Empathy Is Your Sales Advantage (Even in the Age of AI)

Vikram Sathyanaray: Thanks for having me. It’s like you said, an incredible journey so far. We’re excited about where we’re going in the future and you know, hopefully I can answer your questions really well. 

Krissy Manzano: Yeah, for sure. So what brought you to Rocket Lane and what makes this role different from past experiences that you’ve had?

Vikram Sathyanaray: This, I think is my first experience with a company at this stage. Um, I came in as founding ae. We were trying to get part, uh, product market fit and get into the market really early. Um, few things stood out for me. So first is the team themselves. I think Sri Ign Deepak, the founders are amazing. I worked with them previously at FreshWorks.

Vikram Sathyanaray: Um, and you know, they’ve always been laser focused on building bests in class product, and I think that stood out for me initially. The second part is also the space itself. When I was looking at the space, I realized that most of the tools in the space were 10, 15 years old. They’d just been acquired by PE companies, which meant, you know, there’s a slowdown on innovation.

Vikram Sathyanaray: Um, so it was ripe for the taking. And the space was calling out for, you know, a modern, best in class AI ready tool. And I think that’s what Rocket Lean was building. So, uh, it’s a lot of synergy there and that’s why this was exciting for me. 

Krissy Manzano: Yeah, no, I mean, what you are doing is incredible and not just different, but it’s unique in this time of responsible growth, I guess, you know, when it comes to.

Krissy Manzano: Being in mid market and selling, knowing that sales is getting harder. Right. What are the biggest challenges that you see selling it in mid-market companies today, and how do you kind of navigate your team through that? 

Vikram Sathyanaray: I think post Covid has been a very interesting time to sell into mid-market. Um, teams are decentralized, which is the biggest thing.

Vikram Sathyanaray: Previously you had, you know, an organization you could go in, do workshops, yeah. Uh, run a POC for the customer. But that’s changed now. Um, you’ve got evaluation teams, operation teams, leadership that’s spread across different regions, and that makes running evaluations harder. So one of the main things that our eighties do now is.

Vikram Sathyanaray: Try to map what individuals are looking for. What is their pain points? What do they want to achieve? What are their goals? And that extends the overall sales process. Um, I think that’s a huge challenge for us. It means there’s so much, uh, individual conversations that are happening, but the positive side is then we’re building a relationships across the board when it comes to some of these mid-market deals.

Krissy Manzano: No, absolutely and, and one thing I had mentioned in that earlier conversation, kind of your point of needing to understand the pains and everything is reps need to have more empathy. You can’t understand those things if you can’t empathize with your client. And I think in this new world, if you don’t have empathy, you’re gonna fail whether you’re s and b, mid-market enterprise.

Krissy Manzano: And I think that’s where I see a lot of sales reps. Are struggling is ’cause they’re just trying to pitch without truly understanding what their client’s going through. And you can’t understand if you don’t have empathy for 

Vikram Sathyanaray: them. A hundred percent. I think these days there’s a calling for as themselves to be thought leaders.

Krissy Manzano: Yes. 

Vikram Sathyanaray: Um, consultants, when they’re coming into this, nobody wants to hear a product pitch because it’s not about the product anymore. It’s about what my pains are and how can you solve it. Um, I think the, the slightly different. Aspect to mid-market today is also how AI comes into this space. So for PS leaders today, um, you know, it’s still a very manual process.

Vikram Sathyanaray: There’s still, you know, a lot of tooling in place, but they haven’t seen how their world can change with ai. Yeah. So also being able to sell a vision and a dream and, you know, help these leaders perceive it is another challenge for us when it comes to 

Krissy Manzano: midmarket. Yeah, no, absolutely. When it comes to sales strategy, how do you coach your AEs to effectively.

Krissy Manzano: Move business deals forward and close more business. 

Vikram Sathyanaray: Great question. I think you called out a couple of very important points here. You spoke about empathy. I think it’s very important for a, to be empathetic today, um, they have to treat themselves as consultants for the customers themselves or the prospects themselves.

Vikram Sathyanaray: They’re not looking at themselves as a product expert, but more as a, um, as an expert in the space. So for us, that’s PSA. So, you know, I’m expecting a to be more effective in. Understanding what podcasts are in the space, understanding what thought leadership looks like today, what are other leaders talking about?

