Our co-founder & CEO, Patrick Monnot, shares the inception story behind Pod, what problems he saw in sales productivity, and the vision he had to empower sellers to close more deals.
Where it all started
🤯 Thrown into the lions' den
I've supported go-to-market teams for many years - as a consultant and as a startup operator. It gave me a clear understanding of how the different functions - marketing, sales, RevOps, content, and demand generation - fit together to build a scalable and predictable revenue engine.
I've had the opportunity to jump into an account executive role for a few months: doing everything from prospecting, qualification, and demo. This gave me a firsthand understanding of sellers' day-to-day work - how they spend their time, the tools they used, and much more.
What I found out shocked me: Sellers spent on average 60%+ of their day on non-selling activities: updating existing tools and chasing down information to manage their pipeline
This is time sellers don't spend on their open opportunities: preparing for a demo, researching an account, or following up with a prospect. No wonder why more than half of the sellers missed their quota...
⚙️ Tools... tools everywhere
When scratching under the surfacing, we realized that the productivity gap was driven by a fragmented sales tech stack. Sellers have to navigate between 10-15 tools daily to manage their pipeline: CRM, email, calendar, conversational intelligence, sales engagement, sales enablement, and more.
Despite having all these sales tools, sellers still fall back on the standard productivity tools - Excel, Google Docs, OneNote, Trello, and more.
👎 Impacting the whole organization
This not only affects account executives' performance, but also other sales team stakeholders: sales management and RevOps.
Bad data hygiene
Low visibility into deal progress
Low sales process compliance
Slow ramp-up time for now account executives
All in all, account executive productivity impacts a sales organization's ability to create a scalable growth engine.
How can we su
🚀 *Pod just entered the chat* 🚀
A thought then came to mind: why isn't there a true productivity tool purpose-built for account executives today? I'm not talking about a CRM that is more of a relational database than anything else. There was an opportunity to make it easier for sellers to manage their pipeline, so they can focus on selling. The willing approach:
Connect existing tools in a single pane of glass for sellers
Give sellers tools to manage their pipeline
Recommend sellers on deal recommendations
A solution that supports sellers with:
Streamlined workflows
Clearer visibility
Smarter decisioning
Our Vision
The success of a company is driven by the ability to have a strong and scalable revenue function; its ability to bring a product to market and convince customers that it'll deliver sustainable value. Unfortunately, sales is today a relatively obscure function, too often left to luck.
We believe in simplifying the B2B sales process to enable more predictable and streamlined growth. More efficient, aligned, and data-driven organizations can help create the kind of revenue team that will supercharge their growth.
Our Mission
Account executives spend today between 60%+ and 80% of their time on non-customer-related activities: CRM update, internal coordination, chasing colleagues, transcribing notes... This time isn't on what truly generate revenue: selling!
We empower account executives with the tools and insights to more consistently hit their quota. Pod makes it super easy for sellers to manage their pipeline and we leverage data to guide them into what actions to take on their deals.
Pod smart productivity workspace is built to help revenue teams organize themselves and make better decisions in the day-to-day.
At Pod, we've always focused on sellers. We are giving them an intuitive productivity tool build for them - a centralized workspace that connects with their existing systems and streamlines their workflows.
Remove the noise. Close more deals 💪
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