Transformation in enterprise tech sales and ABM in the age of AI with Mahesh Raja

[00:00:00] Mahesh Raja: When you look at the earnings call of many of the companies, you know, it's all about how many hundred million dollar deals, how many fifty million dollar deals. So as companies graduate towards winning larger deals, the complexity of the sales cycle has also evolved in this period.

[00:00:30] Vamsee Tirukkala: Hello everyone, I'm Vamsee Tirukkala, one of the Co-founders and Chief Commercial Officer here at Draup. And, we have an esteemed guest today, Mahesh Raja. Who is the Chief Growth Officer at Ness Digital Engineering. I have known Mahesh for almost like more than 10 years now. He had had a very illustrious, career at, Wipro.

Having grown through the ranks in more than two and a half decades there, he has donned multiple hats, multiple executives roles, managing the teams across North America. He had pioneered the sales operations in pretty much all the organizations that he had worked in the past and no one better to tell us where we came from and where we are headed to with all the transformation that is happening in the market today.

So with that, Mahesh, welcome to the podcast and sincerely appreciate your time, sir.

[00:01:22] Mahesh Raja: Vamsee, thank you for having me today and I'm really excited to be here today actually. As Vamsee said, you know, I'm at Ness today and at Ness we just don't create software, we engineer possibilities. As the original product engineering company, our DNA lies in building the very foundations of groundbreaking software that powers the world.

Unlike our traditional IT services peers that focus on implementing existing solutions, product engineering is about crafting the very software others rely to succeed, and we take pride in this. Our legacy is etched into everyday life and Vamsee I'm going to kind of share an example of what we do from building parts of Microsoft Office and PayPal to powering IBM Tivoli, Ness has been a solid force behind some of the world's most transformative technologies.

You know, today I'm in a Hilton hotel room and when I turn on the set top box and the streaming software I see, it's actually built by us. Wonderful. If you park your car in New York City and use the New York City mobile app, that's us too. So we are a company which spans across the globe with 40% of our team in India, 45% in Eastern Europe, in Germany, and 15% across North America.

Ness combines a global perspective with the local expertise, so I'm very happy to be here and I thought it may be a good opportunity for me to introduce who we are.

[00:02:57] Vamsee Tirukkala: No, this is amazing, Mahesh. I think that kind of also kind of, gives us a platform on talk about the complexities of the enterprise sales, right? I'm really you're- so enterprise sales of, especially the complex solutions that you are solving, Mahesh, that's not easy, right? Like, especially when you think about the large sales cycles, and more importantly, the complexity of the enterprise ecosystem has become such that there is no straightforward sale anymore.

It's, it has become extremely complex over a period of time. So in your journey, Mahesh, I mean, like, how did we get here? I mean, like, this was not this complex 20, 30 years ago, right? Like, How did it became so complex and what are some of the kind of, your perceptions on what companies are doing to address this complexity of sale?

[00:03:46] Mahesh Raja: I think it's a great question, Vamsee. So let me answer it in two parts. Number one, companies large and small are today going after winning larger deals. When you look at the earnings call of many of the companies, you know, it's all about how many 100 million dollar deals? How many 50 million dollar deals?

So as companies graduate towards winning larger deals the complexity of the sales cycle has also evolved in this period. Gone are the days where we used to celebrate small and mid wins. Every company wants to go to the street and talk about larger deals. So that's driving complexity. Number two, the sophistication of the clients and the prospects we serve today has also increased the maturity of that. That are the two reasons

what is actually transforming enterprise sales across the board for a company which is small to a company which is large enough there. And even the practices technologies and methodologies of how you do enterprise sales has actually evolved in the last three decades of my professional journey and I'm happy to share some of that in this conversation today.

[00:04:59] Vamsee Tirukkala: Let's start with the thing that you just talked about right. So, the evolution has happened from spray and pray or how big is my rolodex or what is the network that I can tap into to how can I find the the specific opportunities and how can I actually target them like the whole notion about account based sales, account based marketing, account based engagement, all these have come in the last I would say probably couple of decades, right Mahesh?

And, you know, account based sales and account based marketing is a fascinating thing on the paper, but it is not as easy because either you can't scale

or you cannot be very targeted. So how did you see this complexity of the problem with the sales process, Mahesh?

[00:05:47] Mahesh Raja: I think in short, if I may answer, account based marketing has actually led to a shift the focus from mass outreach to clients and prospects to more personalized engagement.

That's kind of in a nutshell. Now, just to throw some numbers and facts, right? You know, I just recall what Edward Deming had said- without data, you're just another person with an opinion. So rather than me sharing just opinion, I also want to put some data and facts here. Number one, McKinsey research shows that one fifth of all sales team's tasks could be automated, and that cuts across the entire life cycle of sales.

Number two, with the advent of genAI, and opening new opportunities. The venture capital investment in AI has actually surged 13 to 15 fold over the last decade. So with these two as the backdrop from a data perspective, so let me talk a little bit about how the current use of new tools, AI and ABM has actually evolved.

[00:06:51] Vamsee Tirukkala: Okay.

[00:06:52] Mahesh Raja: Okay. Number one, there is an increasing use of data driven personalization. Number two, we're talking about how lead scoring and intent prediction has evolved in the last two decades. Those are the two big shifts we have seen in terms of what used to happen five, seven, 10 years back to what happens today from a sales enterprise sales perspective. I'll probably pause and see if it makes sense

and I'm happy to kind of elaborate on each of them.