Vikram Sathyanaray: So have a real ear to the ground for what’s happening in the space today for them to be able to go preach that to, uh, to leaders. Because you’re speaking to people who’ve been in the industry for 25, 30 years and a lot of. Today on our team are green in this space. So, you know, I think the initial learning curve is the hardest part, but once you’re through that, you know, it’s a really, really straightforward conversation that you can have with 

Krissy Manzano: people.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. No, I, I couldn’t agree more when it comes to the buyer mindset. Again, talking about this new market that we’ve been in for about, you know, four years. Right. Um, and it looks like it’s here to stay even with all the bumps and changes along the way that we keep seeing year over year. What’s changed in your opinion on how mid-market buyers approach SaaS purchases?

Krissy Manzano: What’s the biggest change that you’ve seen? 

Vikram Sathyanaray: I think the three main themes that I’ve seen mid-market buyers look at today is radical productivity, um, operational efficiency and cost management. So those are, ID ideally the three main themes that. They’re looking at as huge pain points for them. It’s not always easy for a tool like Rocket Lane to show long-term growth within a small POC.

Vikram Sathyanaray: So if they’re running a three week POC, we’re not able to, you know, directly perceive what that long-term efficiency gains are gonna be. Yeah. So one of the ways we’ve approached that is by building value assessments. So the way we run that is we sit down with an individual contributor, a manager, an exec on the customer side, and understand what happens in their day to day.

Vikram Sathyanaray: Then we start looking for areas where we can build better efficiency and quantify that as, you know, as time, as dollar value. So that leads to us building a business case. So huge, um, feedback that we get from leadership on the customer side is, hey, we’re being asked to do more with less. So how can you help me build that radical efficiency?

Vikram Sathyanaray: So as long as we can build a really strong business case, give it to our champion internally so they can do a ton of the internal selling, I think that will improve. Our chances of helping these leaders succeed. And you know, just, I think that changes the mindset of all these mid-market buyers on the customer side.

Krissy Manzano: Yep. No, that makes sense. And then. Coming to Rocket Lane, I’d love to hear your view of how you explain Rocket Lane simply to folks in, in layman terms of what you all are doing, but then also what do you think makes you all stand out in the sales process right now in a market that is so uptight about buying anything that’s not absolutely mission critical.

Vikram Sathyanaray: Great question. I think two parts to one, to your first part, which is, you know, what does Rocket Lane do differently as a product? I think PSA has historically been very internally focused. It’s not customer facing, but these are high touch customer implementations, right? So your engagement cannot be fully internally focused.

Vikram Sathyanaray: You, you can’t have your customers waiting for a steering committee meeting to understand what the next thing on the implementation is, or where is it stuck. It needs to be continuous and you need to hold each other accountable. So I think that’s the first place where. Uh, we add a ton of value. The second is PSA has always been a back office tool.

Vikram Sathyanaray: So it’s been for finance, it’s been around for resource management, for project accounting, things like that. And usually these teams use a separate tool to project manage a project. So what we’ve done is link both of these together to say, Hey, any changes on the project should impact immediately what happens in the back office.

Vikram Sathyanaray: So there’s that. There’s that connection between the front and back office that allows. Live data to be processed for accounting, for resources, for staffing, for finance. So I think that’s the entire value prop that that Rocket Lane engages in that sees so much value on the customer side. To answer your second question, I think from a sales process perspective, I.

Vikram Sathyanaray: We have very deep category expertise. So we run, uh, a community called Pre-Flight. It has over 4,000 people across the world in the post-sale world. So we have a real ear to the ground on, you know, what are the challenges that these people are facing on a day to day or. Um, what are, you know, hot button topics that people are talking about today?

Vikram Sathyanaray: And the second thing is we also run, uh, propel, which is our annual conference. We, today, there isn’t an annual conference run by a product company. We wanted, we want this to be an area where thought leadership comes in. So, you know, we have leaders from across the space coming in talking about what’s next.

