Ep. #1007 - Sales: The Most Important Founder Skill
In this episode of Startup Hustle, Lauren Conaway and Shruti Kapoor, CEO of Wingman by Clari talk about sales as the most important founder skill. Hear why founders need to be great salespeople and how you can use technology to empower your team to generate more sales.
Covered In This Episode
Sales interactions begin when a salesperson first contacts a customer in an attempt to make a sale. Actionable intelligence extracts information from sales interactions through data analysis. Through it, you can gather information to create a strategic sales plan.
Wingman scours through hundreds of sales interactions to unlock actionable intelligence to improve sales performances. They help sales teams live up to their fullest potential by providing them with actionable intelligence when it actually matters.
Shruti Kapoor, CEO of Wingman, shares her knowledge on how to unlock new insights from sales interactions. Join her and Lauren as they talk about the most important skill a founder should have.
Listen to this Startup Hustle episode now.
Highlights
- Founder’s journey (2:16)
- How getting immersed in culture inspired Shruti as a Founder (3:44)
- Lauren’s client from another country (7:06)
- Shruti’s understanding of the differences in culture when selling to market (9:47)
- How Wingman works (14:37)
- Why it’s important for a founder to have great sales skills (16:35)
- On being a founder and an introvert (18:46)
- Advice for early-stage startup founders (23:17)
- Founders are problem solvers (26:22)
- Challenges in sales coaching and how Wingman helps solve them(30:25)
- What the future looks like for Wingman (35:26)
Key Quotes
It’s easier to kind of stay in your own bubble even when you travel and live outside when you’re much older because you kind of choose to just interact with a handful of people every day. But when you’re younger, you’re forced to interact with the whole diversity of people that exist in that place.
Shruti Kapoor
Focus on what others are saying, listening to understand rather than listening to respond, and I think that that is a hallmark of a lot of really fantastic sales leaders.
Lauren Conaway
The product should stand on its own and yes, the product should be great. But at the end of the day, the proxy for trust on day one is you as the person.
Shruti Kapoor
Sponsor Highlight
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Also, check out all of our Startup Hustle partners. They provide excellent services for all your business needs.
Rough Transcript
Following is an auto-generated text transcript of this episode. Apologies for any errors!
00:00.39
Lauren Conaway
And we are back. Thank you for joining us for yet another episode of the Startup Hustle podcast. I’m your host Lauren Conaway, founder and CEO of InnovateHER KC and I have to tell you, we’ve got a really special episode sponsor today. Today’s episode of Startup Hustle is sponsored by Equip Bids Auctions, your midwest online auction marketplace to buy and sell stuff equip bid provides dedicated support to affiliates in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Iowa. Join the team and sell everything from heavy machinery to home goods vehicles and boats to restaurant and kitchen equipment and tractors to patio furniture. Go to equipbid.me/startup that is Equip Bid dot me backslash startup for details or just click the link save down below in the show notes.
Now I have to tell you friends, we get excited about all of our guests. But I even told this particular guest in pre-show prep that I was very excited about today’s episode topic because as we all know Matt Decourseey is a sales guru but today I have the opportunity to talk about sales with an expert and I am so so glad and so excited. Have Shruti Kapoor, CEO of Wingman by Clari, joining us today. Shruti, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us.
01:21.35
Shruti
Great to be here Lauren, looking forward to this.
01:23.34
Lauren Conaway
All right! We’re gonna have some fun but first I’m gonna kick it off as I always do, tell us about your journey.
01:36.24
Shruti
Sure. So, I was born in India I’ve been now living in the fourth country. I grew up in India, spent a decade in Singapore, and currently living in the Middle East in UA. And I started wingman 4 years back. It is a sales tech platform that analyzes all of sales interactions to enable real time live coaching so that people can take the right actions while they are trying to close a deal. Because I think one of my biggest frustrations as a salesperson was that you know you make a mistake you get a ton of advice from everybody after you’ve made the mistake but you can’t unlos the deal. So yeah, I’m here trying to help others not having to unlose deals post facto. I’ve actually had a pretty diverse background, did biotechnology for my undergrad, worked in an investment bank and then worked with startups on the funding site for a decade before starting this up.
02:44.97
Lauren Conaway
Wow. Well so sir I want to I want to kind of dial it back a little bit I think it’s really really interesting that you said you’re on your fourth country is that right? So how? Well first off I’d be very curious to hear what has inspired you to be not just a world traveler.
02:54.49
Shruti
Yeah, that’s right.
03:04.65
Lauren Conaway
But a world liver I mean you’re not just visiting places. You’re actually getting involved with the culture and the geography and the people and I think that’s really cool. So first question is what inspired you to do that. But then my second follow-up is and I’m yes, I’m asking 2 questions at once. So just bear with me. But my second question is how do you think that has impacted your perspective as a founder.
03:32.95
Shruti
Yeah, absolutely so I think the first time around I was given the chance to live in another country. It wasn’t of my own choosing. So I went to live in Singapore when I was 16 um, you know my dad had applied for. Ah, scholarship that Singapore government was offering at that point somehow I meet you know I got selected for that and I had no idea and I had no intention of you know, living away from home at that age. Um, and so you know, but but once I went there I really kind of. Enjoyed the diversity just the whole difference in cultural experience and how much it actually makes you kind of rethink all of the assumptions that you make you know and you’re just part of 1 culture because all of those things are just taken for granted till you go and experience a very different world. Um, so I think that’s kind of when it hit me and then through my now you know work career I’ve ah of course worked a lot with companies in the us lived and traveled there for a little bit and you know again very different perspective from Singapore which is you know. Asian chinese culturally um and now that I’m living in the Middle East and you know in between I went back and lived in India for a decade. So now I’m kind of looking at all of those cultural experiences from a very different lens because now I have a kid and I’m kind of thinking about.
05:06.14
Shruti
You know how is each of that cultural experience. The diversity. Yeah, everything that’s impacting him. Um, So I think you know as I’ve gone through this. What I’ve realized is that it’s easier to kind of stay in your own bubble Even when you travel and live outside when you’re much older because you kind of you know you can choose to just interact with a handful of people every day but when you’re younger and especially when you’re going to school or college, you’re forced to interact with the whole diversity of eople that exist in that place and you learn so much more from them and and you know how that impacts you as you know a colleague or as a founder is that you actually you know the the more variety of people that you interact with the more empathy you have. In understanding that there are going to be many different points of view because people are coming from many different contexts and many different assumptions and beliefs. Um, very often. You know we find it really hard to break that in our head to really understand that you know. Somebody is behaving in a certain manner because they have a very different context and Framework. Um, So yeah I think ah sorry that was a long answer to your short life.
06:26.30
Lauren Conaway
No I love it I really wanted to get into the meat of things with you and and I think that we definitely accomplished that. So so I’m gonna tell you a little story. Ah, and then I’m gonna go on to ask some more questions but my my story. Um, you know when I was very early on in my career. I decided that you know I was an entrepreneur and I had ah I actually had a marketing agency at the time it was called v 3 creative and what was really interesting is I somehow ended up with bi coastal despite despite the fact that I lived like smack dab in the middle of other country of the United States I had either bi coastal or international clients and 1 of my clients was based out of Paris France and they did work in the in the global pe realm. And so they had they had contracted me to do some copywriting for their web. They had contracted me to do a bunch of things but 1 of the projects that I was working on was copywriting for their website and I took a stab at it and this is this is actually a little embarrassing but I took a stab at it and I sent it off and I didn’t hear back for like a week and I was like oh that. That can’t be good but when they finally got back to me. They were like hey you know Lauren we can’t we can’t use this and I I asked why you know I thought that it was some of my my good work and they they explained to me that in France.
