Mixcloud is a popular online music streaming service that makes it easy to listen and distribute radio shows, DJ mixes and podcasts, with a reach of 10 million across its platforms. Mixcloud are a happy Pipedrive user and they have interesting views on questions sales software can help to ask and answer. So we had a chat with co-founder Nikhil Shah.

Unlike many other music startups and technology companies Mixcloud hasn’t raised outside funding and is doing great. What’s your secret sauce?

From the start we’ve been very close to the community we serve which has helped us build the right product for many stakeholders. We didn’t manage to raise investment early on, and so we needed to make sure that Mixcloud works for all the different pieces of the ecosystem: our listeners, DJ’s and producers, and brands that promote themselves on Mixcloud. Lots of companies can design their product in a user-centric way, we’ve also had to learn how to be customer-centric.

It definitely hasn’t been smooth sailing. Bootstrapping a startup has its challenges and finding great people hasn’t been easy at any stage. Hiring comes down to a shared vision and so we’re not looking for people to get a job done but rather people that believe in what we do. Having a vision and being able to communicate it clearly is crucial in building a team.

What has worked well for you in sales and business development?

We have what people call an inbound sales strategy. We started out working with the best clubs, festivals and DJs, and their communities. This got the attention of the first brands that wanted to reach the growing community of trend setters on Mixcloud. And this allowed us to develop the model initially without too much cold calling.

We’re now developing our outbound sales strategy. We aim to “fish where the fish are”. It’s quite simple – we’re looking for brands that are active in the music space, social media and branded content. When we find interesting prospects we try to use “warm introductions” as much as possible, we’re heavy LinkedIn users.

Another thing we’re aiming to do more of now is hiring people at a senior level. People that are already well connected in networks we want to reach.

What is your sales process like? 

Our sales pipeline is not that different from the Pipedrive default one. Everyone throws their prospect ideas under “Ideas” and the rest is self explanatory. We use multiple pipelines, one for brand partnership, one for media partnerships and one for getting big name DJ’s to use our platform.

What software were you using before Pipedrive (if any)?

We were and still are using Highrise. While Pipedrive is great for managing sales, we use the former for contact management, for example our media list, festival partners, etc. And we still use good old spreadsheets every now and then. Sometimes it’s better to see all the data in one place.

What has changed since you switched to Pipedrive?

While using software like Pipedrive can lead to being more disciplined about your sales pipeline, in our case it was more about correlation rather than causation. We signed up for Pipedrive because we had gotten more rigorous about managing our deals and wanted our tools to reflect and aid that. The fact that our team was growing also played a role.

So we had started to ask serious sales questions already, but seeing our deals laid out in a simple way like they are in Pipedrive got us asking better questions. What’s in our funnel? Are we talking to enough people? Are our deal sizes big enough? Are enough converting to closed deals? Pipedrive has helped us to think more strategically about our sales process.

Finally, what’s next for you and Mixcloud – any news to share?

We’re about to open a US office in NYC soon, which is big news for us. And we’re always hiring, so do check out our jobs page for more.

The following Mixcloud mix was playing while typing up the interview with Nikhil (and no animals were hurt)

Properly Chilled #88: October 2012 – Tripping Through Mushrooms by Properlychilled on Mixcloud

Mixergy is like having experienced businesspeople available for mentoring. Founder Andrew Warner does top quality interviews with notable entrepreneurs that you can watch or listen for free, and premium membership gives you access to more in-depth courses and masterclasses. If you only have time for one or two sites to get your inspiration and ideas from, you’ll love Mixergy.

The amazing quality of interviews is a good reason in itself to write about Mixergy. But they’re also a Pipedrive customer, so I had a chat with Andrew about their process for scheduling interviewees, the challenges involved and how they use our software. And I must say it felt strange being on the asking end with Andrew – this is how Michael Schumacher’s driver must feel like all the time.

How difficult or easy is it to recruit people to give a Mixergy interview?

It’s very challenging because we’re trying to recruit people that are very busy and we don’t give them anything in return. It’s not like in sales usually when you ask for money and offer a great product in exchange. We’re saying give us your time and in return you’ll be helping our audience. That can be a tougher sale to make.

What has helped you get some many great interviews “closed”?

The main thing is being consistent in our approach. In the past, every time we tried to get a new guest, the approach was different. And every time I had someone new join our team, they would try to figure out a brand new approach, so things got a bit chaotic. We couldn’t remember who we had pitched, or sometimes we pitched someone twice, or three times – because we weren’t organised enough.

