Sales
A friend of mine who is a very proud salesperson, often tells me this quote.
“Sales is the only department which gets the revenue for the company. Rest all are cost centres”.
I partially agree, as it takes a lot of background work in handing a product to sales, which gets the money it. However, the quote does emphasise how important the sales process is in the Company. It’s more than visiting customers, giving demos and sending quotes. It’s extremely important that we break the entire sales process into multiple steps and track it regularly. In the sales SOP, you will find some of the objectives your sales team must follow to maximise the conversions.
Sales Playbook
Here is the sales playbook which was followed by Frappe’s sales team. Will recommend taking a lot at it for finding a day-wise cadence, standard replies and a lot more. Feel free to use it as a reference to define the process which works best for you.
Tracking Leads
Lead could be an individual or a person who could become your customer in future. It can come from different channels like calls, emails, in-person meetings, referral through a customer and so on. It’s often seen that all these leads are not accumulated in a single database. It is highly important that you maintain a single log of these records, so that at anypoint of time, you can review their history and pick-up discussion from them.
If we are not tracking leads in one place, it’s highly likely that you are also losing leads in different platforms, which otherwise would have converted. Bring leads in one place to ensure everyone else in the team knows about it, even if the lead owner is not around tomorrow. In the future, you can also utilise this data for sending event and newsletter updates to these prospects.
Following are some of the practices we expect each partner to follow, so that you can maximise deal conversion.
| Checklist | Description |
|---|---|
| Lead Tracking | Leads all the Lead in ERPNext’s CRM module |
| Lead Source | Update Lead source, so that you can analyse the effective channel for lead generation |
| Follow Up Mechanism | * Identify assignment rule |
* Determine next steps * Set follow-up date * Set reminder | | Standard Replies | Standard email templates are created for approaching potential customers | | Lead Updation | Follow a weekly review cadence to ensure lead’s status, next follow-up are followed. | | Lead Analysis | Some measurables:* No. of leads generated per month * Distribution of lead based on source * No. of lead to Opportunity and Quotation per month * Lead for specific product / Services |
Lead Validation Mechanism
| Enterprise | Medium | Small | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Users | 50+ | 20+ | <10 |
| Turn-Over | 100 Cr | 50 Cr | 10 Cr |
| Company Size | 500-1000 | <500 | <50 |
| Ownership Type | Public Or Private | Private | Private Or Proprietary |
| Funded | Yes | Yes | No |
| Integration Points | Many | Few | No |
| Legacy System | SAP or Oracle | Tally or Quickbooks | Tally Or Quickbooks or Spreadsheets |
| IT Team | Yes | Hybrid | No |
Following are some of the indicators to ensure leads are vetted well before offering a demo call.
| Checklist | Description |
|---|---|
| Primary Check | Validate if Lead has a company or just an individual browsing around. |
| Need Analysis | Ask questions to under if prospect has identified their own business problems/ pain points, for which they are looking for solution |
| Budget Validation | Important to ensure that you are spending time on a lead which has budgets. Indeed you don’t want a question later that “if frappe is open source, why are you charging). Do refer to the BANT principle in the sales playbook to learn more. |
| Expected Timeline | The ones with the urgent need are the most authentic, and the one you must focus on. The ones who don't have any timeline or would think and tell, are the ones you need to be careful about investing in. |
| Decision Maker | Ensure you are talking to someone who is a decision maker. If he/she is not, do try and touch-base with the person who can validate the needs and budgets allocation for this project. |
Build Trust
This is a step zero in ensuring you can lead Lead further. Trust can be established in multiple ways. Some of it you can follow are:
- Listen to their requirements and need before offering any solution
- Adhere the meeting time and dress code as expected by the prospect
- After listening, present a solution based on their requirement, so that they can correlate
- Talk a language they are familiar with. Present the case-studies and references they can find parallel with.
- Have a bit of casual conversation, and try to find more parallel in the conversation as well.
Tracking Opportunities
Only the leads which are highly likely to close are converted into Opportunities. Again, even in the companies implementing CRM and ERP for their customer, the data about opportunities reside in the email and Google spreadsheet. Due to that, it’s very likely that even high value opportunities are lost with employees leaving. Or delays in the follow-up as Opportunities are not tracked transparently.
Here are some of the actionable on the opportunity front which can help you close deals better.
| Checklist | Description |
|---|---|
| Listing Of Opportunities | All the Opportunities should be captured in ERPN |
| Follow Up Mechanism | There should be next action and date update on each active lead, till it’s not disqualified completely. During a review, a sales lead should review following values in each Opportunity.* Identify assignment rule |
* Determine next steps * Set follow-up date * Set reminder | | Updated Details | Update calling / meeting calls | | Frappe Involvement | If lead is likely to convert, ensure the Frappe team is looped at the opportunity state only. You can add a field to track if the Frappe team is looped into this opportunity or not. | | Won or Lost Reason | Even if opportunity is lost, ensure that its status and Lost Reason is updated. | | Opportunity Analysis | Lead > Opportunity conversion ratio. And another dashboard shared above in Lead, if you want to generate on Opportunity as well. |
Conducting A Demo
Till you reach here, ensure you have validated the prospect well, and their needs are logged well in your CRM solution.
To keep Demo interesting, ensure to keep it concise and curate it around the needs of the customer. Don’t focus on the other good features, which are not so relevant to them. Ensure to update their logo in the demo account. That’s the small hack which often leaves a prospect with a good feeling.
