In this episode Gerald Zankl, Co-founder and CEO of KickScale provides valuable insights into KickScale's journey, strategies for navigating a crowded market, and ambitious plans for future growth and innovation.

Company Overview:

• KickScale specializes in providing AI-driven insights into customer conversations to optimize sales meetings, offer targeted coaching, and automate follow-ups, ultimately saving valuable time for sales teams.

Target Customer Base:

• Ideal customers are companies selling products with an annual contract value (ACV) ranging from $5k to $30k, primarily in the software development space.

Customer Metrics:

• Currently serving 30 paying B2B customers, with approximately 97% in software-related industries.
• Deal sizes vary from a few hundred euros per month to $1-2k per month, depending on company size and sales team requirements.

Growth Strategy:

• Leveraging inbound channels through content marketing, including free playbooks, and active engagement on LinkedIn.
• Conversion process involves qualification meetings, product demonstrations, and trial periods lasting between two to four weeks.

Market Position and Vision:

• KickScale aims to empower sales reps by enhancing productivity and providing valuable insights, positioning itself within the rapidly growing market of sales enablement and conversational intelligence.
• Vision to hit $1 million in ARR within the next 12 months, focusing on scaling in the German-speaking markets initially before expanding globally.

Investment and Compliance:

• Raised nearly half a million in external funding, leveraging public grants and business angel investments.
• Considering certifications like SOC 2 in response to customer requests, acknowledging the importance of data privacy and security.

Team Structure and Development:

• Current team consists of 10 members, primarily focused on development, with expertise in front-end, back-end, and artificial intelligence.
• Maintaining cost efficiency while ensuring an attractive offer for customers to achieve sustainable growth.

Future Growth and Metrics:

• Goal to achieve $1 million in ARR by the end of the next year, with plans for further expansion into additional markets and language support.
• Commitment to empowering sales reps and enhancing their daily work through automation and AI-driven insights.

hello everyone.

2

Welcome to the B2B SaaS podcast.

3

I'm your host Bhupendra Verma and

today we have Gerald Sankey with us.

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Gerald here is the co founder and

CEO of a company called KickScale.

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Hey Gerald, welcome to the show.

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Gerald Zankl: Thanks a lot for

inviting me and a pleasure being here.

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Upendra Varma: Yeah.

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All right, so let's just

sort of understand, right.

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What KickScale does, right.

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And why customers typically pay you money.

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Gerald Zankl: Absolutely.

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And I'm more than happy to give you

here a brief overview of what we do.

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And the majority why people buy

our software and our platform is

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that they want to gain critical

insights into customer conversations.

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And we do that with artificial

intelligence in sales.

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Over the last couple of months,

couple of quarters, there have been

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so many great options to leverage

AI and sales and customer success

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is one part of that, where you can

leverage that really, really nicely.

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What does this mean?

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Actually, with looking into your sales

conversations, sales reps can optimize

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sales meetings, Because we provide

targeted coaching, what you can do

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better in those sales meetings, you

gain, as already mentioned, customer

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insights through sales intelligence.

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That means we look into what are really

the common needs, the common objections,

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what does the customer really want,

and you save time through automation,

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for example, to automatically sync

certain data to your CRM system back.

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Or also to automate the follow up

process, you get an automated email

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follow up after every conversation

that saves really, wraps a lot of

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time, at least 20 to 30 minutes per

meeting in follow up note taking.

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Upendra Varma: Yeah, that

makes a lot of sense.

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So I just want to get a sense of,

you know, who you're primarily

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sort of trying to sell this to.

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I know it's sales reps, right.

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But which companies do

these sales reps work for?

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Like, can you just help us understand

a bit about your customer base today?

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Gerald Zankl: Yeah, totally.

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I think where our platform is

perfectly used is companies

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who are selling products.

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That means companies who have products

typically between, I would say,

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5k in ARR, between 30 40k in ARR.

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Why?

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You have a quite standardized

sales process in that range.

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So if you are

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Upendra Varma: mean ARR or ACV?

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Is that like deal size or

ARR you're talking about?

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Gerald Zankl: I mean, the ACV, yeah, I

mean, the, I mean, the ACV, um, the annual

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contract value, um, between five to 30 K.

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Uh, and if you have that and a product

you are selling, then Kikskill is

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definitely the right solution for you.

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Upendra Varma: And okay, so let's,

let's understand a bit here, right?

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So just help me understand it's

how many customers, how many paying

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customers do you typically, do you

have as of today on your platform?

