This is the story that inspires us everyday. Every time we have internal discussions about what a sales enablement product should do for its users, how it should help them drive productivity, how it should help them have better customer conversations and earn their respect, we go back to this story. Here is the story.

In 2017, we were field testing an early version of sharpsell - our sales enablement platform. For this, we were spending time with hundreds of sales people, spread across geographies and industries, to understand their challenges in detail. One of the things that stood out very early was this: almost all of them needed real-time help during sales conversations, when they were with clients. They were not satisfied with their learning arrangements. Those were not useful when it came to dealing with clients in the field. This was a key insight for us: how do you help sales people when they need help the most?

The sharpsell platform has been broadly built to address this problem - to help salespeople in real-time during sales conversations. It helps them through ready-to-use sales pitches, dynamic presentations, role-specific and person-specific learning journeys, AI-powered role plays, and recommendations. This was the core insight when we built and launched the product during the initial days. We saw significant traction almost immediately from distributed sales people across industries. We decided to spend a lot of time with the people (you may call them early adopters) who were using the product. We wanted to really understand how they're using the product and why they are using the product. How do they think it's benefiting them during the sales conversations? One particular conversation stood out - the one we had with Milind Tulsankar.

Milind is an insurance agent based out of Dharavi, Mumbai.  Milind is ambitious - he really wants to do well in his life. He used to work as a security guard at one of the biggest commercial districts in Mumbai by night, and as an insurance agent during the day. My colleague, who used to head customer success for us at that time, and I wanted to meet him and take his inputs. We travelled to Mumbai; and the location on the map was Sion, one of the city’s central suburbs. When we reached there, we could not locate the spot easily. When we called him and asked for directions, we realized that it was in Dharavi, the neighbouring slum. Many of us know that Dharavi is the world's largest slum - but it’s a place full of enterprising people. This was the first time we were in Dharavi, and we were a little scared of walking into a slum. Indeed, we had to walk for one and a half kilometres through very narrow lanes to reach him. He took us to his house: a tiny two-storied structure just about 200 square feet. After exchanging pleasantries, and meeting his family, we got to the point.

The first few questions that I asked him were, “Why do you like sharpsell? Why do you use this product? How do you use it?”. These are the same questions we have asked hundreds of other salespersons. His answer was remarkable: the product helped him to come across, not as a pushy insurance sales agent, but as somebody who can help his customers.

Wanting to understand what that meant in detail, we asked more questions. This is what we learned from him: before adopting a platform like sharpsell , most of his conversations used to be around requesting people in his close circle - his friends, his neighbors and people whom he meets - to take insurance. He would explain how insurance helped them and their family and so on. He said, “Almost always, I came across as an insurance agent. But with sharpsell , I am able to focus on the benefits, and come across as an expert.” He had always known the benefits of the product, but struggled to put them together in a compelling sales pitch. But once he started using sharpsell , he said, “I started sharing bite-sized information on WhatsApp with my neighbors and people around me, on how a small investment every month could help them with their children's education or how a small amount every month can help them to build their dream house in ten years.”

Most of the people in that area are also from low income backgrounds like he was; yet like him, almost all of them have dreams of making sure that their children grow up to do well in life with better education and better careers. The messaging he was sharing struck a chord. When he met them, he was able to more confidently explain how an annual spend of Rs. 30,000 or 40,000 (which is about Rs. 3000 per month) could help them fund their children's education and so on. He told us, “At that time, that completely changed the conversation from me being an insurance agent to me being somebody who can help my customers with their children’s education or someone who can fulfill their dream of having their own house.”

That’s when we realized the power of such transformed conversations. Previously most of his clients used to buy insurance policies from him simply because they knew him. It was purely relationship-based, which meant that they used to take policies of relatively small ticket sizes - worth Rs. 5000 rupees per annum. However, after he started using sharpsell , he was able to raise his ticket size to the range of Rs. 40,000 to 50,000 rupees per annum. This meant that his average ticket size had gone up by 8X. This was a very powerful epiphany for us. We were seeing our product in action, doing what we had wanted it to do. That truly motivated us to examine the platform more closely and make the product better.

We strongly believe that our job is to make sharpsell a platform that transforms sellers into expert advisors. The conversation with Milind Tulsankar proved to us that this was actually possible. It was an awesome, affirmative experience for us. He used sharpsell to come across as an expert and earn respect from his customers, which in turn helped him to sell more policies and increase his ticket size by 8X. In turn, he made more money through the incentives he got as an insurance agent, to move ahead in life.

And that was the transformative lesson of sharpsell that we tell ourselves every time we think of how sharpsell can make salespersons do better on the field.

‍

sharpsell equips sales reps with personalized content to engage with customers and customized presentations to share with customers as per their needs. All the content is accessible through a single source - the sharpsell platform. Companies using sharpsell have seen an increase in sales productivity with higher number of products sold, higher ticket size, increased visibility on prospecting, reduced content creation cost, reduced time to first sale, reduced costs of training, and uncovering insights on product feedback.