Startup Circle: How has Coditas helped ConnectAndSell build their all-round platform?

Client - Chris Beall, CEO, ConnectAndSell: “We've helped companies do things like growing from 200 million an enterprise value to a billion dollars in 3 years. Coditas has put that all together, you keep it going, you make it happen, and you’re incredibly easy to work with.”

Although Coditas is not externally funded, the startup has managed to keep afloat. Thanks to its heads-turning product. Here is one such case, that Coditas' Director-Technology, Shirish Bhatt drafted, to talk about the startup's success.

The Customer

ConnectAndSell is a Sales acceleration platform that gets the best salespeople 8-10x more live conversations with qualified prospects, each day. It provides end to end integration with the CRMs and Sales playbook software to deliver conversations at the right time.

The entire call information is documented and synced with CRM in an automated way allowing the Sales team to have a razor-sharp focus on their pitch and converting conversations into meetings. It builds a strong enviable sales pipeline of opportunities that are ready to be converted into closed business.

The Challenge

The #1 B2B sales challenge is to get “hard to reach” decision-makers over the phone and having meaningful conversations with them. Current lead generation solutions stop at sending you highly targeted leads. You still have to get those decision-makers on the phone and follow up until they buy. Traditional appointment setting services get you meetings but have a high startup cost and the meetings may or may not turn into real opportunities. You have zero visibility into that process and again need the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th follow-up after the appointment to turn those appointments into dollars as 80% of sales happen after the 5th meaningful touch.

Companies need to invest a significant amount of time and effort into coaching a large number of sales reps which increases the headcount expense. Also, there is a lack of visibility about the productivity of each sales rep resulting in larger turnaround cycles and higher costs.

Keeping a track of calling activities as a part of the outreach campaigns requires maintaining and overseeing a lot of data. This involves data entry into various systems to keep everything up to date. It causes a reduction in the time spent on actual prospecting activities.

The Solution

• We built a patented closed-loop calling process that automatically gets prospects on the line at follow-up time so reps never miss a follow-up.

• SDRs have 10x more sales conversations resulting in many more qualified meetings and appointments. Account executives and field reps increase pipeline by 5x-8x.

• Instant Response (< 5 seconds) to inbounds and prioritized lead persistence. 800% more MQL conversation coverage.

• Automatic CRM data entry and updates which keep all systems in sync.

• Since the reps are 100% focused on selling, rather than giving up after a few dial attempts or first conversation they never miss a follow-up and persist with 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th conversations needed to make most sales happen.

• Companies can avoid significant headcount expenses by allowing their best reps to produce more results faster. Often, 3 SDRs can do the work of 18.

The Theme

Coditas is a new-age, offshore product development organization, offering services about the entire software development life cycle. Headquartered in Pune, Coditas works with clients across the globe. We believe in strong engineering-driven culture and steadfast philosophies around writing clean code, designing intuitive user experiences, and letting the work speak for itself. We strongly believe that the beauty of a product lies not only in its user interface but also in its code, performance, and maintainability. Our team of engineers and designers have been turning visionary applications into reality since 2014.

ConnectAndSell required such a team that can own the entire product engineering end-to-end, right from conceptualization to the production deployment. We at Coditas provided all-around expertise right from understanding the domain, the technical requirements, user personas to drive the overall user experience, and the execution strategy to deliver the product which is in line with the vision of the organization. Rather than being a vendor, we work as technical partners during the implementation which establishes a high level of trust with the customer base. Our complete ownership approach helps the customers focus on their target market while we build the products in the background. Also, a delicate balance is maintained between the budgeted cost and quality outcomes.

The Implementation

We built a cloud platform that uses a combination of patented phone dialling technology and minimal human agent touch. The sales reps log into the cloud application, dial into a conference bridge, pick a calling list, and push the GO! button to start dialling. 2-3 minutes later they are talking to someone on that list. To the person they’re talking to, it’s a perfectly normal phone call, there is no delay as agents never speak to the prospect, and transfer the call in a fraction of a second.

The application automatically navigates only the phone systems & gatekeepers which saves a significant amount of time for sales reps. The system keeps track of every single event taking place during the calling activity, syncs information back to the customer CRMs, and provides analytical information via insight-driven reports. The patented phone call management makes sure the right sales reps are connected to the right prospect during the right time of the day so that you never miss a follow-up or the ability to connect with prospects in your time zone.

It also keeps a track of bad data or "Do Not Call" requests which ensure the sales reps do not waste time dialling non-existing numbers. With highly scalable cloud infrastructure, we ensure the system is all up and kicking when the sales reps pick up their lethal weapon (phone) for market dominance.

Results

ConnectAndSell has helped companies grow their enterprise value from 200 million to a billion dollars in just 3 years. It has delivered more than 65 Million dials and more than 6 million conversations. If each of these conversations were to be valued at an industry standard of $200, ConnectAndSell has generated $1.2 Billion in sales pipeline value for its customers. Sales reps have been able to effortlessly follow up and talk to prospects throughout the year until they are ready to buy.

(Our data shows that on average 9% of follow up conversations, 16% of 3rd conversations, and 25% of 4th conversations result in a sale)