Vikram Sathyanaray: Um, in PSA for, in the post-sale world. And I think both of those allow us to get a very deep expertise, but also for Rocket Line to be perceived as a thought leader and a subject matter expert, but, and not just a product company. 

Krissy Manzano: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And just, just a couple more questions here. How does Rocket Line support AE in growing in their careers?

Vikram Sathyanaray: Great question. I think the first part, there’s two parts to it, right? One is, what is the culture that we wanna foster within Rocket Plan? Um, the first part is challenging each other to be better. You know, we’re not running with an individualistic mindset. We’re challenging each other to be better for us to grow as a team.

Vikram Sathyanaray: I think that’s hugely important. The second part is visibility into the business itself. So I had a. Um, I had the experience of, you know, what, what it was like to build product from scratch because we were essentially pseudo product managers as initial salespeople, right? You’re telling product, Hey, these [00:10:00] are the things that are important to the customer.

Vikram Sathyanaray: This is what they’re feeding back. So I think giving even reps who come in today, visibility into how product operates. What does a new module launch look like? How does marketing and product come together? For product mark, for product marketing management, right? So all of those are important portions that allow an AE who’s coming in today if they wanna be a founder in the future themselves.

Vikram Sathyanaray: They get visibility across the board. And I think that’s huge. And I think the final thing is structured coaching as a AI company. Uh, we believe in AI first training as well, so we’re bringing in as much tooling as possible that enables an a to be a better version of themselves, not just from leadership coaching, but their own ability to analyze what they’re doing on a day to day.

Krissy Manzano: Yep. No, that makes sense. I think that’s great and you know, really helps speak to the culture that you all aren’t just committed to having, but actually have, right? Seeing it firsthand, and I think so many companies aspire for that, but fall short for a multitude of reasons. Last but not least, advice for candidates here.

Krissy Manzano: What are you looking for in an ae and what can someone expect when joining your team? 

Vikram Sathyanaray: I think first off, I have to thank Blueprint. Um, yeah, this is not a plug, but honestly we’ve, it’s made our life easier in bringing the right, surfacing, the right AEs for us to speak to in the first place. So I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad conversation with a prospective of ae.

Vikram Sathyanaray: In fact, if we had the capacity, I’d love to hire them all. Yeah. But for AEs who are coming in, I think main things that they, that we look out for, one is a growth mindset. They look at this as. I also call it a founder’s mindset. They’re not looking at this as just a job, but they’re looking at this as, Hey, how do I own this entire part of the business?

Vikram Sathyanaray: How do I grow it? How do I look at not just the sales aspect, but bring in different portions of the startup for us to grow together? I think the second part is problem solving as well. When you’re looking at things as a founder, you’re also constantly solving problems very, very fast. So we’re not looking for somebody who’s, you know, reaching out for each thing to say, Hey.

Vikram Sathyanaray: How do I do this? How do I do that Instead, they’re approaching it first and if they, uh, if they try and fail, that’s totally fine, but you know, we have the, the coaching air cover to then come and say, Hey, you know, this is how we should do this together, and then we achieve together. I think that’s a huge part of it.

Vikram Sathyanaray: Yeah. Um, both of those together I think are, draw a strong baseline because, you know, there are general characteristics like, you know, passion drive, communication that I think are table stakes. These are the additional things that set them apart. 

Krissy Manzano: Yep. No, that makes sense. Well look, that’s all the time we have today, but thank you for coming in and, and sharing your story and kind of your approach.

Krissy Manzano: I think it’s great for people to hear from, you know, true leaders, right? That I think we have a total crisis in our, in our country and, and corporate America, maybe around the world of just having like true leadership and, and you were one of those folks and. What you all are doing at Rocket Lane is truly amazing and admirable.

Krissy Manzano: And so I’ve got some, some folks hopefully got to kind of see that firsthand and you know, if you want to are interested in Rocket Lane in any positions, go to their website and go to our website. We have all the roles up and, and they’ve got more roles, um, on theirs and apply. But these are great folks to work [00:13:00] with and make sure your time appreciate it.

Vikram Sathyanaray: Thanks Kristy. Thanks for having me on. And hopefully we’ll get a longer episode in season two, two. 

Krissy Manzano: Yeah, absolutely. All right, thanks. Thank you.