OceanFrogs

GCC Episode 2: Go-to-Market to the GCCs – Copy

Vinay Mehendi — Tue, 27 May 2025 05:00:53 +0000

Grow GCCs In Your Garden This Summer

I have bad news and good news. What would you like to know first ?

My family always ask for the bad news first so sharing that first.

(Very) Bad News

Global Capability Centers (GCCs) are different beast as they say. They = My customers (IT services, SaaS, Recruiters).

Good News

Market is aware of the growth potential. This is one area where other countries have not been able to challenge India as a hub. This is India’s strength. GCCs in Romania, Turkey, Poland, Armenia are trying as well but India’s organized ecosystem has reached another level.

This article shares thought process behind account planning of Big 5, IT Services, and SaaS Companies.

Market Mood

We observed that more than 100 IT services companies (enterprise, mid-market) have GCC focused sales teams (SDRs, team leads).

Enterprise vendors such as PWC, Accenture, E &Y are playing GCCs game at different level. They have dedicated teams for every vertical. For example, quotas have been allocated on vertical lines such as GCC Pharma, GCC Auto, and GCC Oil and Gas.

Companies such as Infosys, Cognizant have understood the market well, are investing in account planning, market potential.

There are many mid tier IT services companies (operating from India) where strategy leads are estimating the potential.

The potential of this segment is undeniable.

SaaS companies

Enterprise SaaS companies UiPath , Automation Anywhere had organized sales process for the GCCs for the last 7 years (2017 onwards). Salesforce also had realized the potential in 2019-2020 and have since then streamlined their sales towards this vertical.

HR Tech players such as Players such as KNOLSKAPE Solutions , Mettlhad realized the potential in 2019-2021.

This year (2025) – We have been approached by more global enterprise SaaS companies this year than in last 5 years combined.

Go-to-Market Thought Process

Hypothesis being formed by Go-To-Market teams is that:

a. GCCs established 5 yrs (or more) have established now, their senior folks are influential in decision making (if not decision makers).

b. Common marketing wisdom to influence all decision makers.

c. Awareness that influencers are globally spread and should be influenced earlier than later.

It is worth investing in knowing and targeting GCCs. Results will come with patience. This segment is growing rapidly. Money is coming to India.

Can Everyone Get a Share ?

Big Five's approach

BCG, PWC, KPMG, Accenture, Deloitte – I have seen their strategy to GCCs. I do not know about Bain, McKinsey yet.

They have had advantage because their partners had built relations with decision makers at headquarter level. They get to know about parent companies’s plan to move to India first. They do not market using cold outreach.

Their approach is to:

1. Reach out to the global account manager of the consulting company.

2. Get introduced via global account manager of the enterprise account (of the GCC).

3. Build relationships, thought leadership.

SaaS Approach

Farm into Existing Accounts that have GCCs

The most common approach by Global SaaS companies is to identify the accounts that are:

1. Existing Customers

2. Have a GCC established in India

IT Service Company's Approach

IT Services combine the approach of the Big Five and the SaaS Approach.

There are few IT services companies that have been quite innovative in their approach.

For example, they would separate the GCCs in two types:

Young GCCs
Old GCCs

Other IT service companies with mature market research teams one step further. They look at following attributes to identify the right accounts –

a. Age of the GCC

b. Strength of India Employee Count

c. Revenue/cashflow by the Indian GCC

Recruiter and HR Services Approach

HR Services companies are of two types:

1. Focused on leadership hiring

2. Focused on Skill based hiring

#1 (Focused on Leadership Hiring) is mainly focused on building relations at the top. #1 is very organized, plays long-term game, focuses on collecting information about the top players.

# 2 (Focused on Skill Based Hiring) is always hunting.

We have shared the GTM approach, account planning of Big 5, IT Services, and SaaS Companies in this article.

Next week, we would share about the framework being developed and implemented by some of the most innovative companies.

Until then,

Lets keep building ecosystem that brings more business from the developed countries to India.

