Ciara is the First, Dedicated Virtual Assistant For Inside Sales Representatives
The founders, Konstantin Krauss and Martin Heibel, both veteran technology entrepreneurs, are no strangers to the SaaS industry. Prior to launching Ciara, they both founded successful SaaS companies and served as mentors to young tech entrepreneurs. They met by chance in 2018 at a startup event in Munich, Germany. They instantly clicked and learned they were both ready to take on a new project. After brainstorming startup ideas, they realized they had experienced a common theme among the startups they founded and mentored… businesses and organizations didn’t know how to scale sales teams. The average growth rate of the SaaS industry as a whole is 21.2% and, in fact, 37% of those high-growth companies use inside sales as their primary sales strategy. They were on to something and knew Ciara could be the tool to help SaaS companies close more deals faster, give them the ability to cut onboarding time in half, and help eliminate expensive and unproductive training. Ciara ensures that SaaS companies have an efficient and consistent sales process in order to meet their bottom line goals, which is imperative in today’s business world.
Although Ciara is still a new startup, it has had a busy 2019. First, it closed a successful seven-digit seed funding round with lead investors being UVC Partners, a venture capital firm backing entrepreneurs working on industrial technologies, enterprise software and mobility. Other investors included Interhyp founders Marcus Wolsdorf and Rober Haselsteiner, as well as the successful entrepreneurs Christian Mangstl (Scout 24) and Felix Haas (Bits & Pretzels, IDnow). The seed investors saw the uniqueness of the platform and understood the role it could play in changing the sales landscape. Since its launch, Ciara garnered hundreds of users on its platform from a slew of industries that are all looking to sell smarter and faster. It then took the U.S. market by storm by opening an office in Silicon Valley to take advantage and interact with the vibrant startup and investment community.
If you want to take a look at more growing SaaS businesses, head over to the SaaS 1000, SaaS Mag’s list of top growing SaaS companies!
Ciara’s Mission
Ciara has one mission, to make life easier for sales teams! Because of globalization and the evolution of modern sales tools, SaaS companies are more and more frequently selling their products over the phone, instead of meeting with their customers face-to-face. Customer calls are therefore of particular importance, as one of the first impressions of your company is made over the phone. In addition, through focus groups and experience, the Ciara team learned that the biggest pain points of sales teams include:
- Too many and overly complex tools;
- Long and difficult onboarding;
- Lack of and inefficient training;
- Data management upkeep: consistent storing, structure, and accessibility.
Ciara tackles these problems with their all-in-one, smart digital assistant. The tool guides sales reps through their calls by providing them with interactive, proven playbooks and smart, real-time objection handling, helping them to structure their phone conversations and increase success. When a call is finished, and with just a click of a button, Ciara then allows the user to update their CRM contact details.
These features integrate with dozens of complex tools all into one platform in order to streamline the sales process for teams. Besides using Ciara for sales calls, the additional benefits that Ciara provides include:
- Reducing onboarding time by replacing time and cost consuming training with intelligent guidance during sales calls.
- Ensuring consistent storage of customer conversation data.
- Eliminating the complexity of digital tools by having Ciara serve as the one tool that connects everything.
These solutions ultimately help free up more time for sales reps, so they can get back to what really matters – talking to customers and closing more deals! Through the creation of Ciara, a radically new category of business software was launched – a personal digital assistant, whose goal is all about supporting people in daily business situations.
Early Success
Since its launch, Ciara has attracted hundreds of users that have dialed thousands of sales calls and clocked countless hours on the phone, all assisted by Ciara.
Because of its early success, Ciara has proved that there is a need for this tool in the market. Some other success factors include strategic, experienced leadership, solid relationship building, and a team that isn’t afraid to jump in and do whatever needs to get done! It also developed a robust marketing communications mix that guides its user to an easy sign-up page that takes less than 2-minutes to complete. The website is optimized for sign-ups, social media posts link to educational blog posts, webinars are used for further education, and much more. Ciara also heavily relies on referrals and customer testimonials. Signup is currently free,
allowing the early users to provide feedback and help shape the future of the product.
Future Plans
The Ciara team is continuing to roll out more features on its platform, such as speech-to-text and continued software integrations. They also plan to expand the platform expertise for use by other departments, such as HR and marketing, to make work-life easier, not only for sales reps but for all professionals. To learn more about Ciara and signup to get your own personal assistant, visit: GetCiara.com.
