People, Product and Process | Anup Khera, Business Leader
James was delighted to be joined Anup Khera, Chief Revenue Officer at Smarp, on a recent episode of Tech Salescraft. Exploring the fundamentals of any business, Anup shared with us the foundational considerations that will subsequently allow one to accelerate their firm in the long-term. Anup’s position as CRO allows us to critically engage with the challenges of funding and address the challenges of investment honestly. This was a fantastic conversation that truly highlighted the importance of executing the basics brilliantly.
“People, Product, and Process”
Anup shared with us his approach to evaluating the fundamentals of any business, exploring the skillsets, market opportunities and value propositions that propel any firm. For people, Anup shared the importance of considering people according to their adeptness, understanding where they are best suited in the organisation; but also utilising this to identify gaps in knowledge and addressing where better employee coaching needs to be implemented. With regards to product, it’s simply about doing it well. From that, we can consider total addressable market and ideal customer profile (why they purchased the product and how we can acquire more consumers like that).
“Can I sell more of it and can I sell more faster? Do I have more value that I can sell that will drive revenue?”
These are all critical questions to be considered when discussing product, but they are also a vital part of conversations around process. Selling more and selling more faster comes from creating robust, comprehensive, value-driven processes. This will result in better quality deals because you have the processes to prove your market suitability. Anup stresses that founders can often be detracted from the process if their product sells well, but it becomes more critical in the face of success. Processes allow you to expand beyond the firms natural remits, and hence truly allow you to disrupt the marketplace.
“When you are at Series A, you have to sell the dream. But alongside the smooth you have to acknowledge the rough.”
Anup’s wealth of experience in crafting growth plans of successful firms shines through in his honesty towards addressing the challenging side of expansion. Whilst it is critical to sell the vision and optimistic plan of the business, one needs to demonstrate you have considered the hurdles that accompany this. These challenges can arise with talent acquisition; but having people development plans in place, and demonstrating you are committed to embedding such processes can convince investors that you are suited to receive funding. Again, the three ‘P’s’ of People, Product and Process, come into play. They are literally the fundamentals, and Anup reinforces and actualises this message throughout this episode of Tech Salescraft.
Anup’s digestible advice and passion for brilliant businesses makes for a fantastic episode. Elevating a business is never a simple task but Anup reveals the factors we can control and perfect to craft a firm that is disrupting the industry. Thank you Anup for joining us on Tech Salescraft! You can watch the full episode now on YouTube, or listen across all major podcast streaming platforms.