Join My Whatsapp Group

I moderate a Whatsapp group to discuss GCCs in detail. Please join ONLY if you are serious about selling to GCCs or do want to explore GCCs seriously.

Here is the link: WhatsApp Group Link

Please join only if you are targeting GCCs or intend to target or you are evaluating.

Previous Editions of the Newsletter

Episode 1: GCC 101

About OceanFrogs:

Well, I am building GCC Intel for last 7 years. Automation Anywhere (AA) had asked us to identify their technology usage for their Competitive Intelligence (CI) studies. Salesforce challenged us further by asking us to increase their coverage, get contacts in shared services, Center of Excellences (COEs). Infosys asked us to know their footprint (locations) in India. CSS asked us to provide their technology investment, hiring trends.

There are many marquee clients along the way (large and small). SaaS companies such as New Relic, LambdaTest, BrowserStack, Jombay. US Based Strategy departments of companies such as Deloitte, Accenture have also planned their strategies using OceanFrogs’ GCC Intelligence.

Still learning daily.

Author Details

Vinay Mehendi

Vinay Mehendi, PhD focuses on customer engagement, alternative data, technographics, and CRM data management. he was listed as Top 20 B2B Marketer by Ruth Stevens in 2020. He is a Clemson graduate.

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GCC Episode 2: Go-to-Market to the GCCs

Vinay Mehendi — Mon, 05 May 2025 05:55:05 +0000

Go-to-Market to the GCCs

I have bad news and good news. What would you like to know first ?

My family always ask for the bad news first so sharing that first.

(Very) Bad News

Global Capability Centers (GCCs) are different beast as they say. They = My customers (IT services, SaaS, Recruiters).

Good News

This article shares thought process behind account planning of Big 5, IT Services, and SaaS Companies.

Market Mood

We observed that more than 100 IT services companies (enterprise, mid-market) have GCC focused sales teams (SDRs, team leads).

Companies such as Infosys, Cognizant have understood the market well, are investing in account planning, market potential.

There are many mid tier IT services companies (operating from India) where strategy leads are estimating the potential.

The potential of this segment is undeniable.

SaaS companies

HR Tech players such as Players such as KNOLSKAPE Solutions , Mettlhad realized the potential in 2019-2021.

This year (2025) – We have been approached by more global enterprise SaaS companies this year than in last 5 years combined.

Go-to-Market Thought Process

Hypothesis being formed by Go-To-Market teams is that:

a. GCCs established 5 yrs (or more) have established now, their senior folks are influential in decision making (if not decision makers).

b. Common marketing wisdom to influence all decision makers.

c. Awareness that influencers are globally spread and should be influenced earlier than later.

It is worth investing in knowing and targeting GCCs. Results will come with patience. This segment is growing rapidly. Money is coming to India.

Can Everyone Get a Share ?

Big Five's approach

BCG, PWC, KPMG, Accenture, Deloitte – I have seen their strategy to GCCs. I do not know about Bain, McKinsey yet.

Their approach is to:

1. Reach out to the global account manager of the consulting company.

2. Get introduced via global account manager of the enterprise account (of the GCC).

3. Build relationships, thought leadership.

SaaS Approach

Farm into Existing Accounts that have GCCs

The most common approach by Global SaaS companies is to identify the accounts that are:

1. Existing Customers

2. Have a GCC established in India

IT Service Company's Approach

IT Services combine the approach of the Big Five and the SaaS Approach.

There are few IT services companies that have been quite innovative in their approach.

For example, they would separate the GCCs in two types:

Young GCCs
Old GCCs

Other IT service companies with mature market research teams one step further. They look at following attributes to identify the right accounts –

a. Age of the GCC

b. Strength of India Employee Count

c. Revenue/cashflow by the Indian GCC

Recruiter and HR Services Approach

HR Services companies are of two types:

1. Focused on leadership hiring

2. Focused on Skill based hiring

#1 (Focused on Leadership Hiring) is mainly focused on building relations at the top. #1 is very organized, plays long-term game, focuses on collecting information about the top players.

