Who is our client?
Explorate builds an innovative device. It displays
information about tasks directly on the assembly table, and cameras monitor human actions,
while dedicated software verifies the correctness
and completeness of tasks.
Quickly and inexpensively onboard a new employee, even one who speaks a different language (you only need to prepare instructions displayed in a language understandable to the employee).
Eliminate NOKs and incomplete or incorrectly assembled products.
Ensure correct assembly even in very complex or critical processes.
In addition, the client’s software can be installed on a tablet, laptop, or smartphone, turning these devices into mobile terminals for checking the correctness and completeness of assembly or performing service work.
What challenges does Explorate face?
It might seem that such a perfect product sells itself,
but an experienced salesperson knows that nothing ever sells itself. Moreover, all of the client’s products are novelties in a market dominated by other types of solutions (e.g., Augmented Reality goggles), which, however, turn out to be impractical
in industrial applications. This led potential customers to reject any AR-based solutions from the start.
A challenging market? No, just demanding.
Therefore, Explorate hires a salesperson, allocating tens of thousands of zlotys per month. Despite this, the salesperson does not deliver expected results in almost a year of work. After parting ways
with the inefficient salesperson, sales are entrusted to a person with technical education but without experience or knowledge of sales.
While some initial clients appear, they are only for pilot projects, which Explorate fails to convert into sales of finished devices. There are no profits, and in the longer term, all these efforts generate increasing costs.
At this point, we present our offer. After analyzing it, Explorate concludes that the cost of our collaboration is very similar to the expenses associated with maintaining their own salesperson. The sales experience we offer, along with the ease of verifying the effectiveness of our actions, leads to a decision to collaborate with Sales Agency. And here begins the better part of this story.
How we handled sales for Explorate
Immediately, we realize that we need to jointly create materials that will have a real impact on the number of generated leads. Materials that are essential in conversations with customers.
We prepare professional
product and company presentations:
Based on knowledge of target industries, we suggest topics for videos showcasing the applications of their products.
Important note: these and subsequent actions were not revolutions in Explorate but leveraged their existing experiences. We gathered them all and, based on that, along with our knowledge of the expectations of various industrial sectors, helped refine the MVP. We release them to the market to gather feedback from real users as quickly as possible.
Collaborating with Explorate required many meetings at their headquarters. Our sales manager, salesperson, and technical person from Explorate led the initial discussions. We observe what our client pays attention to when presenting their product. We undergo comprehensive product training, which becomes the foundation for our internal sales training.
Our salesperson worked in weekly sprints, where daily routines proved crucial to success, as is usually the case. During the first three months of collaboration, the trial period, the dedicated sales manager and salesperson, supported by the sales team, created these repeatable tasks and adapted them to the specifics of our client.
We started by designing and refining the sales funnel. We discussed feedback gathered from the MVP. We segmented the market. Then we moved on to prospecting, searching for customers, and working on the contact list provided by Explorate. We launched cold calling and cold mailing. In other words, we flooded the funnel with leads. Only then could we move on to working on sales to the customer. These actions proved so valuable for Explorate that, after the trial period, they established a permanent collaboration with us.
It’s worth mentioning that, in addition to searching, verifying, and working with our leads, we also followed the client’s guidelines for selling to specific companies. In this regard, our actions involved multiple contacts with employees from different departments of the company to generate interest in Explorate’s products. This probably best shows that we never close ourselves off to suggestions or guidelines from our clients but try to implement them even in the face of difficulties.
We typically met with the client once a week to update them on the status of the work we had done and present proposals for the next week. However, our salesperson’s work provided such extensive market feedback that we increased the number of meetings to 3-4 each week, and sometimes we even met 6 times in a single sprint.
What did our client gain?
Preparation for sales
Production of sales materials.
Construction of the sales funnel.
Filling the funnel
Customer contacts.
Cold calling, cold mailing.
Sales visits.
Sales to the customer
Working with the customer at various stages of the funnel.
Finalizing the sale.
Our collaboration with Explorate lasted just under a year. During this time, we opened several projects, and many of them were almost finalized. See the selected ones with descriptions of our role, the sales values we achieved, and the likelihood of implementation (we prioritize our clients’ confidentiality):
- Company A
Reorganization of the department
and joining the project
- Value
200 000 PLN
- Probability of finalization:
Thanks to our collaboration, Explorate not only gained sales opportunities exceeding PLN 895,000 but also received extensive market feedback, enabling the development of their products.
For example, we proposed the introduction of time constraints for employees at each stage of the process displayed by the projector.
This accelerated work without the risk of reducing its quality because the station’s software constantly monitored it. We also provided many suggestions regarding the application of our client’s technology
in areas they had not previously considered.
All of this was made possible by the feedback loop, characteristic
of the Lean Startup methodology in which we operate. It was through this loop that Explorate discovered the full potential of its products and services.
Do you think a similar approach could benefit your organization?
