Inside Sales & Account Management: Managing a growing SaaS

Inside Sales can be done remotely.

The next big decisiones that were made to the Nimbo X team was to introduce the inside sales representative role into Customer Success, build an independent sales team dedicated to look for clinics and physician networks, and the introduction of the key account management role into customer success. I’ll explain the story for each one, even though they were developed at the same period of time it’s worth diving in into the details of each.

Inside Sales to Generate Traction with Single Accounts

There are multiple qualification methodologies for Sales. Choose wisely.

Inside sales is the dominant sales model for reps in B2B, tech, SaaS, and a variety of B2C industries selling high-ticket items. Put simply, inside sales is a way of handling sales remotely. The job of an inside sales rep requires them to sell an organization’s products or services via phone, email or other online channels.

With the previous work I had developed in increasing the paid accounts it was time that we dedicated more time and resources to developing sales channels. The objective of the Inside Sales Role was revenue predictability from new sign ups and greater scalability. I had the sales methodology but I wasn’t so sure that what I was doing was the most efficient way possible for doing Inside Sales. So I looked to the Sales Development Representatives (SDR’s) we had at Cirrus.

While I continued working with my methodology, I approached the SDR team because I wanted to better understand how to execute this role. It was a discovery and iteration process. SDRs focus on inbound sales like warm leads from potential clients who have performed an action on the website- in our case, new users that engaged with Nimbo X in specific ways (created a new patient, created a new event on calendar, did their first consultation, etc.). SDRs make contact with these leads, and log information into a CRM platform (for us it was Hubspot) where a more senior sales person, called an Account Executive (AE), will begin nurturing these opportunities in the sales pipeline. As an Inside Sales Representative in Nimbo X you would do both roles (SDR and AE).

So I already knew the usage and the engagement metrics that signaled if a new user had the potential of becoming a paid account but how warm or cold was the lead? To better classify leads I developed different tiers or levels of engagement. In this way it became easier to identify if a new user was becoming warm or if it was going cold. For me this was good but not enough, I needed to understand their intentions and motivations — what if a user has the right usage signals but is not ready to buy? How might we know this? I needed to start the conversation with them.

Additional to the usage and engagement metrics I started using lead qualification frameworks. The most common one I found and that was easy to start implementing was BANT. In here I started transitioning from SDR activities to AE activities: nurturing these opportunities in the inside sales pipeline. At the beginning at Nimbo X my role was 3 fold: Customer Success, SDR and AE. Start ups am I right? Not to complain, it was very interesting to develop 3 roles at once.

Inside Sales became my zone of experimenting with my sales methodology. We still had the challenge of handling a very high volume of new sign ups each week, and not to mention the follow up calls and meetings and demos with the previous week sign ups. I put everything together into a schematized onboarding plan with the purpose of predictably grow new paid accounts:

1. As a first step I classified the different tiers that a user could go to. These were 4 tiers: the one who’s only looking, the enthusiast, the champions, and the independent physicians. In the first 5 days I was able to successfully classify a new lead into any of these tiers.
2. For a second step it was important to plan for the 30 day trial. This means when to send messages, from which channel and how many contact attempts to make. People need to feel they are advancing organically and based on their specific journey. So each contact and message had a strategic placement.
3. As a third step I created a Smart Campaign that was focused on advancing each new sign up through the different tiers. So if a user started as a “the one who’s only looking” the smart campaign would trigger a set of messages (in-app and email) with the right content based on the signals of that tier to help them advance into an “enthusiast” user type. In this way, I could nurture leads without actually having a conversation with them and at the same time know their progress in the funnel.
4. For a fourth step I created my scripts for each call I was going to have with the users. Using the lead qualification frame work enabled me to have different calls with different purposes, and the conversations we had always had a deliverable. This built trust, familiarity and a sense of advancing through a progress.
5. On the CRM I documented everything. The conversation we had, the questions asked, the level of usage and engagement the user had, if they reacted to a message or interacted with a piece of content. At the beginning this was for me to not loose track of each user and then it evolved into a predictability algorithm…

This process was 80% automation and 20% personal contact. But users always felt it was human and that each contact had purpose. At first we generated a 5% success rate, then a 7%, then a 10%…we reached 30% success rate by the end of this exercise. I discovered that I still had a limit on how much I could handle, that means I reached an impasse. When questioned why numbers were not going up I couldn’t help but wonder, what if we had 2 more people like me on Inside Sales?