# 2 (Focused on Skill Based Hiring) is always hunting.

We have shared the GTM approach, account planning of Big 5, IT Services, and SaaS Companies in this article.

Next week, we would share about the framework being developed and implemented by some of the most innovative companies.

Until then,

Lets keep building ecosystem that brings more business from the developed countries to India.

Join My Whatsapp Group

I moderate a Whatsapp group to discuss GCCs in detail. Please join ONLY if you are serious about selling to GCCs or do want to explore GCCs seriously.

Here is the link: WhatsApp Group Link

Please join only if you are targeting GCCs or intend to target or you are evaluating.

Previous Editions of the Newsletter

Episode 1: GCC 101

About OceanFrogs:

Still learning daily.

Author Details

Vinay Mehendi

Vinay Mehendi, PhD focuses on customer engagement, alternative data, technographics, and CRM data management. he was listed as Top 20 B2B Marketer by Ruth Stevens in 2020. He is a Clemson graduate.

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GCC Episode 1: Understanding Global Capability Centers

Vinay Mehendi — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 10:42:43 +0000

GCC 101: Understanding Global Capability Centers and Their Growing Impact

What are GCCs (Global Capability Centers) ?

A company has a GCC in India if –

1. HQ country is outside India

2. There are non-GTM (non sales) people in India. Their first/primary focus on India is to build a capability center.

There are 2052 GCCs in India as of April 21, 2025.

Are GCCs only in India ?

The term is coined for the GCCs in India. This term is also used (only) in India. Do other countries have GCCs ? yes. they do. Other countries have been inspired from India. There are some companies such as E & Y who have worked on building talent pool in Turkey.

Countries such as Turkey, Romania, and Philippines are known for their GCCs as well.

How are these GCCs different from MNCs ?

The headquarter of the company does not have a goal of earning revenue from the captive (GCC). The goal is to twofold –

Short Term – To check the potential of cost cutting by outsourcing.

Long Term – To build capability, push for innovation.

Why is India Successful in building GCCs ?

The term is coined for the GCCs in India. Do other countries have GCCs ? yes. they do. Other countries have been inspired from India. There are some companies such as E & Y who have worked on building talent pool in Turkey.

What happens to traditional outsourcing ?

I asked leaders at Cap gemini, TCS, and Infosys. They recognized that outsourcing models are changing. AI has made it clear.

On one hand, no-code, vibe coding, and platforms such as cursor.ai are changing the ecosystem, reducing the dependency on junior software developer. On the other hand, everyone is jumping to help enterprises adapt AI.

Hence, IT outsourcing is going through a discovery phase. At the same time, it is important to remember that IT outsourcing industry had learned (from the past) to take advantage of RPA, BPM. It can do the same in AI era.

Remember, if you follow Linkedin these days, everyone is going ga-ga about “Outcome as a service”.

Outsourcing to Vendors Vs GCCs

It is similar to the way you think about hiring an employee vs freelancer/contractor. Enterprises will like to keep a balance between outsourcing to other vendors vs one’s captive.

It is true that outsourcing vendors just cannot accept the same as before. They have evolved to sell from thought leadership perspective. Relationships are still crucial.

Should you target GCCs ?

Think of GCCs in 2 ways.

a. Young Vs old GCCs: Needs of old GCCs and young GCCs are different. Old ones have established relationships with vendors. New ones are still building relationships.

Old ones are focused on innovation and new ones are focused on proving India model using cost cutting as the main goal.

Mature Sales teams understand the GCC maturity by their age in India, by their employee count in India.

Young ones will have short sales cycles.

Young ones will need help in manpower planning, real estate, services (IT services, Account Payable, AR, and Banking). There might be more fields.

Old ones will need help in employee retention, people and culture, workplace, L & D, employee engagement, and building a culture of innovation.

b. Enterprise, Mid-market, and Small GCCs:

Enterprise GCCs in Oil and Gas, BFSI, Retail, Auto, and SaaS have established GCCs successfully, are growing, moving more money to India. These GCCs have longer sales cycle, decision making is slow. Indian decision makers are focused on shortlisting vendors. Hence, approach them with long sales cycle in mindset.