07:54.24
Lauren Conaway
Culturally, the language that they use to market and sell is very different than that the kind of language that we use here in the states here in the states we are very into superlatives I don’t have a great product I have the best product. You know my my product is. You know it’s brighter than the sun and it’s going to change your life and we’re very very um, enthusiastic to the point of at least as far as like like french perspective we’re we’re a little too cloying. We’re too enthusiastic. We. We just use all of these really really big superlatives and so that that was a huge learning experience for me, you know the perspective and the paradigm that I’m operating from is not the same globally and I felt and you know I think I was like 24 25 at the time and you know pretty stupid. Still like still learning my as I as I go on but that was a huge lesson for me and so you you mentioned assumptions you know you actually mentioned it a couple of times and so I’m really curious. What are some of the assumptions that you yourself have had to confront in your in your founder journey.
09:07.49
Shruti
Um, so I think this is specifically with the context of um, you know people are interacting with different cultures right? So I think one is. Ah, like you said, right? like different people culturally make different types of claims. So when I was ah you know when I started wing man I was primarily selling to the Us market and I hadn’t um you know while I had worked with. Companies there I hadn’t done like a bunch of selling to that market. So one of the things that I realized was that you know there are also like assumptions that people make in terms of stereotypes. So now one of the you know early feedback that I received was oh. You know every time somebody thinks of it. Plus um yeah, if somebody thinks of I T Plus India they are probably thinking of it in the context of you know the services companies that they’ve worked with and so they’re not really used to seeing a product company. Um from India. And so that is going to be a bit of a barrier and that was interesting because I hadn’t thought about that assumption and you know all of the other things that it implied. Um which you know which kind of made me double down on.
10:30.64
Shruti
Trying to overcome the unset objections that people might have when they’re making those assumptions right? So one unset assumption a you know, unset objection would be that oh because I think people are good at solving a problem that somebody else is defining. They might not be very innovative when they’re coming up with a product. And so you know what I had to do double down on was to say okay, you know I know that people are not going to write directly ask me that but how do I go ahead and you know answer that question for them similarly. The other thing that I realized was that if you’re dealing with somebody who’s unlike you. Um, you tend to over generalize right? because you’re going to have ah you know much fewer sample points of dealing with a certain person type right? like whether that is to say that you know if i’m. You know if I’m in a very male dominated world and you know I worked in investment banking which is probably like the extreme of that example in some ways. Um you know I you know I might have an experience with like working with 5 other women in ah, your career of 20 years and I might just overindex on each of those experiences when i’m. Meeting the sixth person. Ah, but similarly, you know whether that’s you asian or you know you’re a asian woman then you know each of those categories people tend to overindex on and so that was the other experience that I realized that if people had had some experience working with like you know.
11:59.20
Shruti
3 indian people in their career the next time they meet somebody who’s indian they’re going to overindex on that experience and if they’ve had a bad experience in the past. Ah they are going to kind of you know, put all of that on you when you’re walking into that room. So sometimes it’s useful to understand that. And to maybe even try to figure out what experiences they’ve had because people might just and you know the third thing was that um people also culturally make very different opening conversations right? like um, you know in the us a lot of times people would culturally. Project themselves as I would say like very happy and you know everything kind of sorted. Um, that’s not necessarily true in other parts of the world and so you know in those conversations as well. Like um, it’s it’s kind of useful to understand.
12:40.65
Lauren Conaway
Yeah.
12:55.38
Shruti
Ah, how those things play out. Because if I go into a room and if somebody asks me how are you doing and that’s just their way of saying hello and I start with like a 3 minute monologue on you know all of these things went wrong this morning. They’re going to be like I don’t know why you’re saying that right? that wasn’t my question. So. I think it’s just useful to know the context that people operate in and to make sure that you’re trying to bridge the gap or at least make them aware that the gap exists.
13:23.47
Lauren Conaway
Yeah, well and what I find interesting I mean clearly you have a lot of insight around this. But what you’ve actually done is you’ve created a platform that to my understanding kind of removes some of that hesitation and uncertainty because basically what you’re doing you’re scouring through sales interactions to find actionable intelligence so you’ve removed that bias is that accurate like talk to us about wingman and and how how it works.
13:57.38
Shruti
Yeah, So um, you know with thing man What? Um? what?? what? I’m trying to do is to make sure that everybody understands you know everybody I mean like all of the salespeople in the team. Understand and have visibility on what are good sales practices not just based on like you know, somebody said this or this is in the playbook. Ah that the company has put out but based on the actual ah real life conversations that are happening every day on sales calls and so what the platform does is. It’s. Recording and analyzing every sales interaction that’s happening whether that’s an email a call you know and then it’s matching that up with what was the outcome for that sales Call. So if I look at like you know hundreds of sales calls and I know that. Ah, you know more often than not in the sales call where you actually talk about Budget. You have a better chance of closing a deal I’m able to actually go back and use that information and coach people through the platform to say that hey you know talk about budget and talk about budget this way and so what the platform then does is like. Next time a conversation around budget comes up. It’s actually going to show the seller a Qe card with you know the specific talking points that they could use to talk about it So in some sense What it’s doing is it’s it’s trying to make it a more even playing field for everyone and you’re right? it’s.
15:26.50
Shruti
It’s trying to also make sure that you know if you’re ah selling to a similar set of people then you’re being able to sell the same way and provide a more consistent experience. Um, you know for the brand and for the customer.
15:38.64
Lauren Conaway
Yeah, well and to to kind of meet customers where where they are rather than where you are which which I love So so how important do you think it is for a founder to have great sales skills.
15:55.44
Shruti
You know when I started up I was somewhat hesitant on how I should be spending my time right? and it always seems like there are a hundred important things. You could be doing whether that is.
15:56.25
Lauren Conaway
So.
16:11.00
Shruti
You know building a culture ah hiring lawyers writing the right formation documents. But ultimately the first thing that you need to accomplish as a startup is to find you know your product market fit and.
16:27.21
Shruti
To find that product market fit. It’s really important that you’re actually 1 um, you know, reaching out to the market iterating on who or what that market looks like for you or your customers and 3 then. Taking that feedback puts that into the product and you can’t be doing any of that unless you are the primary and the first salesperson for that product. So you know I think it’s absolutely no doubt in my mind. Um, you know the most important job that at least 1 of the founders. In a company needs to be doing.
17:04.18
Lauren Conaway
Sure. Well so so let’s talk a little bit more about about your founder journey have you always been gifted at sales.
17:16.98
Shruti
Um, I would say not really um I mean I’ve always known the importance of it but I would say that I’ve been like a hesitant salesperson right? So I’ve you know I’ve done my fair share of you know, business development and sales roles but I have not really you know, kind of openly or aggressively thought of myself as a salesperson partially because um, you know I have considered myself as an introward I would consider myself as you know somebody who doesn’t like speaking to new people unless you know I have to. Um, but I think being a founder a lot of that has changed for me. Um, and I’ve realized that you know you kind of don’t have an option out of it. Um, and so you know it’s It’s definitely an acquired taste I would say.
