So far, Ajujaht had given us task related to investment, team building & marketing. We knew that the time will also come to sell the product. We were right – it was about sales.
The task
Find a customer, who is ready to say it out loud and also will start using our product.
Corporate sales is not a stroke of pen
This was the most difficult task for us thus far. Our solution is one for large service companies. What it means, that it’s not just an easy decision from one person about wanting to use the product. Many people from one company are involved. The value to the company needs to be defined with all connected stakeholders. It also means changing internal processes and making decisions, etc. It’s a process that involves steps far beyond only making a purchasing decision.
Since we are making pilots that are part of our sales process, these pilot projects also need to be presented. We are always including our future customers through various discussions every step of the way. From the beginning, we have decided not to ASSUME but to ask and discuss, to ensure that we are solving the right pain at the right time with the right scope.
Telia is not the only company that we are working with but the sales cycle is pretty long. For the task, we had to consider which are the options for us to really get a positive sales decision. We left out some companies because of conflict of interest, others since they were not at the right sales step at the time. Telia was the one, we decided to go for and we got a lot of support in it from our mentor Ranno!
Long story short, we were successful! They confirmed that they’re ready to start using our first product with the aim to improve their customer experience. With Feelingstream’s solution, they are able to better understand what their customers are saying about their brand and their products. It gives a better base to make business decisions based on actual customer feedback. It’s faster, it’s automatic and it’s objective analysis – it saves a lot of time, so their employees can use it for other important tasks.
The feedback we got from the jury was supportive. As they could relate with corporate world, they tried to help us shorten the sales cycle. They asked detailed questions about earlier meetings and data analysis from the pilot projects. It felt as the time flied in front of the jury – most of this time we spoke about the value our solution can bring to the corporate world. We discussed about metrics and pricing but also what we learned during the sales meetings with Telia.
Congratulations to Railreed, Levonapp (Levidera) ja Sprayprinter for the jury points!
This time the jury consisted of Mart Maasik (SEB), Erki Mölder (EAS), Kristi Täht (Marat) & Kaidi Ruusalepp (Funderbeam), Taavi Einaste (Nortal).
The episode aired yesterday evening and you can check it here: http://etv.err.ee/v/elusaated/ajujaht/saated/b492f5a8-69b6-4c95-b208-546c161dd0e2/ajujaht-2016-68 – just hold back, it’s in Estonian 🙂
Good luck in the competition to all teams and let’s continue in a week!