Are you able to decide based on this information ? if not, please ask me.

What Does Future Hold for the GCCs ?

Not every GCC succeeds in India. We found that more than 50+ GCCs have closed or got acquired or merged in last 3 years. First few years are tough for the GCCs. As per reports, GCC model is proven, and # of GCCs will increase from 2K to 5K+ by 2030.

Upcoming Readings

1. What sales intelligence is available about GCCs?

2. What opportunities are available in these GCCs?

About OceanFrogs:

Still learning daily.

Author Details

Vinay Mehendi

Vinay Mehendi, PhD focuses on customer engagement, alternative data, technographics, and CRM data management. he was listed as Top 20 B2B Marketer by Ruth Stevens in 2020. He is a Clemson graduate.

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ZoomInfo Unbiased Analysis

Vinay Mehendi — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 06:49:58 +0000

ZoomInfo Unbiased Analysis

Overview

I am not pitching OceanFrogs here. You will see that nowhere have I mentioned OceanFrogs below. I used ZI Engage for more than 2 months before writing this article.

ZoomInfo Customer Support

ZoomInfo has great customer success/support tools and a team. Their AI enabled chart helped me answer all questions that I had as a first user/recurring user. In fact, I did not have a need to go to customer support for setup questions. Very well done, ZI.

Ease of Usage

Muti-factor authorization, connection to the ESP (Email service provider), csv upload, Admin portal, connection to the CRMs was easy.

ZoomInfo Sales Review

Pro

1. ZoomInfo’s filter capabilities are great.

2. GUI is mature. You can search for companies as well as contacts. The speed of results being displayed is quite good given that the database is large.

3. Good depth of companies for fields such as automotive, glass, manufacturing, textiles, software and others where it is not easy to update company data.

4. I changed my linkedin profile a few months back and ZoomInfo captured it now. In other words, they are refreshing the complete dataset every 6 months. That is remarkable.

5. Ease of access intent data.

6. I like the updates to the saved list. I do get updates to the company list, contact list every morning.

7. 2-factor authentication, rich configuration settings

Cons:

1. Technographics leave a lot to be desired. For example, OceanFrogs provided 3000 users of Anaconda but ZoomInfo provided only 750 users.

2. Though ZI provides confidence scores with email address and contact data, we will still lose out on good % (more than 30) of people data.

3. ZoomInfo has disabled the option to share a list with your colleagues. That was a big disappointment to whoever I share.

ZoomInfo Engage Review

Pro

1. Identifies duplicates, removes invalid emails, and you can load 1000 contacts per user to a campaign at a given time. Rest of the expected functionalities are there.

2. Their AI based chatbot is very efficient, schedules tickets automatically, Engage related responses are to-the-point.

Cons:

Cold emailing as well as newsletter marketing have moved to the next generation. This is one area where ZI needs to improve. I can understand that their suite of products is large. I also love the sales intelligence part. I believe that community will benefit if these items can be improved:

1. ZI will allow one domain to be registered. If your company has multiple domains to email, you cannot link them all to your ZoomInfo account. THis is what SmartLead and new generation email marketing tools provide.

2. It will not give an option to warm your emails. Email marketing is dead without warming your inbox first.

3. ZI platform gets stuck when you upload a large number of contacts (less than 1000 as per the rule). You can try again after a few minutes and it will upload some more. This process goes on and on.

The lack of these two features broke my heart. These two features are an important part of the new generation of email marketing tools. Cold email marketing requires more investment on setup such as warming, # of domains, and health of domains. Other tools such as SmartLead claim to segment via email service provider also.

Author Details

Vinay Mehendi

Vinay Mehendi, PhD focuses on customer engagement, alternative data, technographics, and CRM data management. he was listed as Top 20 B2B Marketer by Ruth Stevens in 2020. He is a Clemson graduate.