18:06.24
Lauren Conaway
For sure. Absolutely well. So So you said something really really interesting in there and I think it’s something that could very much speak to a lot of our listeners. But you mentioned that you’re an introvert and yet. Here You are you know leading a sales platform. You’re a founder and founders tend to be the faces of their companies and you’ve you’ve carved out a niche for yourself as a sales leader and so I’m I’m very curious. How have you been able to kind of reconcile. Your your intro version with sales which I think when most people think of sales they think of kind of you know, public facing like you said you have to talk to people that you don’t know um you know pretty much constantly. Ah, what has that been like and how have you been able to to. Kind of work that into your journey overcoming either overcoming the the introversion or integrating it into what you do and how you do it.
19:07.83
Shruti
Sure so I think 2 things for me 1 is um I’m fundamentally curious by nature and I think the way I look at sales and you know speaking to customers or speaking to partners or anybody else today. Is from the perspective of you know what can I learn today and that um you know helps me overcome some of that reluctance I would say right? and the second part of it and so you know I think that also. In some ways makes me a good salesperson because then I’m much more willing to spend time thinking and listening to what the person on the other side is saying rather than um, you know just being focused on what smart thing I’m going to say next? Um, the second thing is. That you know being passionate about your product. Ah, right means that you are constantly trying to answer the question. You know how are people going to use it and that definitely for me precedes. Um, you know a lot of the. Thinking that goes in when I have these conversations because I’m just you know so excited to understand you know what problem somebody is facing and you know how? ah I could be helping them solve that better. Um that I think you know that excitement somehow helps.
20:35.88
Lauren Conaway
I love that I love people who are excited and I love people who are curious so I’m really glad that we have the opportunity to chat today and friends I am also happy to remind you that today’s episode of startup hustle is brought to you by Equip bid auctions.
20:36.14
Shruti
Overcome that hesitation as well.
20:54.15
Lauren Conaway
An Online Marketplace dedicated to growing small auction businesses. They’re solving problems and providing a fun recommerce or liquidation shopping experience to valued Bidders. Go check out their incredible offerings and sign up at Equip Dash Bid dot me Backslash startup that is Equip Dash bid. Emmy Backslash startup and if that was too much. You can definitely check out the show notes for the link check them out I went on their website and I have to tell I was telling shrudy that I am now obsessed with the equip Bids auction website because they have so much cool stuff and I want all of it. So so.
21:18.19
Shruti
Um.
21:32.63
Lauren Conaway
That’s a caution to you just know you’re gonna open up this site and there’s gonna be all kinds of stuff that you want to bring home with you just liberate it from the auction. Ah so Shrudy tell me tell me this you just gave us some really really good. Actionable insight. Into becoming a sales leader and what you said was to focus on what others are saying, listening to understand rather than listening to respond, and I think that that is a hallmark of a lot of really fantastic sales leaders and so I’m wondering. Do you have any other advice for folks who you know founders we have to do a lot of stuff that is not really within our wheelhouse particularly in early days when we’re bootstrapping and operating lean and we just don’t have people. So we have to act as our own marketing person salesperson randd person. You know all of all of the things. So for the folks at home who who maybe don’t feel super comfortable in the sales space. What other advice can you give them that might help them on their journey.
22:37.60
Shruti
Sure so I think you know 2 more things that I learned through this journey right? one is and especially especially applicable. Um, you know in the early days of a startup the first few years that you’re building it as well. Um, think of the process of. Selling or marketing as a proxy to building trust with somebody who you know maybe doesn’t know anything about you or your brand. Um, and the way this translates into getting you know your first five customers versus your first twenty customers is that you know. Initially when you’re starting out the way you build trust is not because you know somebody recognizes your brand right? because that brand doesn’t exist. Um, it’s not because you know you did a full page ad somewhere. Um, but it’s because. You are the face of the brand and they have to somehow build trust with you because they don’t know whether the product is going to work. Maybe you just launch the product like last month um so you know, kind of think about like what is the first stage of building trust with someone and so you know first stage is you. And so you think about like who are the people who already trust you or what are the reasons how people can trust you whether that is you know a school you went to ah people that they know etc and it’s okay to use those things even though you know you might feel.
24:07.82
Shruti
That you know the product should stand on its own and yes, the product should be great. It should stand on its own. But at the end of the day, the proxy for trust on day one is you as the person. Over a period of time, you have to think of other proxies for trust that are more scalable right? so. Ah, in your next phase. It’s going to be what your first 5 customers said and you have to figure out a way to amplify that voice to capture that voice and to make sure that people are seeing it at the right time in the right context and then you know slowly in parallel you should build your brand because that is. In many ways the most scalable way of building. Trust um, so that’s one I think the second thing that I learned in this journey of sales is um, think of sales very much as a coaching process right? So what I mean by that is when you’re trying to. Sell something to someone. Um, it’s very much like you are helping coach them to solve a problem that they have and if you think of it that way. It also makes it much easier for you to build Repo with them around a problem. Um. And I think especially for people who you know may be a little bit more intro it that might be a good way to um, actually build rapport and develop a relationship for the customer versus you know, just small talk or um.
25:42.44
Lauren Conaway
Yeah, well and I think that that’s a really really appropriate and very cool approach simply because even if an entrepreneur is an introvert or not comfortable with the sales process. The fact is entrepreneurs at their core are problem solvers.
25:43.16
Shruti
Other aspects of personality.
26:02.20
Lauren Conaway
Right? Like we entrepreneurs are the people who come up against a challenge or they see ah a gap or a hole in in a market and they attempt to fill it. They attempt to solve the problem. So I feel like almost framing the sales process as a problem solving process that you do with. The customer or the potential customer that could be really really attractive to to salespeople who or or people who are being thrust into sales roles when that’s not really their their comfort zone. So I Love that So So friends listening at home. If You are not a salesperson by nature that is okay because you are a problem Solver. So Just remember that now I have to ask and I’m very Curious. We’ve kind of talked Around. We’ve we’ve talked. We’ve talked around the platform and I really. Would like to get into the Nitty Gritty. Can you talk to us a little bit about exactly how how wing man works.
27:05.48
Shruti
Sure, um, so I’ll just maybe take a step back and say you know why I actually started building this so I was working with leading a sales team and my you know I had 2 big challenges. 1 was.
27:10.76
Lauren Conaway
Oh yeah.
27:20.94
Shruti
Every time I wanted to give feedback to the product team. They would be like oh can we get on a customer call and then you know can we understand from the customer why they wanted it and that would mean you know like 4 follow up emails multiple reschedulings to figure out like a time when we could get everybody together and then. You know I would also feel guilty that like what isn’t it for the prospect writing they haven’t even bought the product yet. Um, and so clearly they didn’t have as much skin in the game and you know these things would just feel like a drain on time. Um, and the second challenge I had was that I had. Folks on my team who were you know doing really? Well I had other folks who from a revenue number perspective were not doing well even though I could see them putting a lot of effort. Um, so I was essentially thinking about this day in and day out and I realized that you know the. Kind of the secret to all of this lay in the conversations that were happening with the customers right? like if I could go back and tell my product team hey you know in the last twenty calls that I’ve had everybody has asked for this feature or you know. 3 out of 10 customers asked me for this feature and hey here are the 2 minute clips on you know how they’re describing this problem that would be much more effective than being able to get them on a single call with one of those 10 people. Um, because one you know that was.
