Cracking the Crowded Market : 30 Customers Within 6 Months of Launch with Our Genius GTM Strategy!

Upendra Varma: 00:00:00

hello everyone. Welcome to the B2B SaaS podcast. I'm your host Bhupendra Verma and today we have Gerald Sankey with us. Gerald here is the co founder and CEO of a company called KickScale. Hey Gerald, welcome to the show.

Gerald Zankl: 00:00:11

Thanks a lot for inviting me and a pleasure being here.

Upendra Varma: 00:00:15

Yeah. All right, so let's just sort of understand, right. What KickScale does, right. And why customers typically pay you money.

Gerald Zankl: 00:00:22

Absolutely. And I'm more than happy to give you here a brief overview of what we do. And the majority why people buy our software and our platform is that they want to gain critical insights into customer conversations. And we do that with artificial intelligence in sales. Over the last couple of months, couple of quarters, there have been so many great options to leverage AI and sales and customer success is one part of that, where you can leverage that really, really nicely. What does this mean? Actually, with looking into your sales conversations, sales reps can optimize sales meetings, Because we provide targeted coaching, what you can do better in those sales meetings, you gain, as already mentioned, customer insights through sales intelligence. That means we look into what are really the common needs, the common objections, what does the customer really want, and you save time through automation, for example, to automatically sync certain data to your CRM system back. Or also to automate the follow up process, you get an automated email follow up after every conversation that saves really, wraps a lot of time, at least 20 to 30 minutes per meeting in follow up note taking.

Upendra Varma: 00:01:46

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I just want to get a sense of, you know, who you're primarily sort of trying to sell this to. I know it's sales reps, right. But which companies do these sales reps work for? Like, can you just help us understand a bit about your customer base today?

Gerald Zankl: 00:01:59

Yeah, totally. I think where our platform is perfectly used is companies who are selling products. That means companies who have products typically between, I would say, 5k in ARR, between 30 40k in ARR. Why? You have a quite standardized sales process in that range. So if you are

Upendra Varma: 00:02:24

mean ARR or ACV? Is that like deal size or ARR you're talking about?

Gerald Zankl: 00:02:30

I mean, the ACV, yeah, I mean, the, I mean, the ACV, um, the annual contract value, um, between five to 30 K. Uh, and if you have that and a product you are selling, then Kikskill is definitely the right solution for you.

Upendra Varma: 00:02:45

And okay, so let's, let's understand a bit here, right? So just help me understand it's how many customers, how many paying customers do you typically, do you have as of today on your platform?

Gerald Zankl: 00:02:54

Yes. So as of today, we have 30 paying B2B customers on the platform. Yeah. Uh, which. are in various industries. Most of them are really in the software, software development space.

Upendra Varma: 00:03:07

Okay. And how many, approximately how much percentage of them are, you know, are selling software exactly in this case?

Gerald Zankl: 00:03:14

Can you repeat that

Upendra Varma: 00:03:15

among those 30 customers, so how many of them actually do sell a software product?

Gerald Zankl: 00:03:20

Oh, actually, uh, 29 of

Upendra Varma: 00:03:24

that's a lot. So

Gerald Zankl: 00:03:25

there, there, there is, so literally everyone is selling a software product, but we see more and more also others like, uh, we are going into the HR space, for example, and so on, and see also people who are selling certain kinds of services and so on and touch base on that as well. What all of them have in common is that it's actually a quite fast paced sales cycle

Upendra Varma: 00:03:53

Uh, makes sense. Right. So, and, uh, what sort of deal sizes are we talking about? Right. So how much do these customers typically pay you? Is it a thousand dollar deal at 10, 000 deal? Like just approximately the median value.

Gerald Zankl: 00:04:02

to be honest that really worries Is is uh different from case to case so we talk about some customers who have a couple of users Uh in our system, they are paying like a couple of hundred euro every month And then we have also bigger customers, yeah, where we go into the 1 2k deal size each month. So it really varies a lot on the size of the company as well and the size of the sales team obviously.

Upendra Varma: 00:04:29

So you still have like 20, 25, 000 deal deals at the top, at the top, top

Gerald Zankl: 00:04:34

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So

Upendra Varma: 00:04:35

the bottom. Yeah.

Gerald Zankl: 00:04:36

especially when you look at bigger sales teams, like having a 10 20 sales reps in the area doing a lot of meetings, yeah, then we get definitely in such a direction.

Upendra Varma: 00:04:46

And just help me understand how you're growing today, right? So 12 months before today, right? So where were you in terms of number of customers or revenue or whatever metric that you're compatible with us sharing?

Gerald Zankl: 00:04:54

So everything we achieved 12 months back then wasn't there. Yeah. So we started with all of that, um, more or

Upendra Varma: 00:05:03

the first customer or first revenue dollar that you got? When was it? Okay.

