Client

Our client is an innovative US-based startup founded by seasoned sales professionals. With a wealth of experience creating high-impact sales strategies, they knew what common challenges sales reps faced. So, they decided to develop an AI-powered platform to help sales reps overcome these challenges and close more deals.

The platform was envisioned as a value intelligence platform that would streamline and enhance the processes of discovery, qualification, and value positioning. By now, it has evolved into a full-fledged, marketable product that helps numerous businesses win customers with their unique value propositions powered by AI.

Challenge

The client's concept was both exciting and challenging. The main goal was to automate the sales process, enable intelligent value sales, and empower sales reps to communicate with potential customers more proactively.

To achieve this, the solution had to offer sales reps personalized AI-based guidance for each customer. More specifically, it was expected to analyze existing data about customer inquiries, including information collected during calls, and provide recommendations on how to strengthen a value proposition.

What’s more, the solution was supposed to enhance deal qualification in the early stages of the sales process. Its aim was to help sales reps prioritize the most promising deals by aligning customer needs with what the business had to offer.

The client reached out to us at the ideation stage. Our job was to build a sophisticated product from scratch, which required deep expertise in AI technologies.

Our cooperation

The client approached us with a raw product idea backed by their profound experience in sales. Rather than creating an alternative to Salesforce, they wanted to develop a tool that would add value to the sales process and boost conversion.

Here are the services we provided and the technologies we used to turn this idea into reality:

We collaborated for three years, progressing through the following three stages.

Stage 1. From the concept to an MVP

In the project’s initial phase, our focus was on developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The client knew the product's target audience and their specific pain points quite well. However, they wanted to release an early version of the platform to test the idea with real users.

The MVP developed by our team was essentially a CRM that also facilitated document management and provided guidance on SWOT analysis to help sales reps effectively win customers. Releasing this MVP enabled the client to gather feedback from early adopters, build a client base, and secure funding for full-fledged development.

The MVP’s success can be attributed to two key factors:

  • The right feature set. The MVP resonated well with enterprises’ need for a tool to allocate sales efforts and resources effectively. Features like SWOT analysis and deal prioritization proved to be very helpful. As a result, early adopters successfully closed some important deals using the MVP.
  • Salesforce compatibility. From the get-go, the MVP was designed as a Salesforce-compatible tool and could be seamlessly integrated into existing sales processes. This made it easy for the client to attract its early customers.

The MVP stage took six months. Although the client had a specific vision for the product's development, the MVP was crucial in helping them identify and prioritize essential functionality. Armed with these insights, we started developing the top-priority features and released them in batches.

Stage 2. From an MVP to a full-fledged product

During the second phase, we tackled two key processes at once:

  • Building a full-fledged, AI-driven value intelligence platform
  • Fixing errors and improving system performance

The development team focused primarily on the first task. As a result, we created a business value intelligence engine that:

  • Transcribes recorded video calls to text, distinguishing between questions and answers
  • Analyzes texts to identify the key phrases
  • Automates document creation after the discovery call

So, a sales rep no longer has to worry about taking notes after a discovery call — the platform does this automatically. It also scores deals and adds the document with all this information to a CRM

Stage 3. Further improvements

Currently, our development team is working on advancing the AI models. The goal is to improve the platform's ability to recognize how relevant and important different phrases are for sales reps. This is also expected to lead to more accurate scoring.

Solution

The platform we built is a comprehensive AI-driven value intelligence web solution that helps sales reps close more deals by asking better discovery questions and creating 100% personalized value propositions. The client plans to develop an application for Salesforce, too.

Onboarding

From the outset, this value intelligence platform was envisioned as a hassle-free add-on to Salesforce. That’s why it allows for the gradual onboarding of new customers who are already using this solution:

  1. First, customers can test the platform with the plug-in for Salesforce. This plug-in offers a simplified version of the platform’s functionality so they can experience its benefits without committing to a full-scale implementation.
  2. When ready, customers can opt for full integration and synchronization between Salesforce and the platform. All their data will be smoothly migrated from one platform to another.

Features

The platform's primary goal is to simplify the sales process and integrate value into core sales operations. It is achieved through the following features:

  • AI-driven assistance with sales discovery. The platform employs AI to analyze data related to specific business cases and generate ready-made questionnaires for sales reps to use in discovery calls. This lets sales reps easily steer conversations with customers toward the information they need to evaluate the case or enhance the value proposition.
  • Automated transcription of discovery calls. The solution automatically transcribes video calls into structured text notes, marking questions and answers in a conversation. This means sales reps won’t miss any critical information. The platform also identifies customer pain points and needs and highlights those in the text notes.
  • Generation of business case presentations. The platform can instantly generate a personalized presentation with a value proposition tailored to the specific customer. To do that, it will use the information sourced at the discovery stage covering customer's pain points, successful cases from the company’s portfolio, winning differentiators, and external data about the target market.
  • Automated qualification. The platform helps sales reps prioritize deals in their pipeline by automatically scoring every business case. It evaluates how well the company's offerings address customer pain points and predicts the chances of winning the deal. This way, sales reps can easily identify which deals to focus on.

Results

As the project progresses, we continuously improve the platform to enable value-based selling at scale. Up to this point, our tech partnership has delivered the following outcomes:

A marketable, AI-driven value intelligence platform

A comprehensive AI-based solution we developed brings the client’s original idea to life, helping businesses add value to their sales. Distinct from other sales tools on the market, it lets sales reps create strong, customized value propositions and turn them into wins. It also leverages the power of AI to automate the sales process.

  • First, customers can test the platform with the plug-in for Salesforce. This plug-in offers a simplified version of the platform’s functionality so they can experience its benefits without committing to a full-scale implementation.
  • When ready, customers can opt for full integration and synchronization between Salesforce and the platform. All their data will be smoothly migrated from one platform to another.

Intelligent value sales

The platform improves the sales process in several ways:

  • Strengthening the sales reps’ expertise. With AI-based guidance, sales reps can make more effective discoveries. They can also qualify leads more accurately and easily create tailored value propositions.
  • Embedding value into sales operation. By analyzing various data sources, the platform assists sales reps with accurate value positioning that factors in the customer’s pain points, the company’s offerings, and the competition.
  • Streamlining the sales tasks. The platform automates core sales tasks, including discovery note-taking and creating business presentations. Sales reps can now work faster and more efficiently than their competitors.

Client-tailored processes

We tailored our processes to align with the specific requirements of this collaboration. Using Scrum or Kanban alone could not fully meet the client's needs. So, we integrated these methodologies and devised a backlog-oriented approach that best suited the project scope.

The client retained control over project leadership and product vision while we assumed the role of the exclusive tech partner. Through the efforts of our team, the client can now effectively balance core product development with timely customizations to meet the demands of their growing customer base.