All Posts

Large GTM Planning and Playbook Adoption

Vinay Mehendi — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 05:58:32 +0000

Large GTM Planning and Playbook Adoption

Many OceanFrogs customers share that they are using OceanFrogs data to do their GTM planning. Hence, I am digging deeper and sharing how they are doing. At the same time, your inputs and feedback would be of use.

This article is based on my discussions with many leaders (CEOs, CROs, CMOs) or based on discussions with enterprise companies, mid-market, and startups. Scope of the use cases in this article is limited to enterprises and mid-market and not startup/SMB. I define startup/SMB as a company with revenue less than $20 million USD in this case.

GTM Planning is a planning of sales, marketing, customer success/professional services, and manpower planning. There might be more teams such as finance involved in it.

GTM Planning is conducted annual and quarterly but it is also conducted in these scenarios.

1. Launch a new product

2. Launch to a new Geo

3. Launch to a new Segment

4. Explore a new partnership

5. Explore GTM on a new ecosystem (SalesForce, SAP, or ServiceNow etc)

Is GTM Planning more than sales planning ? Yes. Though sales planning overshadows other planning such as marketing planning, financial planning, and manpower planning. These are the key things to remember:

1. It is the superset of Sales Planning.

2. It is NOT execution but planning.

3. It is NOT limited to fixing data.

Current World of GTM Planning

Well, this beast has not moved an inch compared to sales intelligence, sales engagement, competitive intelligence, and marketing automation. There are reasons for the slow growth.

Inefficient Ingestion

1. Takes forever to pull data pulled from multiple sources and map it. Market research teams are super busy. As a result, focus is on data collection and fixing the data, putting it together. I discuss the data sources used in ingestion.

2. CRMs do have the number but these numbers are not standardized, templatized. Manually calculate win/loss ratio, SQL/MQL ratio and other GTM numbers manually.

Ineffective Analysis

Forget it. There is no science/organized way to run scenario, compare results. It is not rocket science and hence scientists have not paid much attention to it. Lack of analysis is due to the time it takes to put together the data. Effective analysis techniques will become available quickly when the problem of inefficient ingestion is taken care of.

Directionless

GTM Planning takes a top-to-bottom approach on some days and a bottom-to-top approach on other days. Right now, it is an exercise driven by intuition, opinions. There is no mechanism to put those opinions into a system/tool/methodology to run some tests.

No Insights from third-party Data

Tedious. Right now, it is an overkill to bring insights from third party data sources such as intent, hiring trends, industry growth or investor’s feedback/data.

New World of Large GTM Planning

Oh ! come on. What in the world would we have progressed if we had not done AI based GTM planning? Generally, planning based tools are quite prevalent in cost optimization scenarios. Let’s see what the new world is requesting to do in large GTM planning.

Large and Efficient Ingestion

It takes a month or more to put together data, fix data mapping issues. The data is still not complete after a month. The market research team has to give up and meet the deadline. This is the need of the hour.

1. Seamless way to pull internal data from CRM, Customer Success/Account Management

2. Integration with Sales Intelligence tools such as ZoomInfo, HGInsights, Clearbit or OceanFrogs.

Large and Rigourous What-If Analysis

Data Analysts and Market Researchers are two different jobs. It takes data analysis skills to run scenarios on spreadsheets. There is a tool needed to change variables and see the impact on revenue achievable. More discussion on these variables is provided below.

Collaboration

GTM planning is about collaboration between sales, marketing, finance, and the CEO’s office. A method/tool is required where these stakeholders can run scenarios, decide on the best plan possible.

Ask From the Reader!

Would you care to give us 15-20 minutes and share “How you do GTM Planning?” Many industry leaders from Postman, Persistent, and Hitachi have given us their methods and approaches.

Is Large GTM Planning For You ?

When should one look at making GTM planning more efficient:

1. GTM planning is taking more than 2 months.

2. There are endless iterations between sales, marketing, and the CEO’s office.

3. There are multiple products/Geos/Acquisitions Channels and Deal size > 10K USD.

4. It is tough to decide between Geos/sales channels/marketing channels and budget is a concern.

Benefits of Large GTM Planning

There are benefits that are subjective and objective both.