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Gerald Zankl: Yes.

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So as of today, we have 30 paying

B2B customers on the platform.

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Yeah.

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Uh, which.

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are in various industries.

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Most of them are really in the

software, software development space.

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Upendra Varma: Okay.

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And how many, approximately how much

percentage of them are, you know, are

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selling software exactly in this case?

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Gerald Zankl: Can you repeat that

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Upendra Varma: among those 30

customers, so how many of them

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actually do sell a software product?

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Gerald Zankl: Oh, actually, uh, 29 of

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Upendra Varma: that's a lot.

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So

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Gerald Zankl: there, there, there

is, so literally everyone is selling

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a software product, but we see more

and more also others like, uh, we are

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going into the HR space, for example,

and so on, and see also people who are

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selling certain kinds of services and

so on and touch base on that as well.

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What all of them have in

common is that it's actually

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a quite fast paced sales cycle

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Upendra Varma: Uh, makes sense.

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Right.

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So, and, uh, what sort of deal

sizes are we talking about?

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Right.

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So how much do these

customers typically pay you?

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Is it a thousand dollar

deal at 10, 000 deal?

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Like just approximately the median value.

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Gerald Zankl: to be honest that really

worries Is is uh different from case

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to case so we talk about some customers

who have a couple of users Uh in our

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system, they are paying like a couple

of hundred euro every month And then we

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have also bigger customers, yeah, where

we go into the 1 2k deal size each month.

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So it really varies a lot on the

size of the company as well and the

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size of the sales team obviously.

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Upendra Varma: So you still

have like 20, 25, 000 deal deals

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at the top, at the top, top

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Gerald Zankl: Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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So

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Upendra Varma: the bottom.

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Yeah.

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Gerald Zankl: especially when you look

at bigger sales teams, like having

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a 10 20 sales reps in the area doing

a lot of meetings, yeah, then we

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get definitely in such a direction.

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Upendra Varma: And just help me understand

how you're growing today, right?

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So 12 months before today, right?

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So where were you in terms of number of

customers or revenue or whatever metric

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that you're compatible with us sharing?

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Gerald Zankl: So everything we achieved

12 months back then wasn't there.

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Yeah.

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So we started with all

of that, um, more or

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Upendra Varma: the first customer or

first revenue dollar that you got?

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When was it?

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Okay.

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Gerald Zankl: This was actually

in September, uh, last year,

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Upendra Varma: It's just been six months.

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Gerald Zankl: yeah, it's been six months.

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Yeah.

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So it's, it's going pretty nicely.

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The thing is we founded our company

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different business model back then.

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Yeah.

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We were building up e learning

content and e learning platforms.

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And this was different

than what we do today.

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Yeah.

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Because we.

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Saw that pure e learning for our

customer base wasn't as attractive.

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So we looked into what can we do

and what can we improve that we also

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get some insights to our customers,

what they actually need to improve.

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And that's where the idea came from

to record sales conversations, and

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then make sure to figure out what

can be improved in these sales

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Upendra Varma: have you hit that 100K

ARR, you know, projection so far?

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Gerald Zankl: Uh, no not yet,

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Upendra Varma: Yeah, but you're

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Gerald Zankl: but we are

very very close close on it.

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Yeah

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Upendra Varma: Okay.

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So, so I know that you just

getting started, right?

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So it's been six months and

you've got like 30 odd customers.

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So just help us understand it.

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So where you're getting all of

these customers from, right?

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So, you know, you know, all

of them are, you know, I think

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B2B software companies, right?

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So just help us understand

how did you reach out to them?

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Right.

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And what was that journey

like so far at least

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Gerald Zankl: yeah, I think where we

got get a lot from as of today is also

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we are our inbound channels Yeah, we

do a lot of content on our website We

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give a lot of playbooks for free out

there sales leadership playbooks sales

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skills playbooks Yeah, we really our

aim is really to educate the market

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as well, right to give content out for

free You And people recognize that and

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people get back to us and see, okay,

what, how does this look like and in

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which direction are we going here?

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So yeah, this is, this is one

of our main strategies besides

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that traditional hunting, I would

say, yeah, getting out there.

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Uh,

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Upendra Varma: do you

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Gerald Zankl: outbound via LinkedIn and

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Upendra Varma: what, what, yeah.

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So what, what are your other channels?

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So in terms of Outpoint, what do you do?

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And like, just help us

quantify this as well.

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It's sort of the 30 customers

that you've caught so far, right?

