Amit’s
story started when he realized the amount of electronic gadgets that get piled up in big companies. Out of curiosity, he and his friend decided to find out what happens to them. Much to their surprise, they realized that the unused gadgets either collect dust (or fungus) while waiting for approval from someone higher up. Or, they get disposed off – in a manner that even CEOs are clueless about.
And thus began Blubirch – a reverse commerce company that takes care of disposing the redundant and excess gadgets in IT and other technological firms. A solution that was sorely needed.
Challenges faced
Though he has a good list of clients now, things were not this rosy initially. Their challenges in getting companies to use their services were three fold:
Disorganized industry
Getting a dealer on board who was willing to buy the gadgets at the highest price was a challenge. Because it is an industry that had a lot of middlemen, the operation process was not so smooth.
Establishing company on par with pioneers
By the time Blubirch came into being, a lot of companies had already started selling their gadgets to a large multinational. And since it was such a well-established company, the middlemen really didn’t have to go through a lot of paperwork. However, a shift to Blubirch would have necessitated that – something which the IT guys were reluctant to take up.
Misalignment of objective between client and Blubirch
In their initial business plan Amit actually thought of buying the inventory from the clients and then selling it to a dealer for the highest bid. However, there was an obvious glitch in this process. The clients wanted to sell them the gadgets at the highest possible price. However, he has to sell it to dealers at the highest possible rate to gain a fair margin. So, right from the first step, the interests of the company (Amit’s) and that of the client were not aligned. Because of this conflict, it was difficult to get the company to trust them with their inventory.
Huge sales team
Internally, a disorganized industry meant a lot of sales people taking up the mantle. Unfortunately, not every sales guy understands the process completely and so they ended up making very unconvincing pitches to the prospects and also the dealers. Also, they had multiple sales teams – feet on street, inside sales, and regional. Ensuring that every sales personnel had the same understanding of their product was a task.
The solution
But Amit, being the resourceful entrepreneur he is, approached the problem in B2B sales with remarkable intelligence.
Flexible business module
He decided to manage the inventory and not own it – that way both Blubirch and clients will have aligned interests (selling the gadgets at the best price possible) and thus it was easier to get customers.
Thorough sales training
Involving mentoring, shadowing and weekly discussions. So that every sales guy gives the correct information to the client/buyer and there are no expectation mismatches. He has seen significant improvement in the sales team performance since and looks forward to expanding more!
In short, he is totally killing it.
But hey, sales training is definitely important. Find out what Ashok from Scripbox used it for his financial services marketing.
You can also read how Ankit, the founder of iService looks to building customer trust to accelerate customer acquisition.
