Custdev, sophisticated services and presentation art: what we taught VTB accelerator participants
How long does it take to sift through 300 startups for a bank accelerator? About as many projects this summer sent applications to the second VTB accelerator. The full-time stage reached 40, and on September 11 we met their teams at the site of our partner IIDF in Moscow.
In this post, we will tell you how over the next three days we helped teams prepare for the next important stage - pitches with bank representatives. We look at some expert presentations. And finally, we will tell you who went to the next stage.
Preparation for the final pitching took place in three stages. On the first day, Dmitry Sokolov, the leading trainer and expert in the field of customer development, told the teams why it is so important to listen to the needs of your potential client. The acquired knowledge of the team was consolidated in practice, having trained in conducting interviews with each other.
On the second day, the participants learned more about selling complex services and solutions, creating an offer, and how to prepare for a pitch session. We will share interesting theses from the speeches.
Customer development, as we have already mentioned, is primarily about why it is so important to listen to the requests of your potential client.
To understand what the customer requires, the company needs to take the following steps:
All this is required in order to quickly and cheaply check your assumptions, and subsequently carry out successful business scaling.
The study of the client segment in this context is a fundamentally important step in the process of formation of the project. If at this stage the value proposition is formulated correctly, then further you can work on the payback and scaling of channels.
Otherwise, you will invest money, attract investors and create a product that will not meet market needs. According to statistics, 60% of projects are closed precisely for this reason.
Consulting company CBInsight analyzed the causes of the failures of 101 startups: each of them was not the first business in the account of the owners, completed two rounds of investment, entered several markets, and then failed deafeningly.
In fact, 42% of them turned out to be unnecessary to consumers, 29% went bankrupt - including due to incorrect definition of the final consumer and, accordingly, erroneous mechanisms for attracting an audience.
To avoid the mistakes of most young projects, it is wise to formulate your offer according to the following formula:
“We help clients X in situation Y solve problem P with solution O and get the values of V.”
The client whom you helped calculate the benefits of your decision buys with conversion 2-3 times better than the one who understood everything on his own.
On the second day, Leonid Val, the founder of QED integrated services promotion company, said in more detail about the peculiarities of sales in the B2B sector. According to him, a value proposition is formed by five main criteria:
Taking these criteria into account and an integrated approach to working with the customer ultimately lead to the conclusion of a transaction. It sounds simple enough, but in reality, as usual, everything is far from the case.
Identify the pain. To detect the deep pain of the client and correctly formulate the task, often you need to start not from the global problems of the company, but from small repetitive stoppers at the level of one department.
If the company does not have time to start in the regions due to a lack of new staff, then the reason may not be the lack of recruiters, but because 60% of their time is spent on communication with candidates who have already decided on their work. The true reason can be found out by understanding how the hiring process is going on and talking with the HR department employees.
Get access. You need to sell only through decision makers, including asking questions about the requests and priorities of other employees.
Give a vision. Try to take into account the wishes of the end users of the product, and not just the heads of departments: warn them what expectations regarding the product will not be met (if not justified), and explain why.
Explain the value. Be prepared to justify the ROI if your project translates into a tidy amount for the customer. To win the trust of the CFO, it’s worth calculating how much money the company will lose without your product and how its work will change if the transaction takes place.
Affect the sales process. Your project - this is the conclusion of the contract, and implementation, and accounting. Find out in advance what priorities the accountants, lawyers and technical staff of the customer have. If the customer has confirmed his interest in the purchase, offer to coordinate the “fish” of the contract with his lawyers in advance and develop a clear plan to coordinate technical, legal and accounting issues.
The main event of the accelerator is, of course, the final pitching sessions with representatives of the bank. Based on the results of this five-hour activity, the 20 most interesting projects for the bank went further - to the stage of preparation for the pilot under the leadership of the IIDF trackers team and the VTB Accelerator team.
And now you are probably interested to know who went next. The list of the best:
In this post, we will tell you how over the next three days we helped teams prepare for the next important stage - pitches with bank representatives. We look at some expert presentations. And finally, we will tell you who went to the next stage.
Preparation for the final pitching took place in three stages. On the first day, Dmitry Sokolov, the leading trainer and expert in the field of customer development, told the teams why it is so important to listen to the needs of your potential client. The acquired knowledge of the team was consolidated in practice, having trained in conducting interviews with each other.
On the second day, the participants learned more about selling complex services and solutions, creating an offer, and how to prepare for a pitch session. We will share interesting theses from the speeches.
How to grow sales with customers
Customer development, as we have already mentioned, is primarily about why it is so important to listen to the requests of your potential client.
To understand what the customer requires, the company needs to take the following steps:
- to understand what value the product will bring to the customer and which market this product is oriented to;
- formulate your goal;
- learn to put forward hypotheses and work with them.
All this is required in order to quickly and cheaply check your assumptions, and subsequently carry out successful business scaling.