28:50.10
Shruti
Taking extra time from me and 2 they were only getting 1 person’s perspective versus you know, holistically knowing you know how common is this problem, etc. Um, so that was 1 reason why I was like if I could record these calls if I could and have them analyzed and I could do like all sorts of funky. Um, you know. Ah, search and analysis on it then I would be able to answer that question for my product team and for myself. Um, and the second thing similarly and this was something that when I started speaking to other sales leaders I realized was that typically within a sales team. You have you know if you’re. You know your best rep is doing maybe 10 x in um, you know quota then it’s very possible that your worst performing rep is only doing like twenty thirty percent of that and so every sales manager faces that disparity and they struggle to you know say.
29:35.99
Lauren Conaway
Friends.
29:45.38
Shruti
What could I be doing to help my reps who aren’t performing as well to do better and very often. You know while they come up with coaching and suggestions. It’s not as effective or as scalable as it would be if these people could actually learn from each other and if they could learn much more frequently. Today 1 of the biggest challenges with sales coaching is that your it only happens like once a month for a particular rep and at that frequency like even if you give me the best feedback there are two problems one is I don’t know whether your feedback is actually going to work in the next scenario that I go into. And 2 sales you know because of the repetitive nature of it very quickly becomes like a game of habits and it’s so hard to change habits if you’re only getting feedback on it once a month right? like you literally need to.
30:36.80
Lauren Conaway
Right.
30:40.61
Shruti
Be doing something every day or every time that situation arises for you to change the habit right? So think about like you say hey I want to start waking up at 5 am but you only do that like you know you only look at your clock once every month to save what time you’re waking up right? So that’s not going to happen. Um.
30:55.23
Lauren Conaway
Right.
30:59.91
Shruti
And so what Wingman does is 1 it analyzes and records every call. So for example, if it’s a Zoom meeting it joins as a bot. It’s recording the call. It’s transcribing it and then it’s doing all sorts of Ai analysis to decide. You know what topics you were discussing at what point. Of time in the call. Ah, but the second thing it’s doing is it’s then taking this information and correlating that with what is the actual um you know outcome of that conversation right? So if you’re having ah you know as a rep you had 20 conversations this week um you know 15 of them. You lost the deal 5 of them. You know, resulted in say a closed one. It’s going to be able to tell you what are some of the common things between the conversations where you won the deal versus where you lost the deal and then it could aggregate that at the team level. It could aggregate that. Um, you know across a geography or a segment so you get some very interesting trends. But the third most important thing is that you know the feedback loop gets completed very quickly. So if I identify that this is a best practice. I want to make sure that my reps are getting feedback on that every time that situation arises. So you know a simple example is like if somebody you know I decide as a manager that hey every time somebody asks you for a discount. Don’t go ahead and give a discount instead.
32:18.25
Lauren Conaway
Right.
32:33.96
Shruti
Make sure that you’ve established the ah roi for the product now what I could do with Vingman is that every time the word discount gets spoken automatically, just think of it like you know and Alex are telling you something.
32:35.69
Lauren Conaway
Right.
32:49.22
Shruti
So as soon as the word discount gets spoken. It can show a battle card on the screen of the rep to say hey these are the 3 points that you should now talk about and so that feedback loop instead of it being like once a month and a manager reviews a call and gives feedback now becomes instantaneous and repetitive so that. Your reps are actually able to quickly change their habits.
33:13.13
Lauren Conaway
That’s really fascinating and I and I love the fact that you can use use the tool as as a way to kind of prepare your team prep your team because I think founders often we we often jump to devaluing what we do because we want to make the sale. And so so I love that in the example that you chose and and the I guess advice or the guidance that I would love to give you know the folks listening at home. You know you don’t always have to jump to the discount to your point what you need to do is you need to rebuild or or build in more strongly. That value that you’re providing because by by offering the discount immediately. You’re you’re devaluing what you have to offer and then what happens when the discount period is over you’ve you’ve set an expectation with that customer. So So I love that and I love that you found a way to. To create a really consistent, really strong training tool for your sales reps because often when we talk about you know, poor for poor poor performers who that was difficult to say poor performance in sales often. It’s not necessarily the salesperson. It’s the sales process. Right? And I feel like that is what you’re trying to a lot of what you’re trying to address with wing man is that that accurate. Yeah, love it? Well well that is super cool I have to ask you know I see wing man by clary.
34:35.40
Shruti
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
34:46.34
Lauren Conaway
And you recently went through an M and a process mergers and acquisitions can you talk to us a little bit about that and what the future looks like for wing man.
34:57.38
Shruti
Yeah, absolutely so like you said, um, around you know middle of 2022 we got acquired by clariy clariy of course is you know a well-known unicon in the sales tax space. Um, and. Fit couldn’t have been better so when we started this conversation with clariy I wasn’t looking to sell the company but it just seems like this synergies were so good with respect to like the problem that they were looking to solve the long term vision and to put it very simply they think about. Sales problem in terms of ah you know the past performance and predicting the future with respect to forecastting you know what’s going to happen this quarter by looking at you know all of the historic data. Um, and you know the way we think about wingman is that it’s looking at the present and helping you. Solve for the present right? with like real time feedback battle cards coaching all of those things. So um, so that’s that’s kind of how the 2 companies came together and yeah I think for us it has meant just. Learning from a very different perspective with respect to the customer groups that we sell to typically have been a little bit different and so there’s just a lot of fascinating stuff to see how companies at different scales operate right? both.
36:30.41
Shruti
Ah, in terms of our customers because Wingan has a lot of Smb customers clariy has a lot of enterprise customers. Um, but also how companies at different stages operate internally right? So of course you know Clariy and is a unicorn with. Close to 800 employees right now and you know wing man we were 4 years into our journey with 50 employees at the time of act position. So it’s been fantastic seeing those paddles and contrasts.
37:00.25
Lauren Conaway
That is awesome and and so you’re feeling pretty hopeful about your trajectory and the future of wingman after after all of this change feeling good about it.
37:10.97
Shruti
Yeah, absolutely,. It’s like playing on a bigger stage and you know being able to have conversations with. Ah, many more and many large customers. So yeah, absolutely,. It’s been a fantastic few months.
37:27.11
Lauren Conaway
I love that so much and and I love something else and that is the human question and the human question is my favorite question to ask I always tell our guests in pre-show prep and Trudy is no exception. That with the human question. It’s a dumb question that has nothing to do with anything and here it comes I’m going to ask you if you all right? You have a theme song and it plays whenever you walk into a room. What’s your theme song.
38:03.60
Shruti
Ah, um, so I don’t know if you’ve heard the song bell bottoms from the movie baby driver. Um, yes, yeah, it’s called Bell Bottoms um
38:09.71
Lauren Conaway
No, but now we’re gonna have to listen to area. It’s called Bell Bottoms all right
38:20.63
Shruti
Yeah I mean I think it’s more of a soundtrack but it’s just you know it’s just something Ruby gets into your head and puts a pace on things.
38:29.54
Lauren Conaway
Groovier and gets into your head I feel like that that fits with you very very well Shrudy I love that now I have something to add to my Spotify playlist. So thank you for that all right? Well I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to chat with us this. This was really fun. And I hope that our listeners have taken home and taken to heart some of your very very awesome sales insights. But thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today.
38:56.15
Shruti
Thanks Lauren this was really fun.
38:59.84
Lauren Conaway
Good. Well I would be remiss friends if I didn’t remind you once again, this episode of startup hustle was sponsored by our friends over at Equip Bid Auctions join sell earn. It is just that easy with equip bid auctions. You can become an affiliate and start or grow your independent business by visiting Equip Dash bid.
39:08.31
Shruti
Support.
39:14.34
Shruti
Question.
