KCash

SSDR

Anyone sell to data scientists?

Time of year, budget cuts, yada yada yada

Everyone has excuses for not connecting, but my outbound target recently moved to data teams and answer/ reply rates have gone to the floor.

Conversion on conversations has been great(40%) but takes twice the inputs.

Anyone have experience with this? Tips greatly appreciated

🧠 Advice

😎 Sales Skills

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ChickenWings

Opinionated

Tom Callahan's Son

Had a data scientist humble bragging about his job at our house this weekend.

Buzzwords dropped - UI/UX (a lot), personalized (in reference to algorithms)

Not sure what you sell, but think about what they need to justify a change…backed by data

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

Makes sense to me. Especially since I technically don't know what a data scientist does.

ThatNewAE

Big Shot

Account Executive - Mid enterprise

Me too! This is obviously good information to know!

ChickenWings

Opinionated

Tom Callahan's Son

They seem to like it that way.

Like legal…

JustGonnaSendIt

Politicker

Burn Towns, Get Money

Data Scientists are essentially a fusion of software developer and statistician.

They build statistical models to analyze data, typically using some type of machine learning.

An example of how this becomes a use-case: Marketing insights for retailers based on things like store traffic, inventory levels, sales levels, weather, all in a single model.

Answering questions like: Where should we position inventory? When should we expedite shipments? How will our performance look VS plan if X event occurs?

ChickenWings

Opinionated

Tom Callahan's Son

This is helpful.

Tying their insight to Product at a SaaS company…

Would their model yield insight that could motivate the direction of a product roadmap?

Purpose - expose not just a problem, but the numbers behind it

Extra credit - how do you justify the effort for a data scientist to model something out? What do they need from you?

JustGonnaSendIt

Politicker

Burn Towns, Get Money

At a SaaS company, there are a few things I would think that can be modeled:

- Supply / Demand for forecasting purposes
- Sales Velocity (opportunity creation VS pipeline progression)
- Focusing on markets / features (what components of the SaaS sell more, to who, and what is the best revenue generation VS cost of sales)
- Customer utilization VS experience
- Revenue VS cost related to R&D, Sales, Delivery, and Operations (i.e. where do we run more efficiently and why)

To justify the effort of a data scientist there are kind of two approaches. I would combine both.

- Go to the customer with a rough-cut idea in mind. i.e. If we did this analysis for a customer like you, this is usually what we'd find, and how you'd use it.
- Do a pilot with the data scientists at your customer, show them how your solution helps them more easily and quickly deliver these insights

Your value prop to the customer is related to reduction in human time cost per analysis, and the benefits realized from the insights generated, minus the cost of your solution.

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

interesting that you have data to back up your claim.

I would stick with what you know works:
find the right ppl

-understand the problem that they have
-craft messaging around that problem
- find out if that problem is relevant right now.

you can play around with the channel that you use: LI, calls. email, ect. but i would make sure your covering the basics first

JustGonnaSendIt

Politicker

Burn Towns, Get Money

I used to sell to Data Scientists.

They operate much like software developers, in project cycles and sprints. Typically they are heads-down and focused on milestones during this time.

MY best success in connecting with them was at conferences and other events. That's the rare time they're getting paid to not work some project cycle, so a good time to hop in and try to create curiosity.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

The problem is in connecting and getting their attention? Am I understanding that right?

KCash

Fire Starter

SSDR

Yes and no.

Cold call answer rates plummeting, so need to get attention via email or alt channels.

Most seem to work on project cycles so I’m thinking building champions from gtm leadership could speed things up a bit?

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KCash

Anyone sell to data scientists?

11 comments

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