Today, we'll recap our episode featuring Bill Kantor, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, and Bryan Lewis, Co-Founder of Funnelcast, where we illuminate the path to sales excellence with Funnelcast!
Listen to the podcast as we explore Funnelcast’s journey, GTM strategy, and exciting product developments that guide your organization toward optimized sales win rates. See the highlights below.
Sales Pitch Round: How did Funnelcast come to be?
Funnelcast is a statistical process control for B2B sales. Bill & Bryan looked at what happened in factories long ago when engineers figured out how to use statistics to run factories more efficiently. Their innovative approach involves applying similar disciplines and techniques to B2B sales, learn about the Funnelcast model in this clip:
Bill and Bryan first met at a database management system company 10 years ago and were reunited when Bill was working on a consulting project and sought Bryan's expertise when confronted with the challenge of understanding win rates more comprehensively. This led to the foundation for Funnelcast, marrying mathematical and statistical modeling techniques commonly used in epidemiology with trying to increase efficiencies in B2B sales forces for a more positive outcome of those techniques!
The Funnelcast model distinguishes itself by considering win rates as dynamic curves rather than static percentages. This fundamental shift allows for a nuanced understanding of win rates based on varying timeframes. The co-founders emphasize simplicity in their approach, starting with a basic model that requires minimal data inputs, making it resilient to common data hygiene challenges. As the model evolves and enriches closer to the endpoint, it incorporates more relevant signals from the vast data generated during sales cycles. The overarching goal is to provide businesses with a more accurate and adaptable forecasting tool to enhance their decision-making processes whether that be in the qualification of opportunities, defining an ICP or forecasting revenue. Hear the biggest learning Funnelcast has had through multiple company’s data and insights:
GTM Round: The importance of customer-product fit.
Funnelcast is still in its early days of GTM, but generally speaking, most B2B sales companies’ could benefit from their solution, as long as they over 50 transactions per quarter. With that said, you still can gain insights with fewer transactions.
Their focus with customers and prospects has been aligning their statistical process control solution with the specific needs and challenges faced by businesses in the B2B sales realm. Bill and Bryan stress the importance of understanding their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) as a cornerstone of their go-to-market strategy and an ongoing process involving customer input, historical trends, and data analysis. For example, Bill and Bryan recognize the industry's data hygiene challenges and view it as a critical element in refining their strategy and product. They acknowledged that while it may not immediately change the sales output, data hygiene significantly impacts learning. They’ve embedded features in the product that identify data hygiene issues and nudge the sales teams to address them, ensuring higher fidelity forecasts at the individual deal level over time. By continually refining and enriching their understanding of their ICP and their ICP’s needs,, Funnelcast aims to tailor its offerings to resonate effectively with its target audience, promoting a more seamless customer-product fit.
In terms of competition, they compete with CRM's native tools. For example Salesforce, which has a lot of tools readily available to help with forecasting, like their feature “Collaborative Forecasting”:
On the surface Funnelcast look like Clari, Salesloft, Outreach and other sales analytics tools. From Bill’s perspective “[those tools] are not providing the kind of predictive analytics and insights we provide”. With that said, these competitors offer a slick user interface, so Funnelcast is working alongside them providing a complementary role within the broader sales analytics ecosystem. This collaborative approach contributes to a more holistic go-to-market strategy and they’ve seen success implementing Funnelcast alongside these other sales management tools.
Demo Round: How statistics can improve sales outcomes
Salesforce is Funnelcast’s primary data source today. Bill and Bryan highlight the importance of simplicity and user-friendly interfaces in encouraging adoption, as many users might find Salesforce's dated UI less appealing. The tool is positioned to assist sales leaders in day-to-day decision-making, finance, and operations in setting staffing plans and quotas and marketing in understanding lead generation needs for future goals.
Here is a quick snapshot of what data looks like:
Product Roadmap: How will Funnelcast continue to evolve its offering
Funnelcast is actively focused on expanding its product offerings and has identified two key directions in its product roadmap. Firstly, the integration with HubSpot is a significant goal for the company, acknowledging the popularity of HubSpot among its prospective clients. This integration aligns with their mission to broaden their market reach and cater to a larger customer base..
Secondly, the company is exploring the development of a product for companies to use where they don’t have historical data. They call it their Bayesian approach and it aims to assist startups, VCs and companies entering new segments by providing a prior model based on co-op data from their diverse current customer base, learn more about this innovative future offering:
Regarding market trends, we discussed the shifting landscape toward customer retention as retention metrics like GDR and NDR are the latest hot topics. Funnelcast acknowledges the importance of supporting customers who prioritize retention and customer success. However, most of their current customers remain interested in new logo acquisition and expansion, indicating that customer acquisition is still a primary concern for many businesses. In a market that no longer allows for simply hiring more salespeople or increasing marketing budgets, the challenge in achieving efficient customer acquisition only rises. Ultimately, there is a growing need for more sophisticated solutions to address the evolving dynamics of customer acquisition and retention.
Kudos Round: The companies Funnelcast sees as pioneers in the space
Bill and Bryan expressed appreciation for three companies making significant contributions to the industry:
Salesforce emphasizes its underutilized potential and encourages more people to leverage the existing capabilities within the platform.
Gainsight is recognized for its long-standing presence and innovative customer success and retention products. Bill and Bryan commend Gainsight for being particularly helpful in retaining clients, showcasing appreciation for the company's longevity and practical solutions.
HubSpot was mentioned as Bill and Bryan expressed interest in partnering with them, emphasizing its appeal for both mid-market and enterprise customers, making it a valuable addition to their integration goals.
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