39:19.80
Lauren Conaway
Head to Startup Hustle.xyz. Click on our partners page. You’ll see Equip Bid founder Andy has everything set up for you to go make some money, which I know we all love go build your business within a business. With Equip Bid Auctions and we are very glad that they have shown their support for Startup Hustle.
39:39.29
Lauren Conaway
Thank you friends I also want to take a moment to tell you I’m not the only host of startup hustle. We have many, the Matts, Matt squared as I like to call them. But I also want to point you to some to Andrew Morgans. he is our Amazon ecommerce retail guru.
39:57.90
Lauren Conaway
And he shares a lot of really awesome insights about sales and how to maximize your pipelines and all of those beautiful things that we love to see as founders. Friends, I do this every show, I’m gonna do it again. Just want to thank you so much for taking the time to to listen to us week after week. We would not do this, could not do this without you. We are very grateful that you come back and share your founder journeys. And you listen to the founder journeys of the folks that we interview. Thank you so much. You rock!
40:27.28
Shruti
Out.
40:36.44
Lauren Conaway
And we will catch you on the flip side.
Rough Transcript
Following is an auto-generated text transcript of this episode. Apologies for any errors!
00:00.39
Lauren Conaway
And we are back. Thank you for joining us for yet another episode of the Startup Hustle podcast. I’m your host Lauren Conaway, founder and CEO of InnovateHER KC and I have to tell you, we’ve got a really special episode sponsor today. Today’s episode of Startup Hustle is sponsored by Equip Bids Auctions, your midwest online auction marketplace to buy and sell stuff equip bid provides dedicated support to affiliates in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Iowa. Join the team and sell everything from heavy machinery to home goods vehicles and boats to restaurant and kitchen equipment and tractors to patio furniture furniture. Go to equipbid.me/startup that is Equip Bid dot me backslash startup for details or just click the link save down below in the show notes.
Now I have to tell you friends, we get excited about all of our guests. But I even told this particular guest in pre-show prep that I was very excited about today’s episode topic because as we all know Matt Decourseey is a sales guru but today I have the opportunity to talk about sales with an expert and I am so so glad and so excited. Have Shruti Kapoor, CEO of Wingman by Clari, joining us today. Shruti, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us.
01:21.35
Shruti
Great to be here Lauren, looking forward to this.
01:23.34
Lauren Conaway
All right! We’re gonna have some fun but first I’m gonna kick it off as I always do, tell us about your journey.
01:36.24
Shruti
Sure. So, I was born in India I’ve been now living in the fourth country. I grew up in India, spent a decade in Singapore, and currently living in the Middle East in UA. And I started wingman 4 years back. It is a sales tech platform that analyzes all of sales interactions to enable real time live coaching so that people can take the right actions while they are trying to close a deal. Because I think one of my biggest frustrations as a salesperson was that you know you make a mistake you get a ton of advice from everybody after you’ve made the mistake but you can’t unlos the deal. So yeah, I’m here trying to help others not having to unlose deals post facto. I’ve actually had a pretty diverse background, did biotechnology for my undergrad, worked in an investment bank and then worked with startups on the funding site for a decade before starting this up.
02:44.97
Lauren Conaway
Wow. Well so sir I want to I want to kind of dial it back a little bit I think it’s really really interesting that you you said you’re on your fourth country is that right? So how? Well first off I’d be very curious to hear what has inspired you to be not just a world traveler.
02:54.49
Shruti
Yeah, that’s right.
03:04.65
Lauren Conaway
But a world liver I mean you’re not just visiting places. You’re actually getting involved with the culture and the geography and the people and I think that’s really cool. So first first question is what inspired you to do that. But then my second follow-up is and I’m yes, I’m asking 2 questions at once. So just bear with me. But my second question is how do you think that has impacted your perspective as a founder.
03:32.95
Shruti
Yeah, absolutely so I think the first time around I was given the chance to live in another country. It wasn’t of my own choosing. So I went to live in Singapore when I was 16 um, you know my dad had applied for. Ah, scholarship that Singapore government was offering at that point somehow I meet you know I got selected for that and I had no idea and I had no intention of you know, living away from home at that age. Um, and so you know, but but once I went there I really kind of. Enjoyed the diversity just the whole difference in cultural experience and how much it actually makes you kind of rethink all of the assumptions that you make you know and you’re just part of 1 culture because all of those things are just taken for granted till you go and experience a very different world. Um, so I think that’s kind of when it hit me and then through my now you know work career I’ve ah of course worked a lot with companies in the us lived and traveled there for a little bit and you know again very different perspective from Singapore which is you know. Asian chinese culturally um and now that I’m living in the Middle East and you know in between I went back and lived in India for a decade. So now I’m kind of looking at all of those cultural experiences from a very different lens because now I have a kid and I’m kind of thinking about.
05:06.14
Shruti
You know how is each of that cultural experience. The diversity. Yeah, everything that’s impacting him. Um, So I think you know as I’ve gone through this. What I’ve realized is that it’s easier to kind of stay in your own bubble Even when you travel and live outside when you’re much older because you kind of you know you can choose to just interact with a handful of people every day but when you’re younger and especially when you’re going to school or college, you’re forced to interact with the whole diversity of eople that exist in that place and you learn so much more from them and and you know how that impacts you as you know a colleague or as a founder is that you actually you know the the more variety of people that you interact with the more empathy you have. In understanding that there are going to be many different points of view because people are coming from many different contexts and many different assumptions and beliefs. Um, very often. You know we find it really hard to break that in our head to really understand that you know. Somebody is behaving in a certain manner because they have a very different context and Framework. Um, So yeah I think ah sorry that was a long answer to your short life.
06:26.30
Lauren Conaway
No I love it I really wanted to get into the meat of things with you and and I think that we definitely accomplished that. So so I’m gonna tell you a little story. Ah, and then I’m gonna go on to ask some more questions but my my story. Um, you know when I was very early on in my career. I decided that you know I was an entrepreneur and I had ah I actually had a marketing agency at the time it was called v 3 creative and what was really interesting is I somehow ended up with bi coastal despite despite the fact that I lived like smack dab in the middle of other country of the United States I had either bi coastal or international clients and 1 of my clients was based out of Paris France and they did work in the in the global pe realm. And so they had they had contracted me to do some copywriting for their web. They had contracted me to do a bunch of things but 1 of the projects that I was working on was copywriting for their website and I took a stab at it and this is this is actually a little embarrassing but I took a stab at it and I sent it off and I didn’t hear back for like a week and I was like oh that. That can’t be good but when they finally got back to me. They were like hey you know Lauren we can’t we can’t use this and I I asked why you know I thought that it was some of my my good work and they they explained to me that in France.
07:54.24
Lauren Conaway
Culturally, the language that they use to market and sell is very different than that the kind of language that we use here in the states here in the states we are very into superlatives I don’t have a great product I have the best product. You know my my product is. You know it’s brighter than the sun and it’s going to change your life and we’re very very um, enthusiastic to the point of at least as far as like like french perspective we’re we’re a little too cloying. We’re too enthusiastic. We. We just use all of these really really big superlatives and so that that was a huge learning experience for me, you know the perspective and the paradigm that I’m operating from is not the same globally and I felt and you know I think I was like 24 25 at the time and you know pretty stupid. Still like still learning my as I as I go on but that was a huge lesson for me and so you you mentioned assumptions you know you actually mentioned it a couple of times and so I’m really curious. What are some of the assumptions that you yourself have had to confront in your in your founder journey.