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So which one of your efforts have

sort of driven most of the customers?

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Gerald Zankl: I would say LinkedIn is a

great source where we hunt for customers.

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Yeah.

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I'm personally also

very active on LinkedIn.

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The whole company is that's one source

where we got a lot of customers.

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I would say from as of today.

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But also when we look into, um,

others, yeah, and looking into, uh,

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content marketing efforts and so on.

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We see there are also some,

some nice, some nice growth.

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Upendra Varma: And talk

about the conversion, right?

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So like, what does it take to sort

of close a 10, 000 deal in your case?

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Right.

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So what does it involve?

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So what's

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Gerald Zankl: So it involves,

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Upendra Varma: and just, you

know, how does that look like?

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And just help us understand that

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Gerald Zankl: yeah.

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To be honest, I mean, when we

look into that, it luckily takes

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actually weeks, not months.

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Yeah.

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Where we are right now.

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Um, and, uh, from a conversion point

of view, once we get the people

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in the funnel, we really see that.

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Maybe 30 percent we can close

here really getting further

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once they are in our pipeline.

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So that's, that's, I think where we

are right now, uh, pretty good for us.

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And that's, that's how the conversion

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Upendra Varma: So what,

what happens, right?

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So in those, during those weeks, right?

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So when somebody starts discovering

your product through one of your

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LinkedIn posts, or maybe they're

following you out there, right?

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So how do you convert them?

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What do you do?

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Like, so do you get on a call?

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Is there any discovery call?

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How do you do that?

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Just walk us through the

entire process that you

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Gerald Zankl: So what

we actually do, right.

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And what I think, uh, a lot of

B2B companies these days do.

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We have a qualification meeting

and luckily we use our own product.

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Already in that qualification meeting.

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And so we have our first

qualification meeting.

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And after that meeting, we share

already what our product has

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been done for our prospects.

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And so after the first meeting,

they get already a sense what

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is possible with our product.

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Typically, we have a second meeting to

discuss that, what they think, how they

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would like to start an official trial.

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And then they do a trial typically

between two weeks and four weeks,

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depending on the company size.

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after that trial, uh, we decide

on when officially we start.

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Um, yeah, I think this is, so

we see really one to two months

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of deal cycles is possible.

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Upendra Varma: Got it.

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And, and what have you

observed so far, right?

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So are these customers switching from

an existing sort of product, like a gong

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or something like that, who's already

doing conversational intelligence?

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Or are these like, you know, you

know, customers who, who, who's

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not using any product so far?

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Like what, how, how's, like how's

your customer base, you know, been

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solving this problem before UK

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Gerald Zankl: Uh, I would say both.

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There are some, uh, companies

using already certain services.

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Yeah.

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Uh, haven't gotten yet from Gong,

so that's what we are working on.

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Yeah.

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Um, but the thing is, right, what

we see is that, uh, especially other

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software vendors in that field, some

of them have already a software, but

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also some, they don't have a software.

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Yeah.

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So, and they start from a plain field.

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They see the power of artificial

intelligence these days and work

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on that and really look into how we

can, how they can, solve and help

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their sales reps to perform better.

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And that's how we get them

started with our conversation.

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Upendra Varma: Makes sense.

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So general, like, have you

raised any external funding

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so far to build the company?

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Gerald Zankl: Yes, we have raised,

uh, nearly half a million in

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external funding in Austria.

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There is really a very, very

nice public grant system as well.

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And really kudos to the

Austrian government here for

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supporting startups in that way.

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So overall with public grants, with

business angel money, we have raised,

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uh, around 1 million, a little

bit below 1 million, uh, and yeah,

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looking now into further growth.

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Uh,

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Upendra Varma: So, so what's, what's

the, what's the gameplay here, right?

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I see like this could be, this is sort

of, you know, uh, a matured market.

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I think a lot of sales reps do understand

the value that you provide because,

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you know, a lot of big folks, right?

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Category creators have been

investing a lot of money and time

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into creating this category, right?

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It's, it's pretty

clouded out there, right?

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Everybody came to do a lot

of these things, right?

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Even CRM, sales engagement platforms,

even they are entering the space, right?

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So.

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So what's the, what's your vision here?

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That's how do you intend to

sort of, you know, grow your

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company in such a crowded space?

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Like what, like, what do you

think, what's, what's the vision?

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Gerald Zankl: The vision is really to

bring out the best in salespeople, right?

