Imagine this scenario. You are a rock star sales development representative (SDR) in your organization. You have identified a crucial target account and have to collect all possible information regarding the account. You begin browsing random leads through Google. Each lead has taken you through a wormhole of misinformation and you are now lost. LinkedIn has opened up a list of employees and you are unsure who reports to whom. Minutes become hours and at the end of the day, you are left with disorganized information which you realize is inadequate to make a breakthrough. You are not alone in this scenario, most SDRs and AEs still go around Google and LinkedIn, pouring through search results, web pages, and documents, looking for interesting insights about their target accounts. What they need is intelligence and insights customized to their own business. This is a big gap for B2B sales teams chasing enterprise and mid-market deals. This is the problem B2Brain is looking to solve.
How do they do it? B2Brain solves this problem of delivering contextual account intelligence. They realize this is a hard problem and a significant technology challenge that can have an outsized impact on the sales world.
MarketsandMarkets estimates the global sales intelligence market to grow from USD 2.0 billion in 2019 to USD 3.4 billion by 2024, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.4% during the forecast period. Factors that drive the growth of the sales intelligence market are
· Imminent need for advanced software to improve customer targeting and connect rates,
· Growing demand for data enrichment software to improve sales conversions.
Moreover, factors such as infusion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities to automate the pre-sales processes and increasing use of company techno-graphics to identify buying intent and improve prospecting, are expected to create ample opportunities for sales intelligence vendors.
In a report published by Insidesales.com the estimated number of professional sales people in the U.S. in 2017 is 5.7 million and that number is expected to grow to 5.9 million by 2024. According to the research, inside sales professionals represent 47.2% of the 5.7 million and outside sales professionals represent 52.8%. Job openings for inside sales on LinkedIn grew by 2.5x between Jan 2020 to August 2020, indicating more demand for inside sales and a mind-shift change in selling. In the last couple of years, inside sales is gaining momentum and the Covid-19 pandemic has only accelerated the same.
B2Brain enables sales teams to be more effective, by providing them contextual intelligence on target accounts, within the CRM/Sales workflows. It helps in prioritizing accounts by crafting compelling messages to engage prospects and customers better. Unique talking points are generated by the platform, which enables sales representatives to find the ideal conversation opener.
The product differentiates itself from other products which are based on keywords, company mentions and type of information like funding. B2Brain is based on business value proposition and dynamic information about the prospect organization. For e.g., matching “selling security solutions to company X” to “Company X experiencing DDOS attacks”. The solution is based on a strong technology core with very simple user experience and works within the workflow of the sales personnel.
B2Brain is built as a smart B2B search engine
● which collects information from public data sources, company websites, blogs and social media data
● creates a search index based on “dis-aggregated” documents
● and provides not only sophisticated lead recommendations, but also talking points.
The team at B2BRain is a good mix of seasoned and young team members and is well-balanced with experience in Product, Sales, Technology, Operations and UX design.
Sridhar and Karthik have known each other from their IIT-M days and have worked together at InMobi before co-founding B2Brain. Sridhar comes from a strong product background having headed product teams at InMobi, Yahoo and Zoho. Karhtik also has a stellar product and technology background managing teams at InMobi and Microland. Between the both of them, we found the perfect balance between strategy and execution, understanding of market knowledge, and the build-against-all-odds mindset required to build a startup in this space.
We at Ideaspring Capital are very excited to partner with Sridhar, Karhtik and the B2Brain team, to assist inside sales professionals in reaching out to target accounts in a quicker and efficient manner.