09:07.49
Shruti
Um, so I think this is specifically with the context of um, you know people are interacting with different cultures right? So I think one is. Ah, like you said, right? like different people culturally make different types of claims. So when I was ah you know when I started wing man I was primarily selling to the Us market and I hadn’t um you know while I had worked with. Companies there I hadn’t done like a bunch of selling to that market. So one of the things that I realized was that you know there are also like assumptions that people make in terms of stereotypes. So now one of the you know early feedback that I received was oh. You know every time somebody thinks of it. Plus um yeah, if somebody thinks of I T Plus India they are probably thinking of it in the context of you know the services companies that they’ve worked with and so they’re not really used to seeing a product company. Um from India. And so that is going to be a bit of a barrier and that was interesting because I hadn’t thought about that assumption and you know all of the other things that it implied. Um which you know which kind of made me double down on.
10:30.64
Shruti
Trying to overcome the unset objections that people might have when they’re making those assumptions right? So one unset assumption a you know, unset objection would be that oh because I think people are good at solving a problem that somebody else is defining. They might not be very innovative when they’re coming up with a product. And so you know what I had to do double down on was to say okay, you know I know that people are not going to write directly ask me that but how do I go ahead and you know answer that question for them similarly. The other thing that I realized was that if you’re dealing with somebody who’s unlike you. Um, you tend to over generalize right? because you’re going to have ah you know much fewer sample points of dealing with a certain person type right? like whether that is to say that you know if i’m. You know if I’m in a very male dominated world and you know I worked in investment banking which is probably like the extreme of that example in some ways. Um you know I you know I might have an experience with like working with 5 other women in ah, your career of 20 years and I might just overindex on each of those experiences when i’m. Meeting the sixth person. Ah, but similarly, you know whether that’s you asian or you know you’re a asian woman then you know each of those categories people tend to overindex on and so that was the other experience that I realized that if people had had some experience working with like you know.
11:59.20
Shruti
3 indian people in their career the next time they meet somebody who’s indian they’re going to overindex on that experience and if they’ve had a bad experience in the past. Ah they are going to kind of you know, put all of that on you when you’re walking into that room. So sometimes it’s useful to understand that. And to maybe even try to figure out what experiences they’ve had because people might just and you know the third thing was that um people also culturally make very different opening conversations right? like um, you know in the us a lot of times people would culturally. Project themselves as I would say like very happy and you know everything kind of sorted. Um, that’s not necessarily true in other parts of the world and so you know in those conversations as well. Like um, it’s it’s kind of useful to understand.
12:40.65
Lauren Conaway
Yeah.
12:55.38
Shruti
Ah, how those things play out. Because if I go into a room and if somebody asks me how are you doing and that’s just their way of saying hello and I start with like a 3 minute monologue on you know all of these things went wrong this morning. They’re going to be like I don’t know why you’re saying that right? that wasn’t my question. So. I think it’s just useful to know the context that people operate in and to make sure that you’re trying to bridge the gap or at least make them aware that the gap exists.
13:23.47
Lauren Conaway
Yeah, well and what I find interesting I mean clearly you have a lot of insight around this. But what you’ve actually done is you’ve created a platform that to my understanding kind of removes some of that hesitation and uncertainty because basically what you’re doing you’re scouring through sales interactions to find actionable intelligence so you’ve removed that bias is that accurate like talk to us about wingman and and how how it works.
13:57.38
Shruti
Yeah, So um, you know with thing man What? Um? what?? what? I’m trying to do is to make sure that everybody understands you know everybody I mean like all of the salespeople in the team. Understand and have visibility on what are good sales practices not just based on like you know, somebody said this or this is in the playbook. Ah that the company has put out but based on the actual ah real life conversations that are happening every day on sales calls and so what the platform does is. It’s. Recording and analyzing every sales interaction that’s happening whether that’s an email a call you know and then it’s matching that up with what was the outcome for that sales Call. So if I look at like you know hundreds of sales calls and I know that. Ah, you know more often than not in the sales call where you actually talk about Budget. You have a better chance of closing a deal I’m able to actually go back and use that information and coach people through the platform to say that hey you know talk about budget and talk about budget this way and so what the platform then does is like. Next time a conversation around budget comes up. It’s actually going to show the seller a Qe card with you know the specific talking points that they could use to talk about it So in some sense What it’s doing is it’s it’s trying to make it a more even playing field for everyone and you’re right? it’s.
15:26.50
Shruti
It’s trying to also make sure that you know if you’re ah selling to a similar set of people then you’re being able to sell the same way and provide a more consistent experience. Um, you know for the brand and for the customer.
15:38.64
Lauren Conaway
Yeah, well and to to kind of meet customers where where they are rather than where you are which which I love So so how important do you think it is for a founder to have great sales skills.
15:55.44
Shruti
You know when I started up I was somewhat hesitant on how I should be spending my time right? and it always seems like there are a hundred important things. You could be doing whether that is.
15:56.25
Lauren Conaway
So.
16:11.00
Shruti
You know building a culture ah hiring lawyers writing the right formation documents. But ultimately the first thing that you need to accomplish as a startup is to find you know your product market fit and.
16:27.21
Shruti
To find that product market fit. It’s really important that you’re actually 1 um, you know, reaching out to the market iterating on who or what that market looks like for you or your customers and 3 then. Taking that feedback puts that into the product and you can’t be doing any of that unless you are the primary and the first salesperson for that product. So you know I think it’s absolutely no doubt in my mind. Um, you know the most important job that at least 1 of the founders. In a company needs to be doing.
17:04.18
Lauren Conaway
Sure. Well so so let’s talk a little bit more about about your founder journey have you always been gifted at sales.
17:16.98
Shruti
Um, I would say not really um I mean I’ve always known the importance of it but I would say that I’ve been like a hesitant salesperson right? So I’ve you know I’ve done my fair share of you know, business development and sales roles but I have not really you know, kind of openly or aggressively thought of myself as a salesperson partially because um, you know I have considered myself as an introward I would consider myself as you know somebody who doesn’t like speaking to new people unless you know I have to. Um, but I think being a founder a lot of that has changed for me. Um, and I’ve realized that you know you kind of don’t have an option out of it. Um, and so you know it’s It’s definitely an acquired taste I would say.
18:06.24
Lauren Conaway
For sure. Absolutely well. So So you said something really really interesting in there and I think it’s something that could very much speak to a lot of our listeners. But you mentioned that you’re an introvert and yet. Here You are you know leading a sales platform. You’re a founder and founders tend to be the faces of their companies and you’ve you’ve carved out a niche for yourself as a sales leader and so I’m I’m very curious. How have you been able to kind of reconcile. Your your intro version with sales which I think when most people think of sales they think of kind of you know, public facing like you said you have to talk to people that you don’t know um you know pretty much constantly. Ah, what has that been like and how have you been able to to. Kind of work that into your journey overcoming either overcoming the the introversion or integrating it into what you do and how you do it.
19:07.83
Shruti
Sure so I think 2 things for me 1 is um I’m fundamentally curious by nature and I think the way I look at sales and you know speaking to customers or speaking to partners or anybody else today. Is from the perspective of you know what can I learn today and that um you know helps me overcome some of that reluctance I would say right? and the second part of it and so you know I think that also. In some ways makes me a good salesperson because then I’m much more willing to spend time thinking and listening to what the person on the other side is saying rather than um, you know just being focused on what smart thing I’m going to say next? Um, the second thing is. That you know being passionate about your product. Ah, right means that you are constantly trying to answer the question. You know how are people going to use it and that definitely for me precedes. Um, you know a lot of the. Thinking that goes in when I have these conversations because I’m just you know so excited to understand you know what problem somebody is facing and you know how? ah I could be helping them solve that better. Um that I think you know that excitement somehow helps.
