By combining automation with deep engagement analytics, LiveHive’s sales acceleration platform delivers a much-needed solution to today’s sales organizations – right when they need it.

Headquartered in San Jose, California, LiveHive automates sales follow-up to increase buyer engagement insights that power repeatable sales processes. With automated content-sharing capabilities and robust analytics, LiveHive’s sales acceleration platform helps sales reps automate their follow-up; understand a buyer’s interest level; quickly identify stakeholders in the buying process; and rank top buyers based on engagement.

Fritz Mueller is an expert in product management for SaaS and enterprise software. For most of his career, he has managed the design of software and services with user satisfaction as a top priority. At LiveHive, Fritz leads product development and product design.

BusinessInterviews.com: Can you talk about the power of harnessing repeatable sales process?

Fritz: LiveHive’s powerful analytics show which approach works best for sales processes, so that the most successful approach can be quickly identified and repeated. For example, when email templates are used, we automatically capture data that reveals which templates have the best customer response rate, as well as which ones have the worst. With this information, sales leaders can build a repeatable process for their sales reps – following the path that has had the most success.

Going further, LiveHive’s analytics can help identify stakeholders and monitor the purchasing process, particularly in complex deals. By seeing how these processes in these types of environments work, teams gain valuable insights that can be applied or ‘repeated’ in other similar accounts.

BusinessInterviews.com: Can you provide an example of how LiveHive’s email and document analytics can provide marketing insights for converting prospective customers?

Fritz: By giving sales teams more visibility into how prospects engage with sales content, LiveHive helps them understand customer issues. This is especially important in today’s sales environment. Nearly 80% of executive buyers say that sales reps don’t understand their issues (Forrester Research). With LiveHive, teams can see prospects’ behaviors in real-time. They can see when a document is downloaded and how often it is viewed. They can see, for example, if a prospect spends more time viewing pages including feature ‘A’ over feature ‘B’ so they can understand a customer’s interest level, as well as what they’re most interested in, whether it’s a feature or perhaps pricing. These insights let them time and tailor their follow-up more effectively with the most interested customers at the moment of interest.

BusinessInterviews.com: What are your top tips for creating a successful email template that helps engage current or potential customers?

Fritz: When prospecting with a new potential customer, sales organizations need to “touch” them several times before they get their attention. To be successful, email templates need to be easily accessed by sales teams directly from their inbox. Email templates should also be customizable, so sales reps can deliver more personalized follow-up. Initial emails should be brief with an attention-grabber in the email, followed by several additional emails with content relevant to the prospect.

BusinessInterviews.com: Can you share why you think that you’re in the midst of perfect timing when it comes to LiveHive’s offerings?

Fritz: The need for more personalization in this customer-driven era has created a big sales challenge. B2B buyers are looking more like B2C buyers – they have access to do their own research online and compare the competition, before making a purchase. This has impacted how sales organizations set up their processes. According to InsideSales.com research, inside sales are growing 15 times faster than field sales, forcing sales leaders to provide new kinds of sales tools for this growing organization. Inside sales teams need tools that help automate routine selling tasks and provide deep content engagement analytics, so sales can spend more time on qualifying and closing deals.

Approximately $1.2 billion worth of venture funding has been made in sales acceleration technologies over the past few years. By combining automation with deep engagement analytics, LiveHive’s sales acceleration platform delivers a much-needed solution to sales organizations – right when they need it.

BusinessInterviews.com: Congratulations on recent launch of your next generation of sales acceleration platform. Can you share some of new additions and upgrades that you’re most excited about?

Fritz: To me, the most exciting part of our announcement involves the integration of our new sales automation capabilities, such as our new email templates and group email delivery, with our existing engagement analytics. The combination of analytics and automation on one platform help sales organizations build a repeatable sales process for increased efficiency. It’s exciting to deliver a solution that lets sales reps offload routine tasks and helps them focus on strengthening the customer relationship.

BusinessInterviews.com: You’ve been with several fast-growth startups, and three of them resulted in an IPO. Can you share your insights when it comes to the specifics of creating a solid foundation for success?

Fritz: A solid foundation for success starts with solving a meaningful problem with a convenient solution. A lot of products solve a problem that is not important enough to justify their cost. Your customers may do a rigorous ROI analysis or a simple mental calculation but either way you need to deliver value for what you are charging. The faster the customer experiences that value the more likely they will continue to use the product. Everyone has purchased a consumer product that seemed like a great idea but found out that the learning curve was too much. The product ends up under-used and the customer never recommends it to their friends. If you can deliver enough value quickly enough to hold their attention then you can help them progress to more advanced features.

Another critical factor is your ability to reach a target market of sufficient size. It might seem like modern marketing automation and the Internet have solved this problem but it just changed the problem from reaching your target market to getting their attention. Everyone is bombarded with sales messages so being heard is harder than ever. With a solution like LiveHive, sales teams get buyer-side insights that are extremely valuable in building customer trust.