Okonkwo: Chatdesk achieves an 80% pilot-to-paid conversion rate
Aneto Okonkwo · How We Grew ARR 3X by Upselling Existing Customers · Apr 25, 2023 · at 13:32
Aneto Okonkwo, co-founder and CEO of Chatdesk, explains why the company can afford to offer low-cost and free pilots to prospective clients.
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“It's really, so we don't mind getting a customer, and we know that our pilot-to-paid conversion rate is 80%, so if they have a successful pilot, like, they're gonna be a paying customer, and if they're a paying customer, we're gonna upsell them.”
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More from Aneto Okonkwo
Okonkwo: Enterprise buyers just want promotions and more family time
“Because every person, when they're buying enterprise software, they're trying to get promoted, they're trying to spend more time with their family.”
Okonkwo: Multi-product SaaS footprint protects vendors from budget cuts
“In these current economic times, everyone's looking at their budgets, they're slashing, they're cutting their vendors, so the more solutions, the more footprint you have an organization with more solutions, the harder you are to kill, basically.”
Okonkwo: Never build requested features without budget and a signed contract
“The final thing is, people will tell you to solve all these things, But only solve the ones that they have budget for. Because I made all these mistakes where we said, oh, if we build this feature, then they'll buy, and they didn't buy. No. Pay me first. Sign …”
Okonkwo: Enterprise clients do not care if your service is manual
“Even if it's a person, a human doing it, the client doesn't know, and they don't care. They just want it solved. And that's a way for you to quickly upsell and, like, continue to grow those budgets.”
Okonkwo: Chatdesk does not charge for integrations, monetizing usage volume instead
“We don't charge for integrations because we know the volume is where we make the money, so we want as many integrations as possible, like, add everything, you know, and we'll figure out how to monetize it later.”
Okonkwo: Pre-contracting unbought solutions upfront removes friction for future upsells
“Even if we've only been negotiating and contracted on one of the solutions, we want to pre-contract ahead of time for all the other solutions, so that there's no future negotiation, and it's also a way to educate the customer.”