20:35.88
Lauren Conaway
I love that I love people who are excited and I love people who are curious so I’m really glad that we have the opportunity to chat today and friends I am also happy to remind you that today’s episode of startup hustle is brought to you by Equip bid auctions.
20:36.14
Shruti
Overcome that hesitation as well.
20:54.15
Lauren Conaway
An Online Marketplace dedicated to growing small auction businesses. They’re solving problems and providing a fun recommerce or liquidation shopping experience to valued Bidders. Go check out their incredible offerings and sign up at Equip Dash Bid dot me Backslash startup that is Equip Dash bid. Emmy Backslash startup and if that was too much. You can definitely check out the show notes for the link check them out I went on their website and I have to tell I was telling shrudy that I am now obsessed with the equip Bids auction website because they have so much cool stuff and I want all of it. So so.
21:18.19
Shruti
Um.
21:32.63
Lauren Conaway
That’s a caution to you just know you’re gonna open up this site and there’s gonna be all kinds of stuff that you want to bring home with you just liberate it from the auction. Ah so Shrudy tell me tell me this you just gave us some really really good. Actionable insight. Into becoming a sales leader and what you said was to focus on what others are saying, listening to understand rather than listening to respond, and I think that that is a hallmark of a lot of really fantastic sales leaders and so I’m wondering. Do you have any other advice for folks who you know founders we have to do a lot of stuff that is not really within our wheelhouse particularly in early days when we’re bootstrapping and operating lean and we just don’t have people. So we have to act as our own marketing person salesperson randd person. You know all of all of the things. So for the folks at home who who maybe don’t feel super comfortable in the sales space. What other advice can you give them that might help them on their journey.
22:37.60
Shruti
Sure so I think you know 2 more things that I learned through this journey right? one is and especially especially applicable. Um, you know in the early days of a startup the first few years that you’re building it as well. Um, think of the process of. Selling or marketing as a proxy to building trust with somebody who you know maybe doesn’t know anything about you or your brand. Um, and the way this translates into getting you know your first five customers versus your first twenty customers is that you know. Initially when you’re starting out the way you build trust is not because you know somebody recognizes your brand right? because that brand doesn’t exist. Um, it’s not because you know you did a full page ad somewhere. Um, but it’s because. You are the face of the brand and they have to somehow build trust with you because they don’t know whether the product is going to work. Maybe you just launch the product like last month um so you know, kind of think about like what is the first stage of building trust with someone and so you know first stage is you. And so you think about like who are the people who already trust you or what are the reasons how people can trust you whether that is you know a school you went to ah people that they know etc and it’s okay to use those things even though you know you might feel.
24:07.82
Shruti
That you know the product should stand on its own and yes, the product should be great. It should stand on its own. But at the end of the day, the proxy for trust on day one is you as the person. Over a period of time, you have to think of other proxies for trust that are more scalable right? so. Ah, in your next phase. It’s going to be what your first 5 customers said and you have to figure out a way to amplify that voice to capture that voice and to make sure that people are seeing it at the right time in the right context and then you know slowly in parallel you should build your brand because that is. In many ways the most scalable way of building. Trust um, so that’s one I think the second thing that I learned in this journey of sales is um, think of sales very much as a coaching process right? So what I mean by that is when you’re trying to. Sell something to someone. Um, it’s very much like you are helping coach them to solve a problem that they have and if you think of it that way. It also makes it much easier for you to build Repo with them around a problem. Um. And I think especially for people who you know may be a little bit more intro it that might be a good way to um, actually build rapport and develop a relationship for the customer versus you know, just small talk or um.
25:42.44
Lauren Conaway
Yeah, well and I think that that’s a really really appropriate and very cool approach simply because even if an entrepreneur is an introvert or not comfortable with the sales process. The fact is entrepreneurs at their core are problem solvers.
25:43.16
Shruti
Other aspects of personality.
26:02.20
Lauren Conaway
Right? Like we entrepreneurs are the people who come up against a challenge or they see ah a gap or a hole in in a market and they attempt to fill it. They attempt to solve the problem. So I feel like almost framing the sales process as a problem solving process that you do with. The customer or the potential customer that could be really really attractive to to salespeople who or or people who are being thrust into sales roles when that’s not really their their comfort zone. So I Love that So So friends listening at home. If You are not a salesperson by nature that is okay because you are a problem Solver. So Just remember that now I have to ask and I’m very Curious. We’ve kind of talked Around. We’ve we’ve talked. We’ve talked around the platform and I really. Would like to get into the Nitty Gritty. Can you talk to us a little bit about exactly how how wing man works.
27:05.48
Shruti
Sure, um, so I’ll just maybe take a step back and say you know why I actually started building this so I was working with leading a sales team and my you know I had 2 big challenges. 1 was.
27:10.76
Lauren Conaway
Oh yeah.
27:20.94
Shruti
Every time I wanted to give feedback to the product team. They would be like oh can we get on a customer call and then you know can we understand from the customer why they wanted it and that would mean you know like 4 follow up emails multiple reschedulings to figure out like a time when we could get everybody together and then. You know I would also feel guilty that like what isn’t it for the prospect writing they haven’t even bought the product yet. Um, and so clearly they didn’t have as much skin in the game and you know these things would just feel like a drain on time. Um, and the second challenge I had was that I had. Folks on my team who were you know doing really? Well I had other folks who from a revenue number perspective were not doing well even though I could see them putting a lot of effort. Um, so I was essentially thinking about this day in and day out and I realized that you know the. Kind of the secret to all of this lay in the conversations that were happening with the customers right? like if I could go back and tell my product team hey you know in the last twenty calls that I’ve had everybody has asked for this feature or you know. 3 out of 10 customers asked me for this feature and hey here are the 2 minute clips on you know how they’re describing this problem that would be much more effective than being able to get them on a single call with one of those 10 people. Um, because one you know that was.
28:50.10
Shruti
Taking extra time from me and 2 they were only getting 1 person’s perspective versus you know, holistically knowing you know how common is this problem, etc. Um, so that was 1 reason why I was like if I could record these calls if I could and have them analyzed and I could do like all sorts of funky. Um, you know. Ah, search and analysis on it then I would be able to answer that question for my product team and for myself. Um, and the second thing similarly and this was something that when I started speaking to other sales leaders I realized was that typically within a sales team. You have you know if you’re. You know your best rep is doing maybe 10 x in um, you know quota then it’s very possible that your worst performing rep is only doing like twenty thirty percent of that and so every sales manager faces that disparity and they struggle to you know say.
29:35.99
Lauren Conaway
Friends.
29:45.38
Shruti
What could I be doing to help my reps who aren’t performing as well to do better and very often. You know while they come up with coaching and suggestions. It’s not as effective or as scalable as it would be if these people could actually learn from each other and if they could learn much more frequently. Today 1 of the biggest challenges with sales coaching is that your it only happens like once a month for a particular rep and at that frequency like even if you give me the best feedback there are two problems one is I don’t know whether your feedback is actually going to work in the next scenario that I go into. And 2 sales you know because of the repetitive nature of it very quickly becomes like a game of habits and it’s so hard to change habits if you’re only getting feedback on it once a month right? like you literally need to.
