Personal direct sales are much more effective than advertising. The only problem is that live salespeople don’t pay off when selling inexpensive products and services 🙁 A solution to this problem has only emerged now! This startup suggests using AI salespeople instead of live ones. So their platform should either be urgently adopted or quickly copied 😉
THE ESSENCE OF THE PROJECT
AskToSell allows for automatically concluding B2B deals for selling goods or services for small amounts.
The problem in B2B is that advertising doesn’t work well, direct sales do. But when the price of the goods or services is low, the total profit brought by a live salesperson usually can’t cover the costs of their salary and commissions.
As a result, a dangerous paradox arises: the more salespeople we hire — the more sales there will be — and the greater our losses will be 🙁
There are many platforms and tools that help automate individual stages of sales. AskToSell claims that their platform is the only one that allows automating the full sales cycle from start to finish.
For a business owner, it’s enough to:
- upload to the platform a list of your products with prices and a description of their “selling” characteristics,
- add a list of customer risks with names and contacts,
- provide platform AI agents with corporate email addresses
- and click the “Start Selling” button.
this, AI agents will begin composing and sending letters with offers to potential clients, answering their questions, sending reminders to those who have not begun or stopped responding, offering discounts within the range set by the business owner, and making other movements — up until the point when the interlocutor agrees to the offer made by the AI agent.
All received consents are immediately forwarded to the business owner — who should look at the terms agreed by the AI agent and approve the deal. Or disapprove if the terms seem unsuitable to them.
If, from the AI agent’s point of view, there are not enough responses from potential clients, it will notify the business owner so that they could do something that only depends on them — for instance, change the product list, edit the list of its “selling” characteristics, lower the prices and the range of possible discounts.
The cost of one AI agent is 200 dollars a month. For this money, it can send up to 50 emails a day, which can be initial introduction emails, emails with a commercial offer, responses to objections, and negotiations on terms.
50 effective contacts a day is the maximum a live salesperson can handle. However, a live salesperson will cost the business owner 6,000 dollars a month, including salary, commissions, and related expenses.
Moreover, a live salesperson might forget things, not respond immediately, not respond during non-working hours, lose motivation when faced with rejections, and make other human errors — while an automated AI agent is devoid of these drawbacks. Furthermore, hiring an additional live salesperson entails extra time and money spent on recruitment and training with no guaranteed result — while adding another AI agent on the platform can be done in 1 second.
AskToSell hails from Lithuania, and its product is at the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage — but it has now attracted the first 100,000 euros of investment.
Interesting Facts
The founders of AskToSell experienced the problem of costly “live” sales with small checks firsthand. Previously, they had a European startup for logistic services with a revenue of 2.5 million dollars and one and a half thousand customers. The business was growing, but the unit economics didn’t work out — as the costs of sales were always higher than the profits generated. Ultimately, this led to the closure of the startup.
The founders decided to create a platform that could help other companies avoid such problems. And the market for such companies is huge!
Almost every small business, which by definition sells inexpensive goods or services, finds itself in this situation. Small businesses make up 99.9% of the total number of companies in any country. For instance, in the USA, this category includes 33.2 million companies.
Not only is it unprofitable to sell inexpensive goods or services through live salespersons — but small businesses typically don’t even have these live individuals to handle sales in the first place.
80% of small businesses in the USA, for example, don’t have permanent employees at all — there’s only the owner who is torn between sales and order fulfillment or relies on the miraculous power of advertising. And 16% of small businesses have fewer than 20 employees, the majority of whom are engaged in the main work, that is, order fulfillment.
Thus, small businesses find themselves between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, there’s practically no one to handle sales proficiently. On the other, hiring live salespeople who would manage sales with small checks leads to losses.
So, what’s the way out for small businesses? It seems that the only solution is to hire AI salespeople on platforms similar to today’s AskToSell.
Where to run
The problem of unprofitability of direct sales with small checks is an old issue. Only before, there were just two solution options – either raise prices or use insufficiently effective advertising.
The third option has only emerged now – when AI technologies have finally developed to a degree where they can start replacing live salespeople.
Moreover, entrusting them with significant sales involving large sums is still somewhat risky. But small sales are already quite feasible. Because the risk of losing one small sale due to an AI agent’s error isn’t that frightening, fortunately.
In this regard, AskToSell’s concept came in very handy. On one side, it utilizes the ongoing advancements in AI. On the other, it applies them where the risks of their still possible inefficiency are not critical. And on the third, it appeals to a vast audience of small businesses, to whom it can significantly ease life.
So, the direction of movement is creating full-cycle AI salespeople for small businesses, who would take care of direct sales of inexpensive goods and services, without plunging companies into losses by involving live humans in sales.
The market is big, the theme is workable, the problem is old – but the way to solve it has only emerged now. All the components necessary for launching a successful startup are in place – now it’s just about realizing these chances properly. For starters, one can copy what AskToSell has already figured out 😉
About the company
AskToSell
Website: asktosell.com
Latest round: €100K, 21.09.2023
Total investments: €100K, rounds: 1