We were using Intuit’s Quickbase initially. It’s a really powerful tool, and I liked it, but it’s not as simple as Pipedrive, and the process wasn’t as cleanly and neatly laid out. Then we used an Excel spreadsheet, but that got messy after 20 or 30 lines. And then I thought I’ll try this sales tool that Max from WhatRunsWhere told me about. And once I did that it was easy to set up and everybody internally understood it quickly.

What has changed since you started using Pipedrive?

We were able to define a process for recruiting interviewees so we can now see people go through it step by step. And if there’a an issue or if someone is about to drop off, we know about it, and can follow up.

How we’ve defined the process is as follows. The first step is that someone has to suggest a guest. Then I go through everyone that’s been suggested, and move good candidates to the next stage which is Guest approved. At that stage I also mark some people as “Lost” and I can add an explanation why I have dropped someone, so others that suggest guests understand what’s not a good fit. Then we have to find a contact for them – which can be a challenge. Once we find an email or a phone number we move them over to Connection found. If they agree to do an interview after we’ve contacted them, the next stage is Pre-interview booked. After this is completed we move them to Pre-Interview Done. And the final stage is Interview booked.

We keep trying to shave pieces off this process but this has proven to work best. We can’t do an interview without a pre-interview, because it helps guests tell their stories better.

And Pipedrive is a great f*cking product, in a world where everything else is the same.

Can I use it as a quote?

Yes! Quote I said “great f*cking product”. I think you guys have built an awesome product.

Finally, are there any interviews you’d like to point out to the readers of this blog?

Yes, there is a recent one that anyone in your audience, dealing with sales, would probably like. It’s an interview with Justin Roff-Marsh who talks about creating a good sales process. It has influenced the way we go about booking interviews. It’s also just a great interview.

Footnote: I warmly recommend heading over to Mixergy and discovering some more awesome interviews. I recently enjoyed the story of Hardi Meybaum of GrabCad (another Pipedrive customer), but there are dozens more.

WhatRunsWhere is a competitive intelligence service for companies that use online media. Like they put it themselves: We help you buy more intelligently and profitably for your existing and future campaigns, discover new traffic sources, and help keep an eye on what your competition is up to.

WhatRunsWhere has a unique approach to sales, and they’re also a Pipedrive user, so we had a chat with Max Teitelbaum, the company’s chief operating/marketing officer.

What is your sales process like?

We do a lot of outbound sales. We reach out to potential partners and clients and then onboard them through a demo and trial program that converts them into full blown users.

Our sales stages go as follows: Contact Made > Email Discussions > Demo Pending > Demo Presented > Purchase Pending > Service Switching Ongoing > Live.

Any secret sauce for closing deals?

People these days are so used to being bombarded by sales people with high pressure pitches. One key to closing sales that we’ve found is being personal and relaxed. By being more laid back and personable we find we’re able to close more sales and form long term relationships with our customers.

We treat our customers like people, rather than “prospects”. We don’t push someone towards something aggressively, rather we give them the information to make the right decision and let them do it in a no stress and pressure way. It applies to every facet of the company from internal meetings to sales calls.

The other key that we learned the hard way is organization. When we first started going into a hardcore sales cycle, there were leads everywhere (literally all around our office). By funneling them into one pipeline, we can keep track of leads better and as a result we close more of them.

How has Pipedrive helped your team?

Since moving to Pipedrive we’ve been a lot more efficient with our time. We’re better able to track, plan and execute on our leads. It helps me personally better manage our sales team as it gives me a better understanding of the day to day of the team with a birds-eye view of what is happening across the board.

Any advice to other companies/startups looking to increase sales?

Sales in part is a numbers game and the other part is the process. Great marketing gets you the numbers to talk to and then a solid approach and tool set (Pipedrive!) finishes the deal.

It’s extremely heartwarming to see Pipedrive used for things we could not even have dreamed about. We set out to do a simple sales app but we’ve already seen Pipedrive used in pet sitting, and as project management tool at Simpleshow. And it gets better. Elise Sass who looks after community at Startup Wise Guys recently used Pipedrive to keep the ducks of writing her Master’s thesis in row. In her own words:

Writing a master thesis can be quite difficult and time consuming, to say the least. In addition to all the requirements it’s sometimes hard to keep track what’s done and what still needs to be done. My paper to-do list got messy quickly and didn’t give the overview I needed. But a master’s thesis is a sum of quite similar processes and parts, especially when all the data has been gathered and you are already in the writing phase. This is where I started to use Pipedrive, to keep things in order and understand what parts I had finished and what I still needed to do.