Side Note: in this phase I started imparting webinars to new users. It’s an excellent tool to attract and engage users. I did weekly webinars based on the Jobs-to-be-done for each of the product features. It’s also great for creating evergreen content.

Hubspot’s inbound sales methodology. It’s a framework that I used to help me get started.

The A-Team: Business Representatives for clinics and health-networks

As Nimbo X was growing in functionality and we started working with more complex clients (some pharmacies, physician networks, groups of specialists, coworking spaces for physicians) we realized that we were ready to actively look for B2B clients: Specialty clinics and health-networks. This realization had big implications in marketing and sales.

Marketing had to adopt new acquisition campaigns and a strategy focused on this type of client. From adapting the Search Engine Marketing strategy to making changes to the website messaging and the SEO strategy. We also had to adapt the content and pitch decks we were sharing with prospects to reflect their roles in the organizations we were focusing on.

For Sales it meant to create and expand this area. We had Inside Sales and Outside Sales (or Business Representatives). Outside Sales had two tasks:

1. To prospect, nurture and close inbound leads from our website that fit the size, role & type of organization that is a specialty clinic and/or health-network
2. To build their own targeted lists, work those lists, enrole them on the pipeline and close them

The objective was to go up market to expand revenue and the Nimbo X functionality. We had 3 representatives for México (North, Center and South) and another representative in Argentina to work Latin America.

The flywheel for SaaS Companies.

As product owners know, going up market usually means there’s different and more complex jobs to be done, product features and user experiences. So the Outside Sales team was learning and failing fast, we wanted to advance deals to maintain traction on pipeline but at the same time understand why we were losing some deals and why we were winning others. Work hard, play hard!

The challenges were several. It’s very different selling to a dental clinic than selling to a general physician or to a women’s clinic in terms of what features they would need and use, how to adapt the workflows to Nimbo X, how the patient engages with the physician, and how much technology was actually used (and needed) in the clinical process. For this stage of Nimbo X we had an Electronic Health Record (EHR), a Medical Agenda (basic functionality), and a basic business intelligence module (for clinical reports only). We also encountered the fact that this clinics and health-networks required more management processes done in one system than only clinical processes.

Basically we had the CRM for physicians and we were lacking the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning System). So the Product & Development team were working fast to understand the clients requirements and how to adapt this to Nimbo X. Meanwhile the Outside Sales Representatives were having a hard time selling to leads. They were in need of a product expert that helped them with demos and with Proof of Concepts to advance the deals.

One of the Outside Sales Representatives was a physician and he nailed the main pain to enter with a clinic or health-network: it was through the CRM for physicians (the EHR and medical agenda). His objective was to first help them transition to the cloud: their workflows, their documents, the physical health records, to create the digital infrastructure. Basically the main need (which is the clinical information and treatments of patients) first in Nimbo X and then move to the management and resources of the clinic. This was a workaround, while we waited for the Product & Development teams build the ERP for Nimbo X the Outside Sales Reps could focus on the first step and continue selling with the option of an up-sale further down the line.

So I started supporting his leads for the demos (which is showing the product and selling the idea and value) and the Proof of Concepts (this means a period of time in which we enable the organization to use the whole product for free, and if it makes sense to work a deal to continue on the long run). This was a game changer for me because I had to become an expert on how to use Nimbo X for different specialties and at the same time an expert in implementing cloud-based technology for a large group of physicians.