Gerald Zankl: 00:05:08

This was actually in September, uh, last year,

Upendra Varma: 00:05:12

It's just been six months.

Gerald Zankl: 00:05:14

yeah, it's been six months. Yeah. So it's, it's going pretty nicely. The thing is we founded our company in 2020 already, but we did a different business model back then. Yeah. We were building up e learning content and e learning platforms. And this was different than what we do today. Yeah. Because we. Saw that pure e learning for our customer base wasn't as attractive. So we looked into what can we do and what can we improve that we also get some insights to our customers, what they actually need to improve. And that's where the idea came from to record sales conversations, and then make sure to figure out what can be improved in these sales

Upendra Varma: 00:05:57

have you hit that 100K ARR, you know, projection so far?

Gerald Zankl: 00:06:02

Uh, no not yet,

Upendra Varma: 00:06:03

Yeah, but you're

Gerald Zankl: 00:06:04

but we are very very close close on it. Yeah

Upendra Varma: 00:06:07

Okay. So, so I know that you just getting started, right? So it's been six months and you've got like 30 odd customers. So just help us understand it. So where you're getting all of these customers from, right? So, you know, you know, all of them are, you know, I think B2B software companies, right? So just help us understand how did you reach out to them? Right. And what was that journey like so far at least

Gerald Zankl: 00:06:27

yeah, I think where we got get a lot from as of today is also we are our inbound channels Yeah, we do a lot of content on our website We give a lot of playbooks for free out there sales leadership playbooks sales skills playbooks Yeah, we really our aim is really to educate the market as well, right to give content out for free You And people recognize that and people get back to us and see, okay, what, how does this look like and in which direction are we going here? So yeah, this is, this is one of our main strategies besides that traditional hunting, I would say, yeah, getting out there. Uh,

Upendra Varma: 00:07:05

do you

Gerald Zankl: 00:07:06

outbound via LinkedIn and

Upendra Varma: 00:07:07

what, what, yeah. So what, what are your other channels? So in terms of Outpoint, what do you do? And like, just help us quantify this as well. It's sort of the 30 customers that you've caught so far, right? So which one of your efforts have sort of driven most of the customers?

Gerald Zankl: 00:07:20

I would say LinkedIn is a great source where we hunt for customers. Yeah. I'm personally also very active on LinkedIn. The whole company is that's one source where we got a lot of customers. I would say from as of today. But also when we look into, um, others, yeah, and looking into, uh, content marketing efforts and so on. We see there are also some, some nice, some nice growth.

Upendra Varma: 00:07:45

And talk about the conversion, right? So like, what does it take to sort of close a 10, 000 deal in your case? Right. So what does it involve? So what's

Gerald Zankl: 00:07:53

So it involves,

Upendra Varma: 00:07:54

and just, you know, how does that look like? And just help us understand that

Gerald Zankl: 00:07:57

yeah. To be honest, I mean, when we look into that, it luckily takes actually weeks, not months. Yeah. Where we are right now. Um, and, uh, from a conversion point of view, once we get the people in the funnel, we really see that. Maybe 30 percent we can close here really getting further once they are in our pipeline. So that's, that's, I think where we are right now, uh, pretty good for us. And that's, that's how the conversion

Upendra Varma: 00:08:28

So what, what happens, right? So in those, during those weeks, right? So when somebody starts discovering your product through one of your LinkedIn posts, or maybe they're following you out there, right? So how do you convert them? What do you do? Like, so do you get on a call? Is there any discovery call? How do you do that? Just walk us through the entire process that you

Gerald Zankl: 00:08:42

So what we actually do, right. And what I think, uh, a lot of B2B companies these days do. We have a qualification meeting and luckily we use our own product. Already in that qualification meeting. And so we have our first qualification meeting. And after that meeting, we share already what our product has been done for our prospects. And so after the first meeting, they get already a sense what is possible with our product. Typically, we have a second meeting to discuss that, what they think, how they would like to start an official trial. And then they do a trial typically between two weeks and four weeks, depending on the company size. after that trial, uh, we decide on when officially we start. Um, yeah, I think this is, so we see really one to two months of deal cycles is possible.

Upendra Varma: 00:09:41

Got it. And, and what have you observed so far, right? So are these customers switching from an existing sort of product, like a gong or something like that, who's already doing conversational intelligence? Or are these like, you know, you know, customers who, who, who's not using any product so far? Like what, how, how's, like how's your customer base, you know, been solving this problem before UK

Gerald Zankl: 00:10:00

Uh, I would say both. There are some, uh, companies using already certain services. Yeah. Uh, haven't gotten yet from Gong, so that's what we are working on. Yeah. Um, but the thing is, right, what we see is that, uh, especially other software vendors in that field, some of them have already a software, but also some, they don't have a software. Yeah. So, and they start from a plain field. They see the power of artificial intelligence these days and work on that and really look into how we can, how they can, solve and help their sales reps to perform better. And that's how we get them started with our conversation.