I defined 6 stages in Pipedrive: Needs changes > Writing > For advisor > Sent to advisor > Ready to format > Completed.

At first I thought that it is just good to see how far the things were – especially to remember what parts I had sent to advisor, so I always knew whether I could continue writing or needed to wait for comments. Later I realized that I can use the “Deal value” field to mark how many comments I still had active in writing documents. Of course, my target was not to get the number higher as is the case in sales, but rather get it down to 0.

The commenting possibility under each deal allowed me to add some thoughts while the document was with my advisors. The task feature allowed me to add reminders what and when I should do – for example that I had promised to send a new version of Conclusions part to my advisor by a at certain time, or that I needed to add an additional chart to Results.

Pipedrive helped me a lot in having a constant overview of what was happening with my thesis. It may not seem like a lot but it really supported the long writing process. I’d recommend Pipedrive for the same purpose for others as well – maybe even inviting advisor to the same pipeline, so both the writer and the advisor could see what is happening and what to focus on.

Smart, no? If you or someone you know is in the process of writing a thesis and would like to use Pipedrive for that, you can get our Solo plan for free for 6 months with the promo code STUDENTSOLO.

Full disclosure: Elise is sister to one of our co-founders. That said, she started using Pipedrive for her thesis work on her own initiative and we didn’t have to force her to write about her experience. (Not too much, anyway.)

Recently we learned that a Germany-based animation studio is using Pipedrive as a project management tool in addition to managing sales with it. We were very curious to learn more and so the company’s CEO Jens Schmelzle took us through the details.

Simpleshow are makers of 3-minute videos that explain complex issues, products or services, using only two hands and black-and-white illustrations. Each simpleshow is 100% custom-made and handcrafted. Since 2008 the company has produced more than 700 clips (which look awesome) in over 30 languages for customers worldwide.

Simpleshow has a fixed production workflow for the clips. As Jens explained, they were searching for a project management tool that allowed representing this workflow for a big amount of parallel projects (and their statuses) in a visual and intuitive way, so accessing information wouldn’t take a lot of time. The problem was that most project management systems they tested were built for managing one big project with lots of tasks, not lots of parallel projects with the same workflow.

What Jens and his team liked about Pipedrive, and despite it being a sales tool, was having a very clear overview, with deeper information just a click away (for example by clicking on the name of organisation). They also liked the speed of adding new projects and people, and that everything was saved and linked in the database automatically. This was something they hadn’t experienced with other platforms, wikis or spreadsheets they had used.

Pipedrive was the first software that met all of Simpleshow’s requirements of having a simple overview combined with filtering options for customers, resources and timelines in a smart way. The company started using it as a CRM and project management software. As it worked “incredibly well” Simpleshow decided for Pipedrive to be the company’s central platform for ALL(!) their project data.

How Simpleshow is using Pipedrive in Jens’s own words

I have attached the pipeline of one of our project managers. I’ve blurred out the sensitive data, you can see that our project manager Ilya has 21 projects to manage right now, most of them are in the first stages of production (script or text concept phase). Our main phases are: 

1. Text concept (red comments on the screenshot)

After the official order, we start with a short questionnaire which the customer has to fill out. Then we have a personal briefing – a meeting, phone or video conference- after which we write a text concept including a description of the visuals.

2. Storyboard (blue comments)

After the concept approval, one of our illustrators draws the storyboard which is presented to the customer for another approval.

3. Production (yellow comments)

As soon as we get the GO, the scribbles are printed on a special paper, cut out, and, where appropriate, some bricolages are being prepared. After the shoot in our inhouse studio and the audio recording there is the video and audio editing, the music arrangement, color correction, mastering and encoding. Then the project manager sends the finished clip for the final approval.

Every clip is a separate Deal in Pipedrive, which we just drag and drop through the production line. We work with several pipelines: One for sales, one for project managers (example above), one for the post production and some for special animations or individual projects. So the post production workflow has its own stages like “audio recording”, “shooting”, “editing”, “sound”, “color correction & encoding”,… Each deal leaves the project manager’s pipeline after phase 2b to the post production pipeline and is dragged back in some days later, when the clip is produced and ready to send to the customer.

Going forward, Jens and the Simpleshow team want to combine Pipedrive with their timekeeping tool mite and build relevant interfaces so everything works in the same central project database. Jens says they need an API for that – and reading how thoroughly Pipedrive is used made us move even faster for getting that ready soon.