The study of the client segment in this context is a fundamentally important step in the process of formation of the project. If at this stage the value proposition is formulated correctly, then further you can work on the payback and scaling of channels.
Otherwise, you will invest money, attract investors and create a product that will not meet market needs. According to statistics, 60% of projects are closed precisely for this reason.
Consulting company CBInsight analyzed the causes of the failures of 101 startups: each of them was not the first business in the account of the owners, completed two rounds of investment, entered several markets, and then failed deafeningly.
In fact, 42% of them turned out to be unnecessary to consumers, 29% went bankrupt - including due to incorrect definition of the final consumer and, accordingly, erroneous mechanisms for attracting an audience.
To avoid the mistakes of most young projects, it is wise to formulate your offer according to the following formula:
“We help clients X in situation Y solve problem P with solution O and get the values of V.”
The client whom you helped calculate the benefits of your decision buys with conversion 2-3 times better than the one who understood everything on his own.
How to turn an offer into a deal
On the second day, Leonid Val, the founder of QED integrated services promotion company, said in more detail about the peculiarities of sales in the B2B sector. According to him, a value proposition is formed by five main criteria:
- Having a problem: does the client have a conscious pain that needs to be solved?
- Availability of authority: do you have access to people who make decisions in the company?
- Having a vision: Does the customer understand what he needs and what your product looks like?
- Availability of value: how clearly does the client understand the benefits of working with you?
- Availability of confirmation: can you personally influence the sales process and force it?
Taking these criteria into account and an integrated approach to working with the customer ultimately lead to the conclusion of a transaction. It sounds simple enough, but in reality, as usual, everything is far from the case.
Identify the pain. To detect the deep pain of the client and correctly formulate the task, often you need to start not from the global problems of the company, but from small repetitive stoppers at the level of one department.
If the company does not have time to start in the regions due to a lack of new staff, then the reason may not be the lack of recruiters, but because 60% of their time is spent on communication with candidates who have already decided on their work. The true reason can be found out by understanding how the hiring process is going on and talking with the HR department employees.
Get access. You need to sell only through decision makers, including asking questions about the requests and priorities of other employees.
Give a vision. Try to take into account the wishes of the end users of the product, and not just the heads of departments: warn them what expectations regarding the product will not be met (if not justified), and explain why.
Explain the value. Be prepared to justify the ROI if your project translates into a tidy amount for the customer. To win the trust of the CFO, it’s worth calculating how much money the company will lose without your product and how its work will change if the transaction takes place.
Affect the sales process. Your project - this is the conclusion of the contract, and implementation, and accounting. Find out in advance what priorities the accountants, lawyers and technical staff of the customer have. If the customer has confirmed his interest in the purchase, offer to coordinate the “fish” of the contract with his lawyers in advance and develop a clear plan to coordinate technical, legal and accounting issues.
Who understood everything and successfully passed the pitch
The main event of the accelerator is, of course, the final pitching sessions with representatives of the bank. Based on the results of this five-hour activity, the 20 most interesting projects for the bank went further - to the stage of preparation for the pilot under the leadership of the IIDF trackers team and the VTB Accelerator team.
And now you are probably interested to know who went next. The list of the best:
- MobileScoring This service identifies the probability of bankruptcy of customers by analyzing their behavior in other banks and overall financial literacy.
- Digital passport of the client . Technology based on machine learning, which allows you to identify and identify potential customers.
- Neurodata Lab . Analyzes emotions using artificial intelligence to enhance user experience.
- Hinted . The service helps to train new employees to work with software in corporate systems using interactive tips.
- Stories by SweetCard . The service creates personal stories for users of social networks based on completed transactions.
- KVINT . The platform helps create virtual voice operators for different businesses.
- Biometric identification in the financial sector. Biometrics proof of identity with the ability to identify fraud attempts.
- OpenTRM . Automatically extract data from scans of primary documents for working with clients and contractors.
- Infobot . A service of automatic calls through a voice bot that is as similar as possible to a live operator.
- A solution for optimizing business processes and reducing costs using Process Mining algorithms.
- Jetlex The service replaces manual input of documents and allows you to upload document scans to 1C.
- Cashback 2.0 from CASHOFF . Cashback for customers of banks, which is "sponsored" by manufacturers of goods.
- Botman.one . A visual designer that creates web applications without the help of programmers.
- ODIN . The platform helps simplify the management and operation of commercial real estate through automation.
- Directual Low-code platform helps to quickly create complex and flexible IT-products.
- Legium The service offers the service of remote signing of electronic documents through blockchain technology.
- Turbo Contract . A cloud service that provides online workflow automation.
- HighTouch Lab . Remote verification of users of mobile services.
- Cybertonica Platform . The platform monitors the transaction fraud and authenticates users.
- Firstpoint . The recruiting service helps young professionals find a job and brings them to employers through online gaming tests based on psychometrics.
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