Upendra Varma: 00:10:42

Makes sense. So general, like, have you raised any external funding so far to build the company?

Gerald Zankl: 00:10:45

Yes, we have raised, uh, nearly half a million in external funding in Austria. There is really a very, very nice public grant system as well. And really kudos to the Austrian government here for supporting startups in that way. So overall with public grants, with business angel money, we have raised, uh, around 1 million, a little bit below 1 million, uh, and yeah, looking now into further growth. Uh,

Upendra Varma: 00:11:12

So, so what's, what's the, what's the gameplay here, right? I see like this could be, this is sort of, you know, uh, a matured market. I think a lot of sales reps do understand the value that you provide because, you know, a lot of big folks, right? Category creators have been investing a lot of money and time into creating this category, right? It's, it's pretty clouded out there, right? Everybody came to do a lot of these things, right? Even CRM, sales engagement platforms, even they are entering the space, right? So. So what's the, what's your vision here? That's how do you intend to sort of, you know, grow your company in such a crowded space? Like what, like, what do you think, what's, what's the vision?

Gerald Zankl: 00:11:44

The vision is really to bring out the best in salespeople, right? Even looking into CRM systems like HubSpot, Salesforce, and so on, yeah, they haven't been built to really help the sales rep. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how often you work with a CRM, but it's good to have an overview of the deals, of the leads. But in my opinion, then it ends already, right? I've never met any sales rep in my career who loved it to put some notes into the CRM or even the other way around to check the CRM when they wanted to have some information about the deal. Some of them use like a traditional notebook, yeah, where they write some things and some others use their own systems. And that's the problem, right? Because as of today, we have so many great ways. To leverage conversations with conversational intelligence with AI. And this is really what we focus on getting the best out of the sales reps, but making them also at the same time more productive. And this is what we stand for. Yeah, and there is a lot of things going on in that space as you know, also. And that's why it's pretty, pretty awesome to be in that

Upendra Varma: 00:12:55

so what's, yeah, like what's, what's the plan here? Right. So how do you intend to win and what does winning mean for you in this space? Right. So how do you see all of this, you know, how do you see this space evolving? Do you believe that this, uh, a big market for a lot of players to, you know, grow their companies to tens of millions of ARR or like. Like how's that gonna span out eventually according to you?

Gerald Zankl: 00:13:16

So when you look at the market, when I look into markets of sales, enablement, conversational intelligence, and maybe a little bit of AI assistance, we talk about the market of more than 130 billion, uh, worldwide and growing with more than 15 percent year over year. Yeah. So I truly believe this market over the next 10 years is super, super hot. Yeah. Um, obviously. You can get into your niche. Yeah, whatever this means. Yeah, you can get into regional Countries into regional languages and so on and so forth. Yeah Uh, there is I think space for a lot of players here. Yeah, it's a crowded market. Yeah, you are right There are definitely a lot of players, but I think so for the best players there is still enough

Upendra Varma: 00:14:09

So so are you doing any one of those that you mentioned like are you focusing on any particular region or any particular industry like? Where where are your current customer base come from? Do they come from in a particular place in europe? Like how does that like do you have anything in mind? Are you just you know? Just

Gerald Zankl: 00:14:23

So yes Yeah, we we see that the german speaking markets are very nice markets for us. Yeah, obviously we come from there and it's it's our first Battle, let's say it like this where we go into but this is where a lot of our companies come from But also we have huge interest from the uk. For example, we see interest from us as well India is also a huge part of it. Yeah, we got Lucky and got also some viral LinkedIn posts in India, for example, and get there a lot of traction. So it's going really nicely these days. Yeah. But yeah, starting with the dark region, Germany,

Upendra Varma: 00:15:01

so is the plan to always sell those mid market enterprise deals? Or are you also looking at any SMB play here?

Gerald Zankl: 00:15:09

mid market is the focus. So the thing is, Mid looking into mid market, right? We are Imagine we are really leveraging most sensitive data of any kind of business yeah, and you go really the route through the organizations through the companies and Not so much through the individual sales reps. Yeah, we have always the huge interest from these people as well. Yeah, but then typically you need to talk to the whole organization. Say, what is our strategy there? How can we onboard everyone? What's about data privacy and all these topics? That's why mid market is our, our go

Upendra Varma: 00:15:50

So, so have you in conflict, uh, are you, have you invested in compliance and certifications like SOC2 and all of it so far, or are you still figuring that out because

Gerald Zankl: 00:15:58

Yeah. So that's, that's. That's definitely one of the next items on our roadmap. SOC 2 is one of very important ISO certifications and so on and so forth.

