Powering SaaS Sales with AI

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Hello and welcome to Momentum Officers. My name is Yash, and I'm joined by my co-founders Jai and Kaushik to discuss topic of the week, Powering SaaS Sales with AI. Our goal is to provide you with actionable insights and practical strategies that you can apply to your own business. Throughout the session, we encourage you to engage with us by asking questions and sharing your thoughts. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from each other and gain new insights that can help drive your digital initiatives forward. So let's get started. Jai, Kaushik.

How are you doing today? Great. Good. Client meetings, back to back. Back to back client meetings. Kaushik always has client meetings back to back. So, yeah. So up until the time that Kaushik has back to back client meetings, you and I are doing a good job. Our goal is to fill Kaushik's calendar. I think that's a great sort of target and goal to have.

But awesome. So powering SaaS sales with AI. So one of the first things, let's get started with this in the sense that, Jay, if you can tell us what sort of SaaS companies, what sort of a sales structure do a general generic sort of a SaaS company have? If you can start with like a fundamental.

What is the scenario that we are going to talk about? What could be their average order value? What could be their general typical customer look like? And what could be their average sort of a sales team structure that it could look like? So we know who we are talking about. And then maybe we can ask questions on top of it. Right. For sure. So in the past, we have already done one episode where we were talking more about low tickets as

and how AI and obviously all the activities related to AI for pushing the GTM, how does it work? Rude, we would like to more talk about the areas where ticket size of a SaaS product on an annual contract value, if we see it is anywhere around $6,000 to $10,000 or larger. So in this case, what would happen is there would be

a need of a salesperson based on whatever size the company is at. the more talk is regarding how AI actually helps the sales reps along with this in the entire process process, not just the sales rep. And also to look into the differentiation with respect to early stage SaaS companies and what made to large enterprise level SaaS companies. Both of them have their own processes.

which are little different and hence certain set of tools which are more suitable for enterprise level SaaS products may not be suitable for early stage. yeah, regarding this is the sort of the context within which we exist, right? So fair. anywhere that is $6,000 in annual contract value or higher. So most likely selling to sort of mid market or

a little large-ish enterprise customers having SDRs and VDRs and account managers and a complete sales process. So let's start with the first piece. How do you recommend these sales teams use AI for prospecting? What are the certain tools, tactics, or strategies that these companies can use to identify who's out there?

in the market looking for a platform or looking to solve the problem that their platform solves. Right. So let's try to categorize in these both the areas. One, let's consider where it's an only state says and let's say sales team is even though the ticket size is larger, but then there is a salesperson involved. we say that at least sales team consists of one or two SDRs in this particular state.

In these teams, the salespeople don't have the specified role to work into it. They at times are contributing towards the lead generation as well. So when you mention about the prospecting side, typically, let's talk about where AI actually helps. So for this set of group, for all the stages from lead generation to making sure that outreach is happening, after that qualification is happening, and after that,

closing is happening and from there obviously follow-ups and upscale as well. All of these stages, there are several tools which can be utilized for AI tools which can help them to reduce their timing and make them more efficient. The first I would recommend is clay of course and Apollo. Apollo also has great features of AI enabled inside it now and clay as well for prospecting. from there what happens is let's say you are different. So let's talk in an example set of way, right?

We are talking that, let's say there is a platform, SAS platform for HRFMS, and they are looking out for anyone who is into HR directors, and they want to build a list of the same. Earlier, they used to do scraping from different directories, but now they just list it out. They already have filters, and then all the data will be pulled across from there. So we already know these set of tools, but then there are other tools that are basically.

One would be for prospecting, but from there, we want to do some enrichment where we want to also make sure that they are also looking for these set of services at this particular stage of time. So for instance, let's talk about the CRM platform. Now, how do we understand, how do we get that prospecting in a way where we have intent signals on someone looking to change their CRM? So what happens is, let's say I am a salesperson, for example, for a CRM SaaS.

platforms, I want to look into these set of companies. I can use either ZoomInfo or other such intelligent platforms where I can say that anyone searching for CRM migration should be opt out in my list. So I can use these tasks. it's just earlier it has been very difficult to find such set of intents. But now that with AI, since AI is gradually evolving, lot of data points are being added and because of which these products also are

becoming more and more efficient. You must have heard earlier that clay is not able to give right set of results even though there is a lot of words around it. Now things are getting better around this area. there is a use case for entire sales process and for both the categories which we will discuss of course. then what I would say is this is how the efficiency of salesperson is getting increased.