1. Reduce GTM planning time to less than a month. It would help everyone give it a focused effort.

2. Reduce data ingestion to less than 2 weeks. It will help everyone focus on the next step of running scenarios.

3. Sales and marketing both get a say in the decision making because it is data driven, collaborative.

Large GTM Planning Tool

A tool solving GTM planning automatically has following components:

1. Data Ingestion Module

a. Data ingestion will bring data from various sources, map them together. It is not an easy ask. Company level mappings will be at the website url + country level. Tools have different ways of identifying companies and storing data.

b. Planning will require firmographics, technographics data. There can be vertical specific data.

2. CRM Processor Module

There are three important items that your CRM has.

a. History of your sale last year: existing accounts, churned accounts, lost opportunity.

b. Key relationships involved in those wins, churned accounts, lost opportunities.

c. Conversion factors can be automatically calculated from these CRMs. It is a topic of a separate article, though.

3. Run Large Scenario Module

Let me explain it using examples. Here are the scenarios the CEO’s office and CRO/CMO are interested in solving:

a. What revenue targets should I set that can be achieved in the next quarter/year ?

b. What conversion factors should I aim for next year:

i. MQL to SQL conversion

ii. Lead to Deal Conversion

iii. Lead/Deal to Closure conversion

c. How much should I expect from my sales channels:

i. By replacing competition

ii. By partners/resellers

iii. Using Ecosystems such as salesforce

iv. Direct Sales

Large GTM Planning Results

What do you get after going through the entire process:

1. Account Selection to Sales Channel Mapping

a. By replacing competition

b. By partners/resellers

c. Using Ecosystems such as salesforce

d. Direct Sales

2. Sales Planning

One can change the conversion factors and get to know the following:

a. Territory Mapping

b. Monthly Quota to achieve

c. Accounts to go after

3. Marketing Planning

One can change the conversion factors above and get to know the following:

a. Marketing Channels to go for

b. Spend

4. GTM Reports

GTM analysts love to see planning through the following views:

a. Industry View

b. Geo View

c. Enterprise/SaaS/SMB View

d. Territory View

e. Portfolio View

There are other use cases that need to be solved –

What is completely missing from the radar is an organized way to:

1. Track Monthly GTM Health

2. Check GTM Readiness

3. Connect to a CRM and collect conversion ratios.

Conclusion

I believe that the time has come to give the power of this tool to GTM teams. An integrated, collaborative approach with efficient ingestion of data will allow everyone time to run scenarios, compare results. Large GTM planning is just the beginning of GTM planning.

The second phase of this process is to execute the Large GTM playbook. Once goals, territories, sectors, and sales channels are decided, it is time to train sales organization, marketing on those channels. GTM playbook adoption is the perfect way to do so because it is related to GTM numbers.

Acknowledgement

Thank you to all the industry leaders who have shared their wisdom with us.

1. Sanjeev Sisodia, Ex-CRO of Postman, Persistent Systems

2. Nithin Nadagouda, VP, Cap Gemini

3. Vivek Khandelwal, Co-Founder, iZooto

4. Hamid Qayyum, Head of Marketing, ABM Agency

5. Dileep Reddy, Head of Finance, Knolskape

6. Marcello Davis, Sales, MontyCloud

We also observed more than 150 clients that have worked with OceanFrogs over the last 7 years. Some of the marquee names include Salesforce, MoEngage, LambdaTest, Kovai, Hitachi, and HCL.

In case you do wish to know the latest about this, please schedule a meeting at the link below.

Book a meeting

Author Details

Vinay Mehendi

Vinay Mehendi, PhD focuses on customer engagement, alternative data, technographics, and CRM data management. he was listed as Top 20 B2B Marketer by Ruth Stevens in 2020. He is a Clemson graduate.

All Posts

Is Technographics really boring ?