Here are a few more suggestions which you could follow for curating a customer oriented demo.
| Checklist | Description |
|---|---|
| Demo Schedule | If customer exist in other timezone, you can refer to tools like www.worldtimebuddy.com * Preference to onsite demo, if prospect in or close to your city. Else, go for online demo |
* Set clear agenda and time | | Company Presentation | Initiate a demo with the standard company presentation. This is something you can use just to present the profile of your company as well.Here is the standard template offered by Frappe, on top of which you can further improvise in your company’s context. | | Demo Data | Curate a data so that customer can easily relate* Setup prospects letterhead * Create FG and RM items as per customer’s business * Create a workflow which answers customer’s business problems * Show dashboards and customization features of Frappe Framework | | Demo Script | Refer to the sales playbook | | Recorded Demo and Q&A | After 20-30 mins of demo, open it up for the audience and take their Q&A. If possible, answer the question by creating records in ERPNext there and then. | | Demo Feedback | Create a web-form to track demo’s quality on various parameters like:* Demo content * Demo timing * Presentor’s knowledge * Overall rating |
Quoting A Customer With Frappe
Quoting an enterprise prospect can get pretty tricky, esp. where you have multiple parties involved. To prevent any confusion, ensure to align with Frappe (the OEM) and other partners bidding for the same project.
Eventually, the evaluation depends on the judgement of your sales team. You might have prospects fulfilling certain criteria, and might lapse on some other, however might still categorise them as Enterprise based on their budget for ERP, which match easily with our proposal’s value. Do ensure to connect with Frappe’s sales team to validate your categorization.
When it comes to quoting, firstly you should know what services you can bill for directly, and what is driven by Frappe.
| Services Offered By Frappe | Services Offered By Partners |
|---|---|
| * FrappeCloud Hosting |
+ Site based plans + Dedicated hosting * Frappe Warranty / Support: + On various Frappe Products + Consultation for Customer’s success via Frappe Partner | * Consultation and implementation support * Customisation and maintenance support * AMC for product support for basic and regional queries |
Secondly, ensure that your quote for the services adhere to the base price set in the Frappe ecosystem. This will ensure that partners within Frappe’s ecosystem doesn’t reduce services price way too below it’s worth, and make it difficult for other quality partners to compete.
| Services | Enterprise | SMB |
| Implementation | ||
| INR | 10,00,000 | 1,00,000 - 2,00,000 |
| USD | 12,500 | 1500 |
| T&M support price | ||
| INR | 2,000 / hour OR 12,000/ day | |
| USD | 25 / hour150 / day |
Overall, partners should ensure their quote is at least 1:1 of Frappe’s quote. For eg. if Frappe’s quote is USD 20,000, then the partner should quote the minimum for their services as well. Since this is a base price, partners can charge a rate above this, based on their costing and competence.
Thirdly, ensure to collaborate with Frappe to plan who sends the quote. Ideally, Frappe's quote and partner’s quote should go in the same email. This naturally means we are the OEM and partner aligning internally in advance.
On a case to case basis, we can also allow partners to add Frappe’s component in their quote, especially where the partner has stronger rapo with the customer. If keeping all the serviceable items in one quote could make it easier for prospects to make a decision, we can align for it.
Lastly, while sending a quote to the customer, ensure to set up a joint meeting/call, so that we can explain and justify the value quoted.
SMB Customers
When it comes to SMB, it will be ideal if you can propose a user based support plan to the customer. It will help you recover the commitment fee, as you can consume your used credits to get support enabled for the new customers. If you are a Silver and Gold Partner, check this post to learn how you can avail bundled support for your customers. When it comes to quoting prices of your services, ensure to follow the base price as mentioned above.
If it’s found out that a Frappe Partner is quoting for a service less than the base price set, then Frappe will initiate an inquiry on it. It can have several consequences, which can go till Frappe terminates a contract with the partner, cancelling Partner certification and delisting them from the website.
Here are some of the key actionables we expect partners to follow.
| Checklist | Description |
|---|---|
| Specify Plan Details | In each quote, clearly specify the items, it’s scope and pricing* Brief on the service offered |
* Adhere to floor pricing | | Add Terms And Conditions | Have a standard set of template for the terms of services* Fix bid + Set the limitation in terms of scope, days/months. + Define phases, which doesn’t delay go-live for way too long. Plan go-live with standard features, wherever possible + Ask for mutually agreed and signed document for the final scope of work * T&M bid (time and money) + Specify how sprint would be defined + Still plan for the go-live with the vanilla items | | Coordination With Frappe | This is applicable incase of enterprise deals. Ensure you communicate with Frappe before sharing the quote with the customer. | | Negotiations | Have a negotiation strategy. At Frappe, we have a cap for 10% discount. We start with 5 and max go up to 10% discount. | | Quotation Conversion | * No. of quotation current month & each month * Value of quotation current month & each month * Value of converted quotations per month * Items and value in the converted quotations |
For the project estimation needs, you can use a tool available in the called “Partner Project Requirement” in the PRM.
Sign A Contract
A signed contract becomes a legal binding, hence you must be very careful with the terms and each and every clause. As seen over the years, 90% of the contract terms are the same. Ensure to keep it intact. Each contract also has a few unique terms. You can capture it separately as Order Terms of Addendum. Also, ensure to have a maker and checker process, to ensure the legal terms offered in the quote and final contract are holistic.
| Checklist | Description |
|---|---|
| Standard Template | Maintain standard template for the implementation and customization contract, vetted by the legal experts |
| Order Terms | Have a section where a unique terms applicable for that contract can be added |
| Contact Logs | Create a separate document for logging all the signed contracts in one place, with customer details and contract validity dates |