For the demos I had to develop a process for product demos that sell:

• The first thing is product demo discovery: qualifying demo attendees and what they needed for their clinic
• Then I had to prepare a demo environment: a patient journey (and a clinical case) that showed how the clinic would engage digitally with the patient and how each role (a physician, nurse, front desk) would use Nimbo X to fulfill their clinical process
• As a third step I prepared for giving the demo: created a script, practiced with several people, apply the feedback, and avoid product demo fails

This is a simplified workflow but it delivered great results. If you want more details you can view my webinar on How to Deliver Product Demos that Sell.

Product Demos that Sell Workshop. By me.

I’ll talk more about the Proof of Concepts methodology on the next section of this blog post. This lessons would soon be applied with the rest of the Outside Sale Representatives. This means I was supporting the pipeline for 4 representatives for Mexico and Latin America. It was very exciting and fun, challenging times.

This was an important first step towards becoming a product specialist and a sort-of-clinical-consultant.

Key Account Management: Incremental success rates with clients

As I was explaining earlier in this post we started doing lots of Proofs of Concepts to gain entrance with prospects. At first I knew very little about Account Management and Project Management, and we had no structure for this kind of process. I was accountable for scheming a new methodology and a successful Onboarding experience for these organizations.

The major issue we had when new clients arrived was that nobody was helping them with change management. The sale was done and it was up to them to start using Nimbo X. The reality is that it’s very easy to use and very intuitive, but the problem wasn’t the software — it was how to adopt a new tool for their clinical and management processes.

So what I did was scheme an easy 8 step plan on how to onboard new organizations to Nimbo X:

1. Doing a Gap analysis of the clinic or health-network
2. Work with the key decision makers to establish what Key Performance Indicators we would use to measure success
3. Based on the results of the Gap analysis I would plan, design & scheme a 30 day proof of concept for the number of users
4. Design the adaptation of the clinic or health-network workflow to Nimbo X
5. Design a training plan for all roles and users
6. Execute the implementation process with the users and support them
7. Build a dashboard on Metabase (a data warehouse) with the KPI’s to monitor the success or failure of the implementation process
8. Present the results to the client

It started with something this simple: How might we help the organization adapt and adopt the CRM? How might we reduce the bounce rate? How might we obtain a positive feedback from the Management team and the clinical users of the organization? We measured satisfaction using the Net Promoter Score (NPS).

How likely is it that you would recommend [Organization X/Product Y/Service Z] to a friend or colleague?

This first iteration took me a lot of clients and a lot of failed experiences to standardize and to reach a high level of satisfaction. It wasn’t built on day 1. To be honest it was quite hard to learn about clinical processes and medical terminology. A key step in the success of an Onboarding was understanding the health organization in and out, to become an expert on their business and find the gaps were Nimbo X would not only fit but also improve what they were already doing.

For the next couple of years I was visiting clinics, doing tours of their installations and processes, I had to interview physicians and nurses, shadowing medical directors on their day-to-day activities, observing the flow of patients and the way the clinical & administration personnel worked, creating diagrams and flow charts, review patient feedback…all in order to become a clinical expert on their organization. Of course, I wasn’t a physician or had the ability and knowledge they have but by the end of it I could have a conversation with them. This made a huge difference.

I’m a marketer so I took a very anthropological angle to tackle this task. And then I had to understand the business. I also spent a lot of time in talks with the management team of the health networks to review how they were measuring the clinical, resources and business goals. Part of the challenge is that the physicians had to see an improvement on their work and the patients treatment in order to feel safe with Nimbo X, at the same time the owners had to see a direct result on business goals. So once I came to terms with the management team we established Key Performance Indicators unique to their health network and challenges.

All of this was reflected on a structured plan (A Project Charter) that the clients approved and by the end of the 30 day Trial we would measure KPI’s and obtain the end user’s NPS, and that of the management team.

Before the Proof of Concept strategy we were having a low success rate: 2 out of 10 clients would be satisfied and would stay with us. After the new methodology we saw an increase in success rate: 9 out of 10 clients would be satisfied and would continue with us. It was great.

By the end of this stage, Nimbo X graduated from a Start Up to a proved Business. The next stage was focused on scalability and the process by which we defined our target audiences and estimates of the demand we would have in specific markets: Finding Product Market Fit.