Upendra Varma: 00:16:07

are your customers asking for it? SOC2 when you try to sort of expand to us markets, is that what they're asking or where is

Gerald Zankl: 00:16:13

Yeah. We got, we got first request for SOC 2, for example, yeah. On, on that site. I mean, it's a very important, very important, uh, thing you need to have. Let's

Upendra Varma: 00:16:23

So, so yeah, I mean, do you think it's, it's worth investing in it at this point of time? Because I mean, it's going to cost you 30, 40 grand and a lot of developer time as well, right? So what's, what's your thoughts on that? Because I hear a lot of SaaS founders say this, Hey, we've dragged a bunch of good market deals. There's a couple of deals just on the line, right? They're asking for these certifications and it's just a bunch of boring old stuff. Maybe it might take you four, six months based on your expertise. And what's your take on it? I've seen a lot of people just throw away deals because of that, right? So,

Gerald Zankl: 00:16:49

Yeah, so my take on it is, yes, we have it, for example, on the horizon, yeah, but obviously data privacy, all these things are very important to us. We have there a lot of measurements in place to make sure this works properly. I think at a certain stage we will be SOC 2 compliant, yeah, but as you mentioned, uh, bigger customers need to ask for it and then you get these things done, yeah, um, and, and move forward on that side.

Upendra Varma: 00:17:15

So Jalal, talk about the team, right? So how big is your team and like, what do they do?

Gerald Zankl: 00:17:19

So we are right now, 10 people and with these 10 people, the majority, obviously, as you can imagine, is really focusing on the development side. Yeah, we have right now on the dev side, six people, uh, who are really focusing on the front end on the backend full stack, obviously, as well as one, I wouldn't call it department because we don't have, we had departments on that side. Right. But as one expertise area, yeah, everything on the front and everything on the platform. And then we have another team, let's say like this, and we are focusing on the whole artificial intelligence part, meaning like how can we optimize the prompts? Yeah. How can we tune open source, large language models further, uh, to really get the best results out in sales and customer conversations.

Upendra Varma: 00:18:09

Yes. And are you sort of passing on these LLM calls to your customers or like, have your margins gone down after using such, you know, high pricey API calls that you make to open AI calls? Like, what's your take on that?

Gerald Zankl: 00:18:22

Yeah. I think so. We are, we are in the, I would say lucky situation. Uh, we are obviously onboarding customers where we get also some margin as well. Yeah. Um, I know there's times also that there were different times here where you onboard any kind of customers to get someone, obviously we want to be here cost efficient from our side. Yeah. But also having an attractive offer for our customers so that this is a win win for everyone.

Upendra Varma: 00:18:51

so one last question here, right? So what's the vision for the company right over the next two to three years? Where do you see your company going in terms of revenue, in terms of, you know, growth or whatever that is, whatever metrics that you're chasing, right? Just help us understand.

Gerald Zankl: 00:19:04

So I think that the first thing, what we also say as a vision for us, for the team, what motivates us, what keeps us going every day is really, we want to empower sales reps and we want to help them get the best out of their daily work. That's really when you, everyone who is doing sales, right? It's kind of a challenging role. It's, you know, it's getting busier. It's getting more crowded. Tech is coming. Uh, time is limited. So we want to give there something back here with automating email follow ups, automating CRM synchronization, but also to help them understand their customers better. I think this is on the one hand side, and I come to the metrics part in a bit, yeah, uh, is, is one topic. But this is what. What we do on a daily basis, we really would like to get the best out of the, of the sales reps. Yeah. And from a growth point of view, I mean, obviously we are now in the, again, lucky situation that we got the trust of business angels. We got public grants. So in the next 12 months, it's all about growth. Yeah. Uh, and we are going to hit the 1 million in ARR. By, uh, end of, uh, by next year. Yeah. Let's say like this, this is, this is really the goal. Yeah. Ideally earlier. Yeah. Let's say it like this, how, how things are going. But the plan is to hit that, uh, by mid end of next year to really have such an ambitious goal, but then scaling further, right. We are now really strong in the German speaking markets, but our software supports also other languages for sure. Uh, being in that market first and then expanding into further markets, growing the team, that's really the goal of the next, yeah, one to two years.

Upendra Varma: 00:20:58

that, that was a wonderful goal. Hope you get there as soon as possible. Right. It was wonderful talking to you. Hope you scale, kick scale to much, much greater heights. Thank you for joining us.

Gerald Zankl: 00:21:07

Thank you a lot. It was a pleasure being with you and thanks a lot for the great questions and yeah, looking forward to it.