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Even looking into CRM systems

like HubSpot, Salesforce, and so

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on, yeah, they haven't been built

to really help the sales rep.

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Yeah.

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I mean, I don't know how often you work

with a CRM, but it's good to have an

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overview of the deals, of the leads.

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But in my opinion, then

it ends already, right?

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I've never met any sales rep in my career

who loved it to put some notes into

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the CRM or even the other way around

to check the CRM when they wanted to

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have some information about the deal.

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Some of them use like a traditional

notebook, yeah, where they

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write some things and some

others use their own systems.

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And that's the problem, right?

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Because as of today, we

have so many great ways.

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To leverage conversations with

conversational intelligence with AI.

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And this is really what we focus

on getting the best out of the

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sales reps, but making them also

at the same time more productive.

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And this is what we stand for.

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Yeah, and there is a lot of things going

on in that space as you know, also.

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And that's why it's pretty,

pretty awesome to be in that

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Upendra Varma: so what's, yeah,

like what's, what's the plan here?

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Right.

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So how do you intend to win and what

does winning mean for you in this space?

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Right.

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So how do you see all of this, you know,

how do you see this space evolving?

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Do you believe that this, uh, a

big market for a lot of players to,

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you know, grow their companies to

tens of millions of ARR or like.

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Like how's that gonna span out

eventually according to you?

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Gerald Zankl: So when you look at the

market, when I look into markets of sales,

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enablement, conversational intelligence,

and maybe a little bit of AI assistance,

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we talk about the market of more than

130 billion, uh, worldwide and growing

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with more than 15 percent year over year.

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Yeah.

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So I truly believe this market over

the next 10 years is super, super hot.

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Yeah.

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Um, obviously.

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You can get into your niche.

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Yeah, whatever this means.

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Yeah, you can get into regional

Countries into regional

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languages and so on and so forth.

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Yeah Uh, there is I think space

for a lot of players here.

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Yeah, it's a crowded market.

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Yeah, you are right There are definitely

a lot of players, but I think so for

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the best players there is still enough

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Upendra Varma: So so are you doing any

one of those that you mentioned like

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are you focusing on any particular

region or any particular industry like?

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Where where are your current

customer base come from?

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Do they come from in a

particular place in europe?

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Like how does that like do

you have anything in mind?

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Are you just you know?

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Just

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Gerald Zankl: So yes Yeah, we we

see that the german speaking markets

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are very nice markets for us.

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Yeah, obviously we come from there and

it's it's our first Battle, let's say it

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like this where we go into but this is

where a lot of our companies come from But

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also we have huge interest from the uk.

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For example, we see interest from us as

well India is also a huge part of it.

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Yeah, we got Lucky and got also some

viral LinkedIn posts in India, for

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example, and get there a lot of traction.

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So it's going really nicely these days.

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Yeah.

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But yeah, starting with

the dark region, Germany,

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Upendra Varma: so is the plan to always

sell those mid market enterprise deals?

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Or are you also looking

at any SMB play here?

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Gerald Zankl: mid market is the focus.

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So the thing is, Mid looking

into mid market, right?

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We are Imagine we are really leveraging

most sensitive data of any kind of

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business yeah, and you go really

the route through the organizations

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through the companies and Not so much

through the individual sales reps.

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Yeah, we have always the huge

interest from these people as well.

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Yeah, but then typically you need

to talk to the whole organization.

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Say, what is our strategy there?

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How can we onboard everyone?

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What's about data privacy

and all these topics?

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That's why mid market is our, our go

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Upendra Varma: So, so have you in

conflict, uh, are you, have you invested

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in compliance and certifications like

SOC2 and all of it so far, or are

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you still figuring that out because

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Gerald Zankl: Yeah.

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So that's, that's.

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That's definitely one of the

next items on our roadmap.

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SOC 2 is one of very important ISO

certifications and so on and so forth.

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Upendra Varma: are your

customers asking for it?

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SOC2 when you try to sort of

expand to us markets, is that

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what they're asking or where is

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Gerald Zankl: Yeah.

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We got, we got first request

for SOC 2, for example, yeah.

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On, on that site.

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I mean, it's a very important, very

important, uh, thing you need to have.

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Let's

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Upendra Varma: So, so yeah, I

mean, do you think it's, it's worth

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investing in it at this point of time?

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Because I mean, it's going to

cost you 30, 40 grand and a lot

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of developer time as well, right?

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So what's, what's your thoughts on that?

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Because I hear a lot of SaaS

founders say this, Hey, we've

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dragged a bunch of good market deals.

