Growth management for a B2B SaaS Startup — What do we do at Evreka?
PART II: In this story, we are going to explore how we handle a qualified lead through emails and a bunch of online meetings. But, of course, to understand this, we need to dive deep into the organizational scheme we built.
Chapter I — What is the organizational scheme concerning the growth operations?
Okay, if you read my previous story, Part I, please beware things are going to get even messier now.
Once we had a clear understanding of the book Predictable Revenue written by Aaron Ross, we knew for sure the basic steps of generating leads. Once we have the same level of knowledge about this within the team and built the automated machine, we were ready to roll.
For you to better understand how we handled these leads back then, I would like to share the team structure we built in the very early days of our growth operations. And, from here to the meeting structure, I will repeatedly be referring to How to Get $10M in ARR and Beyond by Jacco Van Der Koolj.
According to the book, in the beginning, if there is more than one founder, they split the responsibility; while some do the sales, the others lead the customer success side for the first 20 - 30 deals.
In our case, this is just what it was! While our CEO Umutcan was on the sales side before the establishment of the Growth Team, Mehmet and Mert were trying to make sure that the clients were successfully onboarded and happy with the product. As we grew to about $10–50K in MRR, I slowly started to manage the inbound and start planning the outbound as a Marketing Manager.
Of course, in time, they needed to pull the plug and assign their sales and customer success related responsibilities to the others. This was the time we invested in four people so quickly.
So, I and my dearest Growth teammates were to cover the process with a prospect until its SQL stage and hand over the deal to our one and only Customer Success Manager Ahmet.
So, it was and still is our responsibility to find prospects or respond to the MQLs, and carry them over until they declare their intention to test or use our solutions.
I told you it’s going to get messy and I understand if these abbreviations are nonsense to you. Let me share the direct definitions of these from the book itself.
Prospect: A person who expresses interest by visiting a website or other piece of content.
MQL: Marketing Qualified Lead, a person who expresses interest in your product and fits the target profile.
SQL: Sales Qualified Lead, a person who experiences a pain that you are addressing with your product and wants to take action.
Commit: Mutual commitment to deploy a solution that will achieve impact at a set time.
Live: Customer has been onboarded: On-time, within budget and the solution can deliver impact.
MRR: The solution delivers impact again and again, and a recurring revenue stream is secured.
LTV: The revenue an account generates over its lifetime, net of churn and including growth.
Although we are not there yet, the ideal scenario here is the chart below, which is for a company exceeding $10M in ARR. However, we are still in the chart above and trying to onboard more clients and increase the ARR so that we can specialize more.
I hope everything is somehow clearer about our organizational structures and core responsibilities; because now, I would like to move on with the most fun part: Meetings!
Chapter II — What happens if a prospect books an online meeting with us?
Yay! Now, after tens of hours of research, sent emails, and requests, you have a person who is possibly interested in your services and wants to meet you. What’s next? Now, you have to make sure that this person undergoes a seamless experience because now the company has an actual face; you!
Maybe I should start with the meeting booking process, right? In the automatized reach out process I mentioned in the previous story, we make sure that we propose the prospects a 1-hour online meeting. After they share their preferences with us, we make sure they receive their Google Hangouts invites ahead of time.
Just after we send the invitation on Google Calendar, we send them an automatized email on Pipedrive to introduce ourselves, share our contact info, explain the draft agenda, and kindly request their answers to a very short questionnaire so that we can customize the presentation we are going to make and change the direction of the meeting accordingly.
After they confirm their attendance and the big day arrives, we make sure we start to study the account for at least an hour before the meeting. We try to understand their operations, problems (news gives you lots of clues if the account is big enough) and priorities, define an agenda and list the must-ask questions beforehand.
What happens once the meeting starts? Here, we try to follow certain rules to have an efficient and beneficial meeting for both sides. At this point, I would like to share a video with you from Winning by Design that we all watched many times and try to keep remembering until it is bone-deep knowledge.
In the very first place, we make sure that we introduce ourselves and the company clearly and kindly request the same from the prospect. Here, of course, we emphasize that we have studied their accounts; however, we add that some further insights would be helpful to make the meeting even more successful.
Although the quote below I take from The Ultimate Guide to Sales Prospecting: Tips, Techniques, & Tools to Succeed is more relevant to the first touch, whether it is calling or emailing, I believe it does apply to first meetings, too.
Personalize: Reference a specific problem that the prospect is encountering with a specific solution.
Stay relevant and timely: Ensure the issue a prospect is trying to solve is still relevant to him or her and their team.
Be human: No one likes to communicate with a professional robot. Adding in details like wishing someone a happy holiday weekend or by conveying how awesome their company’s product is are real touches that allow us to establish a connection on a deeper level.
Help, don’t sell: Provide value and ask for nothing in return. This process isn’t about us, it’s about them. For example, instead of scheduling a follow-up meeting, we could offer to conduct an audit on their digital media presence and get back to them with our findings in a week.
Keep it casual: Remember that this is just a conversation. Stay natural and as not salesy as possible. The key to prospecting is that we’re never selling. We’re simply determining if both parties could mutually benefit from a relationship.
OKAY, LET ME STOP BLASTING MORE SELF-CONFIDENCE HERE. FOR A JUNIOR SDR, COULD YOU PLEASE IMAGINE HOW HARD AND STRESSFUL IT WAS TO MEET A CLIENT IN THE BEGINNING?
I remember the times when our Head of Growth Caner and CEO Umutcan were trying to calm me down saying that I got this and I can do it. Of course, they knew for sure that after a few months and tens of meetings they assisted, we were all going to get used to having and managing client meetings. And, we did.
Not only were we calmer, but we also realized that such companies face similar problems all around the world and have similar concerns and questions about our products. So, after some time, it got easier.
Okay, for now, let’s get back to the meetings. In these 1-hour meetings, we walk the prospects through the presentation we prepared beforehand that includes screenshots of our platform (so it is sort of a demo meeting, too), and we try to understand if they have a problem that Evreka can solve and if they are inclined to purchase a product from us.
And although quite generic, these questions from 21 Sales Qualifying Questions to Identify Prospects Worth Pursuing might help you a lot to qualify a lead and also foresee the timeline in front of you.
After the meeting, I make sure the leads receive the minutes under two main headings as “What did we discuss?” and “What are the next steps?”
If everything goes well and we see a fit together, we usually move on with more to the point meetings we manage or with the technical meetings that our Customer Success Manager (more like an SM) shows up to provide some further technical and operational information.
Moving on, these meetings, unfortunately, require lots of follow-ups to get the proof of concept confirmation. That’s why keeping straight track of these on Pipedrive and getting in touch with the leads at least once a week is crucial.
When they say yes, the deal owner changes on Pipedrive and the Customer Success Manager takes full responsibility for the success of the project. But of course, we try to get updates about the current status of the SQL and be at attention in case any unexpected events occur.
So, the end of a series! :) I hope any trick I shared in this story or in the previous one can help you with your sales activities.
I will see you on the 1st of April with the first story of a brand new series on startups.
Until then, take care!
