SmartCue
Deliver hyper-personalized, virtual Demos
Large enterprise customer, healthtech. 10+ users and great brand visibility! Super excited to kick this off and grow SmartCue. Took a long time to close -- ~4 months so some learnings there. Need to figure out how to close deals faster. In the process, created our templatized Standard Sales Agreement and Invoice Templates!
Got accepted into the Upekkha accelerator and was also selected for their first fund! The UP Fund and accelerator's mission statement of "Helping B2B SaaS startups scale and sell in the US" strongly aligned with SmartCue's objectives. The community and the founders really elicited a lot of confidence. Cohort begins in March 2022 and I can't wait to apply those learnings and scale SmartCue quickly!
AngelList FTW! It's refreshing to see job applicants put in effort and thought into an application. It was easy to select the applicant because of the deep thinking and strategic eye. He just 'got' what we were trying to do. From application to interview to hire, it took 3 days!
1/ Since we started, we've been grappling with how to best position @getSmartCue - as a sales 'enablement' platform or a sales 'efficiency' platform? There are a couple of problems that SmartCue solves: (thread continued--) #buildinpublic
a. Avoid vanilla, cookie-cutter product demos 🍪
b. Ensure sales reps are always in sync with the latest product features & HOW these features address a prospect's need.
#nofeaturevomitplease 🤮
Sales orgs, especially inside sales/BDR functions face the problem of long onboarding times (~5 months) and a lot of churn. With SmartCue, you can shorten the 'time-to-sell' and the 'synchronization' problem. 🩰
Also, the sales 'enablement' space is crowded. We need to differentiate ourselves and showcase our value-
a. Shortest learning curve for both 'demo givers' & 'demo creators'
b. Least amount of time to create & maintain demo libraries
c. Contextual #cues for live Zoom demos 📉
Finally, the bedrock for anything we build at SmartCue is to develop features that reduce/eliminate friction in a sales rep's workflow or we risk low adoption. We're trying to abstract our architecture so it fits into a sales rep's workflow rather than the other way round ⚓️
Most other tools I see try to force-fit a sales rep into a new workflow or are geared towards providing efficiencies to the leadership rather than the sales reps themselves. With SmartCue, the sales rep is front and center. 📷
Still debating this, but figured I'd put it out there and see what folks think! #buildinpublic #nosnoozedemos 😳
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Hi Robin. Small world :)
To begin with, Sales Enablement, Sales Acceleration, Sales Intelligence, etc. are examples of product categories. While categorical positioning is a key driver of overall strategy, your product positioning isn't just limited to it.
I like to think of categories as point of views - a PoV to look at a problem or an opportunity together with a particular approach to solving it. They provide high-level market context to think about your product.
Categories denote market demand in that sense. Categories exist when demand exists or perhaps vice versa, where creating a category is to create a demand.
Example in case, Electric Cars vs Traditional Cars. Or from the world of SaaS, Conversational Marketing vs Live Chat. It's sometimes an ideological difference if not a difference of the underlying product itself.
So if your purpose of defining SmartCue as a Sales Efficiency product is because Sales Enablement is crowded, that would be a futile cause I would say. Figure out your opinion, belief, and ideology regarding the market and it would lead your way.
And when you're keeping Sales Reps at the front and center of your product unlike others, it's in fact partly defining your PoV.
You could always differentiate within most spaces from thereon, saturated or not, with your:
Positioning (specific customer context)
Messaging (what you say & how you say it)
Brand narrative (underlying shift your empower)
After a few demos, MTX Group signed on as our first paying customers. They've signed up to use SmartCue for 5 of their users in a single division. If things go well, the plan is to roll it out to their other divisions as well.
This was a relief more than anything else because our real first customer still hasn't launched because of certain security issues 😞 Hopefully this one goes smoother than the first one.
Finally putting it out there for folks to critique. Initial response from sales leaders has been positive and I will hopefully have a few commits for pilots at various organizations. Need to fine tune the website, eliminate bugs/kinks and start building out the product roadmap as I get feedback from buyers and prospects. 🤞
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