CRM SaaS
Introduction
Today we meet Ben Lilienthal. Ben is the CEO of ScreenMeet and we talk about how to qualify leads efficiently.
ScreenMeet is a cloud-native SaaS co-browse and Remote Support software. From the web, a support agent can see and remote control any device. ScreenMeet is used by leading SaaS companies, mobile carriers and Handset and PC manufacturers.
Ben shares some great nuggets – first how they got their first 10 enterprise deals and how they are now qualifying their leads to increase the number of demos with high quality companies. Check it out…
See an abstract of the interview on how to qualify leads
Pathmonk: Could you tell me about the website, what role does that play in, people coming from those different stores potentially? How important is the websites for you guys?
Ben Lilienthal: We don’t, you can’t buy it online and just give us your credit card and buy $300 worth of ScreenMeet. Cause that’s not really the business that we’re in. The website is to provide supporting information, case studies, kind of to be part of more of like an account based marketing surround. I don’t know what the term is but it’s more of an informative slash demand gen than it is a eCommerce fulfillment.
Pathmonk: A hundred percent it makes total sense. Especially the types of clients you’ve been talking about. There still the metrics that you would care about on the website because folks could be looking at very different types of metrics for the website. Do you still have a couple of metrics that are important for you?
Ben Lilienthal: Yeah, I mean we’re always looking for demand gen, right? We want people to say, I want to learn more and do a free trial. There are a couple ways that we get folks to do that. Historically our online marketing, because it’s enterprise sales has been lagging. That’s a big area of opportunity for us to do any more online to manager.
Pathmonk: Have you guys been working already on improving the demand or addictive conversion rate for that matter on the website itself? So maybe war stories or learnings that you could share?
Ben Lilienthal: I mean we haven’t won that battle. We keep, we keep fighting it and losing it. Because these are such big ticket sales, 10K to seven figures, all it takes is one or two or three leads to justify the cost of the investment and the cost of the work on the present.
Pathmonk: Could you tell me maybe back into this first, one to 10 customers. Could you tell me maybe the first or the second? How did you win them?
Ben Lilienthal: I was calling everyone I knew, I was doing it online. We were standing in trade show booths. You beg, borrow and steal to get those first customers. There is no right way to do it. It’s really a shake out. You determine the use case, you identify the buyer persona And then you do everything you can to find somebody who’s willing to listen to you and try your product. Very very good. So a lot of different, go ahead. Like like it, if you’re a first time founder, you can’t be embarrassed to ask people to try your software. That’s your job. You should be embarrassed if you can’t get somebody to say yes because, but you just keep asking. And eventually people try it. They like it, they help you make it better. You build on that to get to large customers. Look, I mean, gosh, our first user, our first deal was somebody paying us 20 bucks a month, and we leveraged that into a seven figure ARR kind of opportunity because we could prove that this had value.
Pathmonk: Could you give us an idea of time between those first customer that you just mentioned to that like later? Two years. 10 years?
Ben Lilienthal: Very good. Good. Okay. It was two years from when we started to, when we had a product for the first customer and then another two years to get to some, call it real enterprise deals.
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