Pushkar’s vision to provide an intelligent sales solution-Interview with areoleads CEO Pushkar Gaikwad

AeroLead’s Pushkar Gaikwad reveals his organizational progress where he faced challenges in the form of retaining customers, learning from observation, inexperienced staff and experimenting in setting achievable objectives. This interview is part of a series conducted by Salesmate to help startups in designing and achieving their business goals in order to lead them to the road of success.

Name: Pushkar Gaikwad
Designation: CEO
Company: AeroLeads
Social link: https://web.facebook.com/aeroleads

 

  1. How big is your addressable market and how did you determine that?

It is difficult to give the accurate numbers but there are tools like Salesforce Data.com, Hoovers, InfoUSA, etc. in 20m to 50m range in terms of revenue. Of course, many of the tools are in the business for 15+ years but we felt there is still a large untapped market available.

  1. You have come a long way. What do you think are the 5 most important aspects of successful sales and conversions for a startup?
  2. Be patient - things happen slowly in B2B vertical. Sometimes people come after 1 year too.
  3. Don’t lose touch with your clients.
  4. Don’t overdo follow-ups - earlier we used to send too many “follow up” emails and we realized that it is not having a good conversion. People will use the software when they want to. So we cut down on the excessive communication.
  5. Learn and observe from others - there is so much information available now on medium, hackernews, sales blogs,etc. where users are sharing what is working for them and why.
  6. You don’t have to try and fail to learn things, if you learn and observe what is happening around you, you can learn a lot from others mistakes and experience. There is a huge cost involved in learning by failing and you ideally want to avoid it as much as you can.
  7. What marketing tactic/campaign was most beneficial for your startup?

For us, 2 things work best:

  1. Organic Traffic - We get 70% traffic from search engines. Lot of it is noise but still, we get a good number of people.
  2. Email Marketing -Since our software finds business prospects with emails and phone numbers, it makes sense to use our own software to find prospects.
  3. What’s the worst marketing move you regret making the most?

There are plenty:

  1. Hiring people who didn’t have good knowledge of marketing
  2. Hiring marketers before finishing the product, or worst washiring before knowing where we are going
  3. Running LinkedIn ads and paying flat $2 per click with zero conversions or any relevant traffic whatsoever
  4. Spending too much time and resources on channels which had nothing to do with our software. These channels brought irrelevant inquiries and interest without the intent of buying the software.
  5. While working on endorsing your brand, did you (or do you still) incorporate online marketing and sales tools? Can you name 5 of your favorite ones?

We have tried plenty of online sales and marketing tools to accelerate our growth and automate the work. Some of the tools which we are using (which are also our favourite) are:

  1. Google apps - Not just the email but we are using their whole stack like google drive, calendar, emails,etc. It is convenient, easy to setup and works well.
  2. ly - Our team uses calend.ly to schedule appointments.
  3. us - after trying many such software, we settled down on zoom for a demo. All other softwareswere really good but the zoom is extremely rich in features,and even the free version comes fully loaded.
  4. Evernote - we all use evernote at an individual level and also share evernote links (like Google drive) which is extremely convenient to share information.
  5. Skitch - This is my favorite tool to quickly edit demos
  6. Asana - for tasks and goals
  7. Getloom - I am becoming a fan of it as it allows quick screen casting and makes a screen demo really easy.
  8. What is your company in 2–5 words?

AeroLeads finds b2b emails and phone numbers. We are a prospecting software to start your sales.

  1. What made you choose this path of building a startup instead of a 9 to 5 job?

It happened by luck and started from college days where I was writing small php scripts and doing some online marketing for a few companies. I enjoyed the work, learning and the freedom and started doing this full time. Later in the year, I got more serious with company formation and having a team.

  1. If you were your own mentor, what’s the most important advice you’d give yourself?

Do what makes you happy

  1. What do you enjoy the most about the day-to-day management of your business? What do you enjoy the least?

I enjoy Learning. I try to learn something every day.

I hate doing accounting and finances.

  1. How do you plan to manage the shift from a small business to a scalable company?

We will go with the flow. As long as you are making money, you will grow automatically as you will keep investing that money back into the business.

  1. Why are you the right CEO? Do you plan to continue in that role in the future?

We are still a small company and like others, I am just an employee juggling with lot of tasks. CEO is just a fancy term and If given an option, I will certainly avoid using it in the future. I will prefer to work in the background building world-changing products with great people and teams.

 

  1. Where do you see your startup in the next five years?

I am certainly seeing few more iterations for Aeroleads before we settle down on “this is all we will do and nothing more”. We are still experimenting with new features so it is very difficult to comment on where we will be in the next 5 years. We are certainly open to building new products that will complement Aeroleads,andwe will keep growing.

  1. What obstacles did you face while trying to reach your goals and what steps did you take to overcome them?

Most of the earlier goals were just wishful thinking and really not goals. I am still learning how to set meaningful, challenging but realistic goals. I think things happen much faster in your head as compared to in the real world.
For some time now, I am setting more realistic targets based on the resources and vision we have. Targeting X% growth per month is better than 5X% growth where you have no resources or plan to achieve it.

  1. Who do you look to as a role model?

No one in particular though I certainly follow the work of Elon Musk.
From the B2B domain, I look forward to Turakhia brothers (Directi Group) and Sridhar Vembu (Zoho Inc). Both have bootstrapped and built billion dollar businesses over a period of 10-12 years.

  1. What motivates you?

Learning and Knowledge

  1. Are you willing to work on holidays or weekends?

I don’t mind,and sometimes I do

  1. Any advice for new startup owners?

Plenty!

  1. Do what you want and makes you happy
  2. Do not compare yourself and your startup to others and other startups. You don’t what they are doing, how they are doing it and what they are going through.
  3. Money is almost always the byproduct of your success, so work to be successful.
  4. I may be wrong but right now it looks like building startups is almost a mathematical model. You need to pick certain patterns, do certain things based on some patterns to get certain results. Repeat and Rinse. For this, you either need to fail multiple times or observe what is happening around you. 2nd one is easier and less time-consuming.
  5. Putting both your time and money is extremely risky and foolish. Look to raise money.
  6. Have a co-founder, it improves your chances of success by 3X or even 5x. But if you can’t, then don’t stop. After crossing a certain point, you won’t be needing it.

 

Pushkar Gaikwad’s AeroLeads communicates that patience, learning from experience and setting realistic goals are key elements of business success.

AeroLeads is a market leader offering competitive prospect and lead generation software to initiate the sales process.

Being a trendsetter, AeroLeads guides the clients about how prospect generation can ease the sales process. It helps through innovation by embracing the developments in technology and implementing in the prospect generation process. Thus, assists businessesin achieving their goals of growth and customer satisfaction.

Pushkar’s vision to provide an intelligent sales solution along with the emphasis on the ease and happiness for both the employees and customers is taking AeroLeads to new directions of victory.