Jay, a little follow up on that answer. So let's say if I am a SaaS company, a small SaaS company, team size of less than 10 to 15 people, I want to have AI. I have to use AI in my sales process without high investment in it. So then at what places do you say, with respect to me, I have no idea. I don't know how are you celebrating it, but OK.

No, no, I had actually reached out to the Restream team customer support to figure out and it said that the animation, they actually do mind reading and so if you're happy then that's how the background thing works. So Yash, have a question. When did you confirm if they have any AI based intelligence tool where they can figure out when we would also be that happy of that extent?

They said AVEs people can never be happy or satisfied. So we'll never get there. It's unachievable. Kaushik's full of joy. But please go ahead Kaushik. Sorry for saying. So like I was saying, when I'm a small team, at some places like while you're mentioning, I'm thinking of there is AI acting as an enabler for my team member. There's also some places where it can replace certain

manual process that was happening. So could you tell me for a small team like me, where AI can be an enabler and where AI can be a replacer in this process? Right, for sure. So let's say for a team of 15 to 20, where you largely one or two people are only there for the sales part, the primary need is to have a list building. So let's say for these set of team structures and the tickets as we talking about.

Outbound is something which largely works, Speaking in general context. So what we need is someone who can script. So let's say when there were no products related to AI, what would happen is there is a person who is just scraping the data, maybe the same person or another person needed for just figuring out on what sort of copy needs to go out there. And then that copy goes out. And then from there, responses come in. Then there is the same person or another person who is just responding, getting the meeting book. Then a person is going on a meeting and things like that.

In these cases, would need a bigger team size because the same person can do these things. However, then a lot of their time will be utilized in doing these different tasks. So overall outcome will be limited. Let's say in that way, if a same person is doing all of these activities with a lean team, you are getting anywhere around two to three bookings in a month. Now, let's say same person is there. Now with these AI tools, what he or she can do is basically figure out their ICP, utilize Apollo for just

finding out the right ICP segment or segments based on that they can directly have the copy, I mean the list ready. They can either use, since you mentioned it's a new team type again, so we would say that the same person is not using another platform like Lavender or anything else for personalized writing, but using just basically chat GPT. And since ICP segments are just one or two at the earlier stage and writing down a copy of it, Apollo also by the way provides this feature.

From there, basically, just using Apollo, you have found out your data. You have been able to write down a sequence. And just from there, you can move ahead. I would say for doing the outbound motion, there can also be instantly, which can be utilized. So either GLE, that GPD, and instantly, these three tools will largely take care of three to four people's work, which was needed in the earlier case. Otherwise, Apollo in itself, if for the starter, can do a lot of the jobs as well.

It's just that all the different tools that we talk about would have certain form of accuracy when AI-related work is defined. So the copy which you might like from Apollo, you may like even better if it is created by Lavender. Because Lavender is basically a tool only for copywriting based on the personalized profiles, so things like that. But yeah, these are the ones. And also, for early stage, I would recommend having Fathom, because that basically solves a lot of your time.

Earlier what used to happen is meetings were happening. You use your time in writing downloads, miss out on important insights and things like that. Right now you just have to have Fathom or Fireflies and tools like that, are basically just covering up the recording the whole meeting, doing the transcripts, but along with that also making a list or categorizing what is the summary of the meeting, what are the actionable items, and what are the key takeaways. All this is basically a talk for...

an early stage company, right? When we talk about again, mid to large enterprises, all of these things get coupled up with even more further set of utilities. But for the small teams, I guess, these are the tools which they can utilize. Fair. And so, so another thing that I wanted to understand was, so we've spoken about

We've spoken a little bit about prospecting and we've also spoken a little bit about optimizing. And by the way, for people who are watching this or listening to this, once the live is done, we'll retrospectively go and all the tools, Fathom and Apollo and Zoom Info and a few of them. Most of them are fairly well known and out there and some of them you may not know. So what we'll is we'll put the list of all the tools along with the links and put them in the description so you'll be able to sort of check them out and see if that's...

if they can be useful and become part of your software stack. But we've spoken a little bit about prospecting and then we've also spoken a little bit about optimization. In terms of analytics sort of or pipeline management, so in terms of accelerating the sales, right? So I've let's reached out to you as a prospect and you had a conversation.

challenges that most salespeople start facing is that they have a great top of the funnel, but then the deal flow or the speed of deal in their middle and bottom of the funnel becomes extremely slow. So from a deal acceleration standpoint, is there anything that AI can be used for? there any tools, platforms or anything that exists out there that can help us accelerate the deal? Not discovering anything.

