Speaker at "A Famous Venture Speaks! How to Create an Organization for Continuous Growth - For Startups Struggling to Improve Sales

On Thursday, January 17, salesforce.com hosted an event, "A Famous Venture Speaks! How to Create an Organization that Achieves Continuous Growth - For Startups Struggling to Improve Sales" was held on Thursday, January 17.

Establishing an organizational structure is essential for a start-up company.
In this session, the know-how of organization building was discussed with the voices of three startup companies that have achieved growth based on "The Model," a business model that Salesforce has adopted and continues to follow. Our CEO, Mr. Kaneki, was also invited to speak at the event.

What is "The Model"?

The "acquire, retain, and expand customers" business model that Salesforce Inc. has adopted and continued since its inception, and has achieved nearly 30% growth each year on an ongoing basis. We follow up fully from the stage of prospective customers, which greatly contributes to the improvement of the deal conversion and order rate. In addition, marketing, sales, and customer support departments work seamlessly together to clarify the location of business issues, which speeds up improvement activities and enables companies to achieve short-term growth.
Articles related to "The Model

Why "The Model"?

Japan's working population is decreasing year by year, and we need to increase productivity more efficiently. It is precisely in times like these that "The Model" organization building comes alive. said Junichi Suzuki, Sales Development Manager at salesforce.com.
The good thing about 'The Model' is that even if we get a bad result, we can trace it back to the past sales flow and so on. There is absolutely no way to cheat, and the countermeasures are clear in real time. He also explained the features of "TheModel.

Each wall

The speakers for this session were Mr. Tatsunori Kadai of Sansan Corporation, Mr. Shinya Tsuchiyama of BizteX Corporation, and Mr. Ryusuke Kaneki of UPWARD.
They each introduced their companies and looked back on their past businesses, sharing episodes about the times when they hit a wall in creating organizations and how they adopted "The Model".

BizteX's Mr. Tsuchiyama said that he was troubled by the phenomenon of not being able to understand the reasons for both good and bad results in an operation where the sales team was just going through the motions. The issue at the time with UPWARD was similarly "unclear processes.
At Sansan, on the other hand, it became difficult to maintain a balance of power between the telesales members, who were simply part of the sales department, and the field sales members, who actually communicate with customers and close deals.
We had a phenomenon where the telesales members became unmotivated," said Mr. Kadai, looking back on that time. Mr. Nakamura recalls, "We had a phenomenon where the motivation of the telesales members would inevitably drop.

Incorporating "The Model

The three companies then adopted "The Model" in their organizational development, and sought to rebuild.
The common focus was to make the inside sales team independent.

BizteX, which has a high closing rate from service trials, is able to promote trials by having its inside sales team and marketing team work hand in hand.
UPWARD has also strengthened its customer success team, and has achieved more repeatable sales activities by strengthening lead management through inside sales.
Sansan has positioned inside sales KPIs as "indicators that unify the organization" and has built a consistent process. Sansan positioned inside sales KPIs as "indicators to unify the organization," and built a consistent process. As a result, the number of orders received jumped twofold.

All of these stories clearly show that the organizational structure learned from "TheModel" has had a significant impact on business growth.

Messages from three companies

During the panel discussion, the three companies were lined up side by side, and participants asked a number of questions.
The question was, "What is important when setting up an inside sales department? The question was "What is important when setting up an inside sales department in the future? Customers have a variety of information and their purchasing processes are changing. If we don't recognize this, we will not be able to face our customers. This was Kaneki's response.

It's important to have people who are good at face-to-face communication, and let them take charge at the right time. It's just like raising eggs and letting them hatch.
It was very impressive to see Mr. Kazai and Mr. Tsuchiyama nodding their heads in agreement.

Building an organization is a problem unique to startups. Although the form may differ, every company faces these issues and builds up its organization through various trials and errors.
However, this is something that can only be done by startups, and it was a very valuable time for me to feel a kind of "excitement" and at the same time to see the possibilities of startup companies.