30:36.80
Lauren Conaway
Right.
30:40.61
Shruti
Be doing something every day or every time that situation arises for you to change the habit right? So think about like you say hey I want to start waking up at 5 am but you only do that like you know you only look at your clock once every month to save what time you’re waking up right? So that’s not going to happen. Um.
30:55.23
Lauren Conaway
Right.
30:59.91
Shruti
And so what Wingman does is 1 it analyzes and records every call. So for example, if it’s a Zoom meeting it joins as a bot. It’s recording the call. It’s transcribing it and then it’s doing all sorts of Ai analysis to decide. You know what topics you were discussing at what point. Of time in the call. Ah, but the second thing it’s doing is it’s then taking this information and correlating that with what is the actual um you know outcome of that conversation right? So if you’re having ah you know as a rep you had 20 conversations this week um you know 15 of them. You lost the deal 5 of them. You know, resulted in say a closed one. It’s going to be able to tell you what are some of the common things between the conversations where you won the deal versus where you lost the deal and then it could aggregate that at the team level. It could aggregate that. Um, you know across a geography or a segment so you get some very interesting trends. But the third most important thing is that you know the feedback loop gets completed very quickly. So if I identify that this is a best practice. I want to make sure that my reps are getting feedback on that every time that situation arises. So you know a simple example is like if somebody you know I decide as a manager that hey every time somebody asks you for a discount. Don’t go ahead and give a discount instead.
32:18.25
Lauren Conaway
Right.
32:33.96
Shruti
Make sure that you’ve established the ah roi for the product now what I could do with Vingman is that every time the word discount gets spoken automatically, just think of it like you know and Alex are telling you something.
32:35.69
Lauren Conaway
Right.
32:49.22
Shruti
So as soon as the word discount gets spoken. It can show a battle card on the screen of the rep to say hey these are the 3 points that you should now talk about and so that feedback loop instead of it being like once a month and a manager reviews a call and gives feedback now becomes instantaneous and repetitive so that. Your reps are actually able to quickly change their habits.
33:13.13
Lauren Conaway
That’s really fascinating and I and I love the fact that you can use use the tool as as a way to kind of prepare your team prep your team because I think founders often we we often jump to devaluing what we do because we want to make the sale. And so so I love that in the example that you chose and and the I guess advice or the guidance that I would love to give you know the folks listening at home. You know you don’t always have to jump to the discount to your point what you need to do is you need to rebuild or or build in more strongly. That value that you’re providing because by by offering the discount immediately. You’re you’re devaluing what you have to offer and then what happens when the discount period is over you’ve you’ve set an expectation with that customer. So So I love that and I love that you found a way to. To create a really consistent, really strong training tool for your sales reps because often when we talk about you know, poor for poor poor performers who that was difficult to say poor performance in sales often. It’s not necessarily the salesperson. It’s the sales process. Right? And I feel like that is what you’re trying to a lot of what you’re trying to address with wing man is that that accurate. Yeah, love it? Well well that is super cool I have to ask you know I see wing man by clary.
34:35.40
Shruti
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
34:46.34
Lauren Conaway
And you recently went through an M and a process mergers and acquisitions can you talk to us a little bit about that and what the future looks like for wing man.
34:57.38
Shruti
Yeah, absolutely so like you said, um, around you know middle of 2022 we got acquired by clariy clariy of course is you know a well-known unicon in the sales tax space. Um, and. Fit couldn’t have been better so when we started this conversation with clariy I wasn’t looking to sell the company but it just seems like this synergies were so good with respect to like the problem that they were looking to solve the long term vision and to put it very simply they think about. Sales problem in terms of ah you know the past performance and predicting the future with respect to forecastting you know what’s going to happen this quarter by looking at you know all of the historic data. Um, and you know the way we think about wingman is that it’s looking at the present and helping you. Solve for the present right? with like real time feedback battle cards coaching all of those things. So um, so that’s that’s kind of how the 2 companies came together and yeah I think for us it has meant just. Learning from a very different perspective with respect to the customer groups that we sell to typically have been a little bit different and so there’s just a lot of fascinating stuff to see how companies at different scales operate right? both.
36:30.41
Shruti
Ah, in terms of our customers because Wingan has a lot of Smb customers clariy has a lot of enterprise customers. Um, but also how companies at different stages operate internally right? So of course you know Clariy and is a unicorn with. Close to 800 employees right now and you know wing man we were 4 years into our journey with 50 employees at the time of act position. So it’s been fantastic seeing those paddles and contrasts.
37:00.25
Lauren Conaway
That is awesome and and so you’re feeling pretty hopeful about your trajectory and the future of wingman after after all of this change feeling good about it.
37:10.97
Shruti
Yeah, absolutely,. It’s like playing on a bigger stage and you know being able to have conversations with. Ah, many more and many large customers. So yeah, absolutely,. It’s been a fantastic few months.
37:27.11
Lauren Conaway
I love that so much and and I love something else and that is the human question and the human question is my favorite question to ask I always tell our guests in pre-show prep and Trudy is no exception. That with the human question. It’s a dumb question that has nothing to do with anything and here it comes I’m going to ask you if you all right? You have a theme song and it plays whenever you walk into a room. What’s your theme song.
38:03.60
Shruti
Ah, um, so I don’t know if you’ve heard the song bell bottoms from the movie baby driver. Um, yes, yeah, it’s called Bell Bottoms um
38:09.71
Lauren Conaway
No, but now we’re gonna have to listen to area. It’s called Bell Bottoms all right
38:20.63
Shruti
Yeah I mean I think it’s more of a soundtrack but it’s just you know it’s just something Ruby gets into your head and puts a pace on things.
38:29.54
Lauren Conaway
Groovier and gets into your head I feel like that that fits with you very very well Shrudy I love that now I have something to add to my Spotify playlist. So thank you for that all right? Well I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to chat with us this. This was really fun. And I hope that our listeners have taken home and taken to heart some of your very very awesome sales insights. But thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today.
38:56.15
Shruti
Thanks Lauren this was really fun.
38:59.84
Lauren Conaway
Good. Well I would be remiss friends if I didn’t remind you once again, this episode of startup hustle was sponsored by our friends over at Equip Bid Auctions join sell earn. It is just that easy with equip bid auctions. You can become an affiliate and start or grow your independent business by visiting Equip Dash bid.
39:08.31
Shruti
Support.
39:14.34
Shruti
Question.
39:19.80
Lauren Conaway
Head to Startup Hustle.xyz. Click on our partners page. You’ll see Equip Bid founder Andy has everything set up for you to go make some money, which I know we all love go build your business within a business. With Equip Bid Auctions and we are very glad that they have shown their support for Startup Hustle.
39:39.29
Lauren Conaway
Thank you friends I also want to take a moment to tell you I’m not the only host of startup hustle. We have many, the Matts, Matt squared as I like to call them. But I also want to point you to some to Andrew Morgans. he is our Amazon ecommerce retail guru.
39:57.90
Lauren Conaway
And he shares a lot of really awesome insights about sales and how to maximize your pipelines and all of those beautiful things that we love to see as founders. Friends, I do this every show, I’m gonna do it again. Just want to thank you so much for taking the time to to listen to us week after week. We would not do this, could not do this without you. We are very grateful that you come back and share your founder journeys. And you listen to the founder journeys of the folks that we interview. Thank you so much. You rock!
40:27.28
Shruti
Out.
40:36.44
Lauren Conaway
And we will catch you on the flip side.
