SalesTechStar Interview With Srikrishnan Ganesan, Co-founder and CEO of Rocketlane

Srikrishnan Ganesan, Co-founder and CEO of Rocketlane shares a few B2B customer onboarding must-dos in this catchup with SalesTechStar:

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Welcome to this 2022 SalesTechStar chat Srikrishnan, tell us about Rocklane’s and the team’s journey this year…

We’ve had a high momentum journey so far. Our customer base has grown rapidly, and we’ve also matured our product quite a bit in the last year. But most importantly, our team has done a great job at propping up the whole customer onboarding category. We’ve played the role of a catalyst in this space – with the community we run, the events we host, including the first ever global customer onboarding event Propel22. This has helped us emerge as a leader, and get acknowledgement from G2, and Gartner (as a cool vendor in GTM tech).

When it comes to client onboarding platforms today, what do you feel sales/marketing teams need to be looking at (in terms of features/others) when choosing platforms?

I’d structure the evaluation into different aspects of onboarding – how the tool can help with visibility, better collaboration, data and insights, increasing customer experience, and ensuring consistency of processes.

Read More: Rocketlane Among 100 Early-Stage Companies to Work for in 2022

What are some of the biggest lags you still notice in the B2B domain when it comes to client onboarding and client success processes? A few best practices that you feel B2B teams should follow to drive better impact here? Can you highlight a few brands and their onboarding process and why their models stood out for you – what takeaways from these stories would you share with other sales and marketing teams?

The biggest challenges typically are:

(1) holding people accountable internally and at the customer end to finish tasks on their plate,

(2) getting consensus and alignment within client teams on processes and data needed to set up clients for success, and

(3) integrations with other systems.

Some ways to drive faster and predictable onboarding:

• Often, customers aren’t “ready” for change, which means consulting and hand-holding them to meet them where they are can help accelerate onboarding.
• Sharing resources that can help customers make informed choices.
• Providing visibility and transparency around the process and inputs needed ahead of time.
• Preparing for integrations, and providing customers with checklists for readiness around integrations

Also, different aspects of onboarding stood out for me with a few brands we’ve worked with:

1. We liked the kick-off done by Gong, and how the CSM established a personal connect very quickly and easily.
2. We loved the concept of the “reverse demo” that Blackthorn.io does to see how much of the training has worked, and what best practices they can further share with the customer.
3. At Rocketlane, we’ve experimented with many such ideas to deliver an onboarding that we hope teaches something to every customer .

A few thoughts on the future of salestech as a segment and how you feel this space will shape up?

I believe there is lot of innovation we will continue to see in salestech, to discover intent, demonstrate value, deliver value. There’s many axes along which we are going to see more use of tech to deliver personalised and relevant experiences to buyers.

We cannot underestimate the importance of building efficiency in our processes in times such as now. Using a system for customer onboarding helps your get more efficient, handling more onboardings in parallel, and finish them faster. Onboarding is also the first and important partnership the customer experiences with you. Ensuring you are able to deliver on time, consistent experiences helps you build upon the partnership and grow with the customer.

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