Vinay Mehendi — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 07:15:46 +0000

Is Technographics really boring ?

My polls on Technographics are really boring. No one responds to them. Sometimes, I do not vote myself either.

Why ? Benefits of Technographics are not easily understood. Intent data is based on someone’s search while technographics work is based on facts.

For example, what are the companies investing in private cloud ?

Well, why go to costly Intent data in the first place ?

1. Search for companies using AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, Google Functions. These are the ones on public cloud and spending good money there.

2. Search for companies using OpenShift, OpenStack. These are the companies. OpenStack is an open source. OpenShift is to manage private clouds, offered by RedHat.

3. Put 1,2 together and you get most of the companies investing good dollars in cloud and also leaning towards private/hybrid.

4. You can prioritize more by targeting BFSI and other industries where data is sensitive, and the number of customers is high.

This would give you mid-market, enterprise companies going towards private cloud.

Hit me up if you want to know more. We are on the mission to build the best cloud intelligence.

Author Details

Vinay Mehendi

Vinay Mehendi, PhD focuses on customer engagement, alternative data, technographics, and CRM data management. he was listed as Top 20 B2B Marketer by Ruth Stevens in 2020. He is a Clemson graduate.

All Posts

Why should you reach out to SaaS Companies ?

Vinay Mehendi — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 07:15:14 +0000

Why should you reach out to SaaS Companies ?

1. SaaS Companies are quick decision makers,

2. I want to grow fast.

3. Is 2 not enough, folks ? I do not have a third one.

Here is my view:

1. Reaching out to SaaS companies is getting affected because data about them is treated like any Zoominfo or Apollo.io data.

2. You need to have better categorization of products there such as HR Tech, MarTech, Cloud Tech, ..and others. Otherwise, how would you segment ?

3. Funding data is not enough. You need to know their team charts. Do they have teams in APAC or Europe ?

4. One needs to know about them. Technographics, pricing points (usage based, volume based).

In case Nathan Latka‘s list is enough, go with it. Great source of data, I love his contribution to society.

But if you do need more intelligence on SaaS (their technographics, pricing) and want me to guarantee that it is a subscription driven company, then consider us.

Author Details

Vinay Mehendi

Vinay Mehendi, PhD focuses on customer engagement, alternative data, technographics, and CRM data management. he was listed as Top 20 B2B Marketer by Ruth Stevens in 2020. He is a Clemson graduate.

All Posts

Open Letter to Apollo.io CEO

Vinay Mehendi — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 07:15:07 +0000

Open Letter to Apollo.io CEO

Stop commoditization of B2b sales data/intel field.

1. You have made data affordable but it has increased spam. Inside sales teams are outreaching to more than 10K+ people a day, spraying in the era of ABM. It does not serve good to anyone including you.

Here are the disadvantages –

1. Google, Linkedin has taken advantage of this situation, will penalize folks who spam, and will encourage paid marketing using Google/Linkedin Ads.

2. B2B GTM teams are not doing homework, using advanced filters, and account intelligence as much as they were doing it 2 years back.

3. B2B Sales Intel vendors are forced to focus more on automation than using Intelligence. Automation at high scale reduces response rate. We have all seen that in our lifetime.

4. Outbound is crucial to GTM of thousands of businesses. They are not inbound. Outbound was and is the most cost effective way/lead for them.

Action that you must take:

1. Build a sustainable business, Earn from customers, Stop raising $100 million every year.

Author Details

Vinay Mehendi

Vinay Mehendi, PhD focuses on customer engagement, alternative data, technographics, and CRM data management. he was listed as Top 20 B2B Marketer by Ruth Stevens in 2020. He is a Clemson graduate.

All Posts

Customer facing roles must remove the virtual background.

Vinay Mehendi — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 07:14:51 +0000

Customer facing roles must remove the virtual background.

Now accepting regular, original, natural backgrounds in video calls.

Customer facing roles must remove the virtual background.

What about roles that are non-customer facing ? Should they also care about the background in a video call ?