not optimizing my workflow. So that we've covered, but accelerated. Yeah, right. So especially for accelerating the deal, let's say lots of deals are being generated, but then it's not coming to a closer stage. And there are a lot of reasons why this could happen, right? Maybe salesperson is utilized in lot of other activities or they have back-to-back meetings and then they are missing out on taking the right timely follow-ups. Or it could be a case where there is an additional insight, which a human

by general capabilities may not be able to look into. So for instance, I have a prospect with whom I'm talking and I'm told about one of the plans which my product offers as an offering. But then I would not know that my prospect would also be looking for something else. Maybe they have posted regarding that on someone, my competitors post, they have just commented over there.

This is something which I may not be knowing unless I am also following them over LinkedIn or things like that. This is how the tools can also be helpful. I mean, there are lot of tools for tracking these set of deals. One of the good platforms to look into is Bong. It's basically, it started as a sales trainer where it is also coming into your sales call and just understanding what you're doing. And it also gives you real-time insights on how you can improvise the same.

But now it has also transformed into a place where once the meeting is done to make sure that the deal is being approached in the right format or actual activities from a salesperson are happening in the right time. Gong gives you insightful pointers on what can be the next steps. It also helps you create a message or an email for a follow up and things like that so that you just are a few clicks away from getting there. Obviously, I can have my option to tweak this and get things even better, but

The goal is to not miss out on these. this is one. But this gong is just an example. Same way, lot of CRMs have been. So this is a problem which, as you mentioned, lot of organizations face, right? Where top of funnel is heavy, but then even the sales managers are only focused towards how to optimize this. And since we have a lot of leads in the CRM deals that are also created, but then it's not moving ahead. So how to do that? There are people whose only role is to observe these and get it improved.

how AI is replacing that or how AI rather is not replacing but helping them get this thing faster is. We can talk about examples like what Freddie AI does in Freshworks, right? Where there were also always lead scoring available. Now what Freddie AI does is basically you need to input it with lot of other data points for it to do the work better. But it basically understands that how much lead is engaged with your platform in all the aspects.

not just talking with the salesperson. Let's say it gives you two to three points scoring for answering your mail or opening your mail, gives you one pointer responding to it, gives you two pointers or two scores basically. are lead scores. Same way, you can add lead scores based on their activity with other platforms. So what happens is all of your deals, let's say I have 50 deals going on, I would not know whom to prioritize for follow up, but then

Freddie AI can help me with giving the lead score which is highest one and that I can prioritize upon which was possible but not up to this good accuracy because of the second data. that's where these are coming up and getting things in. Until very recently, I sort of thought of these lead scoring mechanisms just as a gimmick. I never thought that they worked. I'm yet to check it out, to be honest.

But yeah, up until very recently, I thought that these were only gimmicks. But AI is sort of changing. It is actually understanding my context. But sorry, no, please, go ahead. Yeah. So just to add a point to that, it looks like a little gimmicky. If any CRM is selling it as a primary feature. However, it is more useful, I would say. See, an early stage product company, what happens is deals are there, but may not be that of good volume.

when it's about large number of sales team and when top of funnel is already there, but then bottom of funnel is not happening based on the planning or projections. This is where these lead scoring helps. this is how the whole sales team functions largely on this extent where they only focusing for they start their day by just looking on what are the deals which are having the largest score and then they just start reaching out to them. So yeah, this is helpful for sure.

especially at mid to large enterprises. So Jay, actually while you were discussing about that point, there is one interesting connection that I got in mind. I read this point that your AI is a general purpose tool, and it is only as effective as the data foundations that you give for it to work upon. So in that case, we very often talk about this point

that which AI tool will work effectively. do you have the right set of data points and data foundations ready with you for that AI to take action upon is something that we not that often discuss about. So in that case, for me, at every stage, like you mentioned, there are different AI tools that you pointed out. So what sort of data foundations should I have at different stages such that my AI can take that and take the most effective action?

This is a question. We are only talking about the lead scoring aspect and improvising the deal. If we are talking in that aspect, I would say that it totally depends on what sort of business or what sort of target customer we have. Let's say even my SaaS product is a horizontal platform where again, I would not go into horizontal and vertical. So let's take HRMS as an example.

