Hello, readers! Welcome to the first Zohort story.
Zohort is a digital platform that helps people grow their tech sales careers. Along with online classes, and mentorship programs, it provides placement assistance. It is helping non-SaaS people to transition or start their careers in B2B SaaS sales. With a 6-week intense training program, people are taught the fundamentals of B2B SaaS. The best thing is that at Zohort, you only have to pay after getting a job. So stay tight and read an amazing experience of one of the students of Zohort placed in his dream job.
The exciting thing about Abhranil Mukherjee is that he is not only one of the earliest graduates but also a mentor with Zohort. He is currently working in Zomentum as an SDR. Let’s look at the exciting interview of Abhranil with Richa Bahl, Co-Founder of Zohort.
A brief introduction of Abhranil.
Abhranil is a Zohort graduate and is currently a mentor at Zohort. He had some experience in sales before joining Zohort.
- Abhranil Mukherjee is from Pune and was enrolled in the second batch of Zohort.
- He is from a biotech background but has worked in various companies for sales.
- Before joining Zomentum, he worked in an Animation company.
- He is a Zohort mentor and is currently working in Zomentum, where he got placed by Zohort.
Experience of Abhranil in the SaaS industry so far
Abhranil did his first job in software sales. He was actually from a biotech background. After leaving his first job, he had a couple of job shifts.
Before joining Zomentum, he worked at an Animation Company in sales. There also most sales happened with SaaS Companies. Then he thought about joining a SaaS or tech industry which was a booming market and was looking forward to joining a SaaS company within a year or so.
Coincidentally, Zohort reached out to him, and because it looked interesting, he enrolled. Zohort has greatly helped him get the right kind of connection and support to break into the SaaS industry. In SaaS, it isn’t easy to get in without experience. Zohort accelerated the process and didn’t have to go on a job hunt.
The number of companies that offered the job after the training program from Zohort
Abhranil gave interviews to around three companies and got offers from all of them. The salary was quite good, which was almost 40 percent.
Abhranil’s experience with SaaS before joining Zomentum
Earlier, Abhranil worked for a Software company. After that, he worked in field sales for biotech products for a short period. Then he joined an animation company where he made end-to-end sales. He used to get inbound as well as leads generated from outbound activities. His job was to close them and have an end to end sales. He had to handle accounts from across the world, including the USA, UK, and Europe, but he was so obsessed with SaaS that he wanted to pursue a career in this field.
Abhranil’s opinion about opportunities that lie for SDR profile
Abhranil says that in movies, sales are shown to be related to talking nicely or buttering, but according to him, this is not sales. He says that sales are about identifying and solving problems. You must know that not everyone is your customer but finding the one who will be and finding the one your product and service will value is sales.
As for SDR, different companies have different strategies for their SDR teams. Some do cold calling, handle inbound leads, and many more. According to Abhranil, he says that it’s like a filter. On one side, you have a pool of leads, let’s say hundreds and thousands of leads, and on the other side, you have AEs who will take them through the product, understand and close the deal. AEs cannot push all the efforts into all those leads. They have limited time, so they can only put their efforts into the right kind of leads that will get converted.
So basically, Abhranil says it works as a filter to bring in the right needs to your age. So, for that, you have to be vigilant, you have to ask a lot of questions, you have to understand their pain, and you have to have a dynamic and persistent process. You should know that not everyone is your customer, so there is no point in getting demotivated if you are not getting appointments.
As for the career, one can take longitudinal movement and grow in sales itself or translation to AE that is Account Executives or can become SDR managers, sales managers or you can also have a lateral movement like if someone is passionate about coding and want some starting point so they can start with sales and understand the product or engineering rules and can move to marketing and training.
Abhranil’s experience in Zohort
Since Abhranil was already working in sales, he got a lot of validation. He could understand and see exactly how he was managing sales in his previous company, and it aligned. They were very well structured, and he could feel the same like the same principles were applied in Zohort. So, it provided a sort of validation that he was on the right track.
He also says that many concepts were new to him and used in the SaaS industry. They all were helpful to him.
According to him, the best thing about the course was personal guidance; his mentors were Rahul and Kartik, and he felt they were so into it that they wanted him to succeed. It all boosted his confidence.
We are unaware of these modern industries and rules in schools and colleges. Starting a career in sales is a big plus point because you get to see business firsthand and learn the core of business knowledge it gives. Also, it provides you with the skills you can apply to your personal life, like good communication, emphasizing with people, and staying persistent. If you start your career in sales, everything else becomes easy.
Abhralin’s advice for everyone
“Asking ‘why’ is a very important question,” Abhranil said.
Just be clear and ask yourself why you are doing it every day, and everything else becomes easier, like making decisions and choices.
