in the process. Hevo coaches all its salespeople on this philosophy, which has made a massive difference for me to thrive in the tech selling environment.
If technology sales seems like something you would be excited by, shoot us an email at sales.talent@hevodata.com or explore our open opportunities at www.hevodata.com/careers.