Yeah, so taking HRMS as an example, what happens is I would want to have my motion in a way where I am just reaching out directly through Outbound to directors of HR or the people at management level who are into main HR work. All I'm trying to do is my platform is basically improving their overall efficiency and making things easy for them. So I want to reach out to them. Coming to data points, what happens is it totally depends on company and scale size. One primary thing would be

Outbound will run in itself, but then what happens is how much they are visiting your marketing assets is something needs to be set up well, and that in itself needs to be added as a lead scoring point inside the CRM. So these are the data sets which we need to add up to. A good way to do is, let's say your CRM is also providing marketing services, just like Freshworks or HubSpot and platforms like these so that

you don't need to set a specific integration and get these data pointers so that this lead scoring part becomes easier. But then if you are having lots of different tools at an early stage, then you might want to define it even better. So this is a very specific question when we talk about what data points we need to have. But largely, it is related to all of your context, which your team is doing with the prospect. It could be omni-channel as well, not just emails.

So you need to have all of those data points coming from different social media and your email channel as well. And along with that, same goes with the marketing side on what, let's say you're running retargeting ads on those particular set of companies or the accounts. Then you also want to see that, you know, whether they have clicked, how many times they have clicked upon, how much amount of time they have spent and things like that. So this is a longer conversation for sure. Yeah. Also,

I mean, if you're an early stage company, mean, Jay, I mean, like, one of the recommendations is don't have a lot of different platforms. Don't complicate your sales tag. If you're an early stage company, having sort of mid-market customers or selling ticket size of $6,000, $5,000 or higher in annual contract value, have one CRM, one outbound engine.

you know, and it's like one funnel is the way that we define early stages if you have $1,000 in MRR or less. So $100,000. So sorry. $100,000 in MRR or less. So if you're yet to reach $100,000 in MRR, selling a $5,000 annual contract value product, then don't complicate the sales time. So have as little tools and platforms as possible.

All the tools and platforms that we are mentioning in this, Ajay is mentioning in this conversation, you choose a few of them, the one that makes sense. It should always be strategies, followed by tactics, followed by tools and not the other way around. So don't find the shiny new tool and then figure out a tactic and then come up with a strategy that will be putting cards before the horse.

But having sort of said that, so in terms of, I mean, this is not strictly part of sales, but a lot of different departments are merging. so I'll see if this can be an interesting conversation to have. So once the sales is closed, and then from a customer onboarding to engagement and retention. So it is sort of part of

revenue operations or customer success, or account management. I mean, it depends on where you are and what industry you are in. But for those parts of the life cycle of the customer, are there any tools or platforms that, or anything that you've come across? Like, how can AI help me reduce my churn? Or how can AI help me expand my accounts? Or how can, like, what are the places where AI can come in and

And it can genuinely aid, like if I'm selling to enterprises, then it can genuinely aid me in converting my paid POC into a full-blown sort of an implementation. Right. So again, when these type of challenges are being solved upon, especially in mid and large enterprises where it's not just about a simple approach where focus is to just get the

Customer acquisition is not the only challenge that is largely sold upon, but more is about the retention side and upselling as well. there are a lot of tools available for that as well. But the most common which people use and prefer to is Salesforce because it's Einstein tool is basically doing the similar activity where it figures out on what sort of conversations are happening. And let's say you have predefined your set of offerings from your side. Even Clary is good for

set of projections, but this is little different than what we are talking right now. But talking about Salesforce, Einstein or any similar tool, they do is your overall offerings are well entered into the system. It understands that, you know, when a particular customer is onboarded, it knows that, okay, this is just an entry point and there is a scope of other activities as well. let's say I'm offering five things and

first two things are already sold upon and the remaining three things are something which an upsell can happen. What happens is whenever the conversation is happening with the accounts manager, of those meetings are entered into notes are being managed and all of those things are entered into the same CRM or a system of records. And what happens is it basically understands that, there is also a discussion happening on the other three sides and it then gives an insight to the relevant salesperson on.

you may want to talk about this. Or it gives the customer support executive that intent signal that, hey, this discussion has happened with the account manager. Maybe you want to take this thing ahead when a new query is raised, and things like that. So there are a lot of things. Again, since we are not going into any specific ones, but based on whatever business use cases, there are possibilities now through AI where these signals are being picked up. And large enterprises are especially utilizing these for

improving things upon and overall helping, increasing the efficiency of all the people, We account executives, customer support team, and also for SDRs as well.

But one thing I would like to add, since everyone is talking about the same thing, lot of people, the marketeers who are using AI especially are just using it as a hook that AI is going to take up your job and things like that. It's very famous. But what I would say is the tools which are built upon are largely towards improving the efficiency of a salesperson.

