How This Workforce Tech Startup Boosted Customer Engagement

In this episode, host Deboshree Dutta CEO of Criya AI, sits down with Venki Mandapati, Co-founder of workforce tech startup UpSquad. Venki shares insights into UpSquad's journey, their growth story, the challenges they've faced in scaling their go-to-market strategy, and how partnering with Criya AI has helped streamline their customer engagement and prospecting processes. As a design partner of Criya, Deboshree delves into the specific features and capabilities of the platform that have been most valuable for UpSquad. Venki also provides advice for other B2B companies looking to optimize their sales and marketing efforts through the use of AI-powered tools.

Meet Venki, Co-founder UpSquad

UpSquad is a workforce tech company that transforms talent into a qualified workforce. Founded in 2018, Up Squad partners with cities, workforce agencies, and economic development organizations across the U.S. to help them efficiently run their workforce training and development programs.Leading UpSquad's mission is Co-founder Venki Mandapati, a first-time entrepreneur navigating the challenges of building a B2B startup.

In this conversation, Venki shares the strategies he and his team have employed to scale UpSquad's go-to-market efforts, as well as the key ways they've leveraged Criya AI's sales and marketing platform to streamline their customer engagement processes and drive more pipeline.

B2B Sales Cycles and Today's Customer Needs

As a fast-growing workforce tech startup, UpSquad was facing common challenges that many B2B companies experience - long sales cycles, difficulty tailoring their pitch to each unique customer, and an inability to efficiently manage the customer engagement process from first contact to close.

"We were always focused on the next customer, the next prospect, to generate more revenue, but sometimes we didn't have time to focus on building on the engagement with our existing customers," explained Venki Mandapati, Co-founder of UpSquad.

"We didn't have a streamlined process - it was all manual and disjointed."

Enter Criya

That's when UpSquad turned to Criya AI, a sales and marketing platform that uses AI to automate content creation and personalization.

"Criya has really helped us streamline the entire customer engagement journey," Venki shared.

Venki was immediately drawn to Criya's customization capabilities.

"The most important features for us were the seamless way Criya allows us to create content, and then customize it for each of our customers," he said.

Rather than spending hours researching each prospect and piecing together a custom pitch, the UpSquad team could simply input key details about the customer, and Criya would generate a tailored presentation.

"It takes a lot of time and effort to really understand a customer's needs and challenges," Venki noted. "Criya makes that process so much more efficient."

The team also leveraged Criya's engagement tracking features to stay on top of prospect activity.

"We love getting those notifications when a customer engages with our content," Venki said. "It gives us real-time insights into where they are in the sales process so we can follow up at the right time."

Since partnering with Criya, UpSquad has seen a noticeable improvement in their prospecting and closing rates.

We're able to be more targeted and personalized in our outreach, which is leading to more qualified opportunities."Looking ahead, UpSquad plans to further leverage Criya's capabilities, including its new account-based selling features that generate hyper-customized pitches.

Looking Ahead

As UpSquad continues to grow, Venki and his team are excited to further leverage Criya's capabilities, particularly the platform's new account-based selling features.

"The ability to automate a lot of the research and content creation is a game-changer for us," Venki shared.

"It frees up our team to focus on building deeper relationships and delivering more value to our customers."

Conclusion

For other B2B companies struggling with inefficient sales processes and low engagement, Venki has a simple piece of advice:

"Just get started with Criya. You'll be amazed at how much it can do to make your life easier and your sales more effective."

By streamlining their customer engagement and prospecting with Criya AI, UpSquad has been able to drive more qualified pipeline and close more deals - a testament to the power of AI-powered sales and marketing tools.