There is nothing wrong with virtual backgrounds. On the other hand, a regular background in virtual calls can go a distance for sales and other customer facing roles.

1. People buy from people. Show that you are human.

– A background with plants or other items from nature indicate your love for nature. You are human.

– Quality of the plant does not matter. Any plant will do.

2. You enjoy the workplace and are passionate about it. People like to work with people who are passionate.

3. Tidy Background

Tidy background signals that this person and company will deliver and be organized.

4. Are you a winner ?

Customers/prospects want to work with people who are accomplished. It helps build trust, gives them confidence. One indirect way to show them is your workplace certificate. If you do not have those, any sports or academia will do equally good.

I put a karate trophy on for many years.

5. Should non-customer-facing roles care about it ?

Well, you should if you are passionate, ambitious and motivated to grow. Remember, everyone including your supervisor, colleagues are evaluating you.

What is a good item for the background in video calls ?

1. Books

2. Plants

3. Subtle art piece (that are not controversial)

4. A sports person from the area that you love or your customer love

5. A trophy that you won or your daughter /son won

6. A graduation ceremony photo

7. A family photo

What is one item that you have put this week in your ‘real’ background ?

Author Details

Vinay Mehendi

Vinay Mehendi, PhD focuses on customer engagement, alternative data, technographics, and CRM data management. he was listed as Top 20 B2B Marketer by Ruth Stevens in 2020. He is a Clemson graduate.

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Buying intent comes from 3-15 % of the account ?

Vinay Mehendi — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 07:14:47 +0000

Buying intent comes from 3-15 % of the account ?

One of the most influential statement of last 2-3 years has been – buying intent comes from 3-15 % of the account ?

It is true. I do not deny it. I have analyzed the data myself of our customers ( HR tech, front office workers tech). I could see 10 % at a given time.

But it led the industry to run towards those accounts with automated sequence and ABM. Somewhere, building relationships with others took a back seat. Obviously, things didn’t go as expected and everyone is complaining about bad conversions.

It is time to reconsider this strategy. Strategy is to go back to basics.

Inbound, Outbound, and Nearbound can give you only so much of demand gen.

Time has come to think of building relationships with customers (all types of them such as lost opportunities, free sign-ups, deals, high intent accounts, new hires) and throughout their life-time on purchasing seats.

Let’s call that Life+Bound.

Life+Bound approach says –

1. Build relations throughout the life of the buyer.

2. Keep recording their triggers, changes such as job change, technology acquisition.

3. These triggers can be at company level or person level.

4. Nurture them with updates that you are better than others.

This approach increases the # of future customers in the pipeline. Sales rep can be given more leads from the demand engine you will have built.

A good Life+Bound funnel is where more than 60 % of the Net new customers come from this Life+Bound funnel.

How often are you talking to customers outside the intent zone ?

Author Details

Vinay Mehendi

Vinay Mehendi, PhD focuses on customer engagement, alternative data, technographics, and CRM data management. he was listed as Top 20 B2B Marketer by Ruth Stevens in 2020. He is a Clemson graduate.

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Big Five's approach

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Farm into Existing Accounts that have GCCs

IT Service Company's Approach

Recruiter and HR Services Approach

Join My Whatsapp Group

Previous Editions of the Newsletter

Author Details

Vinay Mehendi

Read more to understand how our customers drive better revenue with OceanFrogs

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(Very) Bad News

Good News

Market Mood

Go-to-Market Thought Process

Can Everyone Get a Share ?

Big Five's approach

SaaS Approach

Farm into Existing Accounts that have GCCs

IT Service Company's Approach

Recruiter and HR Services Approach

Join My Whatsapp Group

Previous Editions of the Newsletter

Author Details

Vinay Mehendi

Read more to understand how our customers drive better revenue with OceanFrogs

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What Does Future Hold for the GCCs ?

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Vinay Mehendi

Read more to understand how our customers drive better revenue with OceanFrogs

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Vinay Mehendi

Read more to understand how our customers drive better revenue with OceanFrogs

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