In the end, it's going to be a salesperson who is going to close the deal. it's more about... So when we talking about mid to large enterprises, it's more about enabling your salespeople to do things faster so that either they can cover more set of prospects. So a larger area or larger part of the market, the same person can cover up on. So it's about enabling them for these things rather than reducing the team size, right? Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. I so it's like...

Sword is getting replaced by a gun and then a gun is getting replaced by a tank and a tank is getting replaced by a drone. But a person sort of runs that. And so they are able to run it better. They have more information. They have more intelligence. They are able to make better decisions and they are able to create a larger impact for sure with each and every progression.

So one of the things that I sort of don't like about marketing, I very recently posted on LinkedIn also about it was that it sort of feeds, it's a positive feedback loop. It sort of feeds on making very big bold calls and there's no space for nuance in a title. Because you have to write a click-baity title and so nuance is lost always. But we have time for one last question, Kaushik.

If you have anything, we can dig that up. Jay, now we use AI tools in our sales process. You have seen its transition from the time where none of the AI tools were there till the time where now we are at the stage where we using them continuously. Where do see this is going towards in the next two, three years? What sort of

if new tools or what sort of use cases within the steps that we discussed is where you are expecting an improvement where AI again could play a crucial role. Yeah, and if I could add to that, right? just one piece is that in that question also, like make this a part of it if you can is to today in the process that you are recommending or you're using, what sort of still frustrates you the most?

I mean, we have the technology, this could be so much better. So if you can include that as well. Right. So I'll try to answer both of these questions with a single answer. see, first thing, with respect to tools, Kaushik, you know, we are in an industry where every day thousands of tools are being invented. So you talk about anything, if you think that there is no tool about it, it's just that you're not searching on it. Right. So the same thing happened with me as well. I used to spend

lot of my time and I like just like till last week also lot of my time either I do it or any of our team members are doing it. So overall a team is used the team is spending a lot of time in writing proposals for the set of services which are already well defined. Still it needs to be some tweak and things like that but still it takes time right to write it down. Recently I stumbled upon Quiller which is basically doing the same task for us. So

Just a few clicks, you need to set it up first, but then few clicks and then things are done right away from there itself. So what I'm trying to answer is frustration point can be different. Maybe we want to search on the right tool. Maybe we want to experiment upon three to four tools we find out. But it is for sure that tools are available. So that can be utilized. With respect to answering on the cauchy where this is going, this is more going towards the direction where these tools are being replaced.

or rather converting themselves into a workflow in itself. So it is trying to set its place in an established workflow, which should be there in the space. That's where I give an example of Gong, right, where it just started as a tool which helps you to improvise on your overall sales meetings, giving you tips on, don't smile a little bit. Here is the 50 % what I mean, are speaking more than 50 % of the time, which should not be there as a sales call and things like that. It started like that. But now,

it is turning out into be a tool where it overall manages a deal where it also tells you that, OK, your meeting is done. These are the notes. And now you need to follow up at this particular time. And here is also a draft message which you might want to send up. So that's where it's going to that extent. So I would say that as our conversation was happening, SaaS products are turning into AI agents. So this is more related to that area where things are going ahead.

There's a solution and improvisation in all the areas. So while existing tools are improvising upon their AI model results, because more data points now are available, and also it has a lot of data for now to improvise upon. Also along with that, the typical workflow where a person is separately doing it, and now that complete thing being replaced and added into the existing workflows is where things are going. It's like a super enabler.

that would help you at every step. Yeah, definitely. Awesome. No, sorry, Jay. were saying something? I was just saying that the trends that come into SaaS space, initially the trend came into where AI features need to be there in your SaaS product. the next trend is coming up where your AI product should turn into an AI agent and things like that. All of these are ultimately leading to one basic thing where

Sales reps are getting the great benefits if they are able to navigate that what they actually need to do and if they are able to plan things well and just spend time on researching on what sort of right tools should be there based on their actual workflow and their ICPs. Things are pretty much getting easier and better and we are just waiting for more things to get easier. That's it. Yeah. Awesome, thank you and I hope for all the people who have been joining in, who've joined in, listened to

this conversation found value and hope this helps in accelerating or optimizing your SaaS sales process. We will see you in our next streams and if you're on YouTube, you should be able to see a very lonely red subscribe button. It's extremely lonely. Click on that. It will return white in joy and excitement. So do consider clicking.

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