Skip to main content

India B2B sales-Part 1-The Hunters

By C Chaitanya
Starting a new series of blog posts on sales gyan with inputs from our sales head, Rajiv Bharatan.
Flickr

The Hunters

In sales parlance, hunting is simply going after new logos. The opportunity may arise due to
  • An in-bound lead
  • It could be a referral (referrals can be internal or external)
  • It can be a cold-call (which seems to be completely out of fashion now).
  • It can be a cold email
  • It could be through a direct message on social media
One reacts to such a lead, goes through the sales process, and either closes the deal, loses it or the lead goes cold, due to various reasons. Smart Hunters catch their prey(customer) no matter what. And just like in a real hunt, preparation is the key. 

Some good hunting spots:
  • Linkedin groups
  • Facebook groups(Bangalore startups, Headstart Network, Hyderabad startups etc)
  • Conferences (Unpluggd, Techcircle, Techsparks etc)
Hunting tools:
  • Twitter. A good hunter has patience. He builds a network and observes patterns in social media. He engages with customers and when the time is right, pounces on them. Well,not literally, but you get the drift :)
  • Linkedin. In B2B sales, this is an indispensable tool. You have to create the right network.
  • Blogs. Read everything, everyday and keep upto date on the vertical/customer profile you are targeting. Read about funding stories to understand who has the money to spend. Read about customer launches to understand who might have a need for your product.
  • Product. The right product is a killer tool. If the product is weak, there is only so much a hunter can do. 
  • Email and Call script. Done right, this can be very powerful and the cheapest way to get a customer.
Have the right hunting tools and go to the right hunting spots. You are sure to get your customer. And make sure you have the right kind of friends. Hunting is a very niche sport. The rewards are great, but if you dont manage to bag enough targets, you will starve to death(lose your job) and other hunters will take your place. After all, its a dog eat dog world.

If you some cool hunting methods you want to share please share in the comments below.

Happy hunting.

Popular posts from this blog

Cloud Telephony-History and state of the art

By C Chaitanya
Well, its been 11 years since Twilio launched their voice API in November 2008. I would say that was a major turning point in the cloud telephony industry. Before that, for people to build telephony applications, you either had to depend on proprietary platforms like Avaya dialog designer or build on arcane technologies like VXML which again was supported at varying degrees by the incumbents. Enter Twilio with their voice API and the industry changed for the better. Since it's been almost 11 years now I thought now might be a good time to do a comprehensive review of the cloud telephony industry as a whole in general and in India in particular. The Beginning Twilio was undoubtedly the startup which ushered in the era of cloud telephony. They started in November 2008. At that time in India, we at Ozonetel had launched a hosted VXML platform. There were no takers. After all who coded in VXML :) So when Twilio launched and we saw them take off, we immediately realized tha...
Read more

Telugu ASR speech data collection

By C Chaitanya
Image Source: IIIT-H Developing an indigenous ASR for Indian languages has been a goal for us since a long time. In that regard we have been experimenting a lot, trying out various neural network architectures.  While doing these experiments we found that there was no good dataset for Indian languages. While discussing with IIIT professors we got to know that the government of India was also exploring options to generate a good dataset. We immediately offered our help and our platform for this endeavor. So, as a starting step we have come up with a few campaigns to encourage users to donate speech data. We wanted to make it fun, so our first few campaigns are along the lines of JAMs(Just a Minute speech topics) etc. A topic will be provided and you need to speak for a minute on that topic. We have started this campaign for college students to start with. Of course anyone can participate and contribute their data. The more the merrier :) We will adding a lot more innovative ways ut...
Read more

Google's approach to business communication

By C Chaitanya
 Google has been making silent moves in the business communication space. Google has mostly lost the instant messaging wars. But it does not want to lose the business communication war. WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook have been making their own moves to enable businesses to reach their customers through their channels. Its all about who has control over the communication channels. Especially communication which leads to business. That's where the money is. Currently, Google is the king of search and most online transactions start with a Google search. FB, Amazon, Apple and others want to change that. They want the search to start on their properties. And they have started making the moves. WhatsApp business allows small businesses to conduct their transactions on WhatsApp. FB and Instagram have long supported small businesses to manage their business on their channels. Apple has also made some nice moves with Apple business chat. They have integrated a whole shopping expe...
Read more