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There's a couple of deals

just on the line, right?

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They're asking for these certifications

and it's just a bunch of boring old stuff.

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Maybe it might take you four, six

months based on your expertise.

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And what's your take on it?

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I've seen a lot of people just throw

away deals because of that, right?

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So,

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Gerald Zankl: Yeah, so my take on it

is, yes, we have it, for example, on the

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horizon, yeah, but obviously data privacy,

all these things are very important to us.

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We have there a lot of measurements in

place to make sure this works properly.

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I think at a certain stage we will be SOC

2 compliant, yeah, but as you mentioned,

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uh, bigger customers need to ask for it

and then you get these things done, yeah,

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um, and, and move forward on that side.

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Upendra Varma: So Jalal,

talk about the team, right?

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So how big is your team

and like, what do they do?

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Gerald Zankl: So we are right

now, 10 people and with these 10

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people, the majority, obviously,

as you can imagine, is really

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focusing on the development side.

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Yeah, we have right now on the dev side,

six people, uh, who are really focusing on

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the front end on the backend full stack,

obviously, as well as one, I wouldn't

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call it department because we don't

have, we had departments on that side.

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Right.

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But as one expertise area,

yeah, everything on the front

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and everything on the platform.

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And then we have another team,

let's say like this, and we are

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focusing on the whole artificial

intelligence part, meaning like

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how can we optimize the prompts?

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Yeah.

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How can we tune open source, large

language models further, uh, to

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really get the best results out in

sales and customer conversations.

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Upendra Varma: Yes.

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And are you sort of passing on these

LLM calls to your customers or like,

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have your margins gone down after

using such, you know, high pricey API

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calls that you make to open AI calls?

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Like, what's your take on that?

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Gerald Zankl: Yeah.

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I think so.

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We are, we are in the, I

would say lucky situation.

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Uh, we are obviously onboarding customers

where we get also some margin as well.

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Yeah.

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Um, I know there's times also that

there were different times here where

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you onboard any kind of customers to

get someone, obviously we want to be

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here cost efficient from our side.

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Yeah.

400

But also having an attractive

offer for our customers so that

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this is a win win for everyone.

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Upendra Varma: so one

last question here, right?

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So what's the vision for the company

right over the next two to three years?

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Where do you see your company going in

terms of revenue, in terms of, you know,

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growth or whatever that is, whatever

metrics that you're chasing, right?

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Just help us understand.

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Gerald Zankl: So I think that the first

thing, what we also say as a vision

408

for us, for the team, what motivates

us, what keeps us going every day

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is really, we want to empower sales

reps and we want to help them get

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the best out of their daily work.

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That's really when you, everyone

who is doing sales, right?

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It's kind of a challenging role.

413

It's, you know, it's getting busier.

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It's getting more crowded.

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Tech is coming.

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Uh, time is limited.

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So we want to give there something

back here with automating email

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follow ups, automating CRM

synchronization, but also to help them

419

understand their customers better.

420

I think this is on the one hand side,

and I come to the metrics part in

421

a bit, yeah, uh, is, is one topic.

422

But this is what.

423

What we do on a daily basis, we

really would like to get the best

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out of the, of the sales reps.

425

Yeah.

426

And from a growth point of view,

I mean, obviously we are now in

427

the, again, lucky situation that we

got the trust of business angels.

428

We got public grants.

429

So in the next 12 months,

it's all about growth.

430

Yeah.

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Uh, and we are going to

hit the 1 million in ARR.

432

By, uh, end of, uh, by next year.

433

Yeah.

434

Let's say like this, this

is, this is really the goal.

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Yeah.

436

Ideally earlier.

437

Yeah.

438

Let's say it like this,

how, how things are going.

439

But the plan is to hit that, uh,

by mid end of next year to really

440

have such an ambitious goal,

but then scaling further, right.

441

We are now really strong in the German

speaking markets, but our software

442

supports also other languages for sure.

443

Uh, being in that market first and

then expanding into further markets,

444

growing the team, that's really the goal

of the next, yeah, one to two years.

445

Upendra Varma: that, that

was a wonderful goal.

446

Hope you get there as soon as possible.

447

Right.

448

It was wonderful talking to you.

449

Hope you scale, kick scale to

much, much greater heights.

450

Thank you for joining us.

451

Gerald Zankl: Thank you a lot.

452

It was a pleasure being with you and

thanks a lot for the great questions

453

and yeah, looking forward to it.