[00:07:24] Vamsee Tirukkala: I think it absolutely makes sense Mahesh. Let's kind of, I think you and I, when we were talking offline, you're giving some numbers about how long it is to take, you know, putting together the research or engaging with the right people to how you're brought it down from days and weeks to kind of, you know, few hours and minutes.

[00:07:42] Mahesh Raja: Yeah.

[00:07:42] Vamsee Tirukkala: Can you share some examples of, you know, how you have transformed those processes?

[00:07:48] Mahesh Raja: I think that's a great, that's a great question. So from my own personal experience, when I used to be a seller 10, 15 years back, you know, for every senior level executive meeting or a C-Suite meeting, we used to prepare for like a number of days.

You know, if I have to put a number there, you know, on an average, it used to take seven days to prepare for an hour or 30 minutes meeting with a C suite stakeholder. Right.

[00:08:12] Vamsee Tirukkala: Right, yeah.

[00:08:13] Mahesh Raja: With the advent of platforms such as Draup and other third party AI-based solutions.

[00:08:20] Vamsee Tirukkala: Yeah.

[00:08:20] Mahesh Raja: Today, that has fundamentally shifted and changed.

[00:08:24] Vamsee Tirukkala: Yep.

[00:08:25] Mahesh Raja: Now, what has changed? Number one, we have tools from some of the platform companies, including Draup, which helps us in prospect activity. Number two, it helps us to identify pain points. And number three, recommend tailor sales strategies. Now, good old days when I used to go and search for what are the pain points for a prospect, I used to go to the SEC website or look at the earnings calls for the last three or four quarters.

It was an exercise which consumed a lot of time and effort. Now that's what took seven days on an average. But today, within seven minutes, with the advent of platforms which are available at our disposal, that's what has fundamentally changed from a data driven personalization perspective. And this not only is in client acquisition, but also from a client servicing perspective.

So let me give you an example. What used to, when we used to follow up with our clients, after our initial conversations and when we used to write personalized emails, it was, you know an effort which we need to budget time for today with the advent of tools which each one of us are very familiar from a market perspective They augment us in our ability to reach out to our clients and not only that even from a pricing perspective, we have enough augmented tools, whether we call it genAI, AI, or assisted tools, they help us to price for a certain stakeholder, for a certain enterprise client, and also bring in the relevant case example.

So that is what has fundamentally changed from 10 years to today, from a data driven personalization perspective. So client acquisition, client servicing, both these dimensions from an enterprise sales has really, really changed and transformed.

[00:10:23] Vamsee Tirukkala: I'm like, what you're talking about is hyper personalization of opportunities and hyper personalization of services, Mahesh. That's amazing. So let's actually look at it like a holistically, like, you know, you have gone through this journey for the last few years. Is there something that you can share about some, you know, like, what did it mean to a company like Ness or what did mean to a professional like you?

On either optimizing what you used to do, what you have given a great example, but on the value side, how did it create value for you, Mahesh?

[00:11:01] Mahesh Raja: It's a good question. Ness leverages AI to enhance our account based marketing efforts by analyzing intent data, engagement metrics, sales metrics, and account level metrics to deliver personalized campaigns today.

[00:11:20] Vamsee Tirukkala: Right.

[00:11:20] Mahesh Raja: Now, tools such as Draup and other platforms help us to provide deep account insights and also compliment us by offering accurate and real time client contact information and firmographic data. When I say that what I mean is data about the client's structure, spend, et cetera, helping my team refine the account targeting and identify key decision makers.

That's the number one change I've seen within Ness. Now in terms of our approach from an account based marketing perspective, we are primarily focusing on driving and delivering personalized data driven campaigns to our top champion accounts and the tier two accounts what we call as attack accounts by leveraging these tools and methodologies there.

And also making sure that the sellers are able to really follow through on some of the commitments from a sales perspective and the handoff from a client acquisition to client servicing happens well. And the final point I want to really drive down is what did I do to amplify that?

[00:12:38] Vamsee Tirukkala: Okay.

[00:12:40] Mahesh Raja: There are five things which broadly I would say, which helped me amplify account based marketing with the advent of AI.

Number one, deepening account insights. And this is slam dunk with all the technologies at our disposal, you know, insights to uncover decision makers, understanding of organizational priorities, and more importantly, the growth areas. Number two is tailored campaigns beyond what we used to do three, four, five years back.

How AI can help create hyper personalized messaging and content formats that address specific business needs, whether it's on the revenue side, on the expense side, customer experience side. Number three is how do we strengthen executive alignment between my organization and the client organization and enhance collaboration even between my own teams, between sales and marketing to coordinate, outreach at an executive level and build stronger account level relationships.

Fourth point is about multi channel engagement. In today's world, where we are, you know, having a number of social media tools available at our disposal. Gone are the days where email was the only way of reaching out to our customers.

[00:14:04] Vamsee Tirukkala: Right, right.

[00:14:05] Mahesh Raja: Leveraging LinkedIn, you know, leveraging other social media tools at our disposal to reach out to our customers and stay in touch is a mechanism.

Let me give you one example.

[00:14:17] Vamsee Tirukkala: Sure.

[00:14:18] Mahesh Raja: Today sometimes when our clients actually take up different roles within their own organization or they move from one organization to other. We get to know from the social media technologies and if we are smart enough of using these AI tools, we are able to put actionable

insights for our sellers to see what they need to do when such changes happen from social media. I don't think we were able to achieve that five or seven years back. So that's what I mean by multi channel engagement. And finally, you know, leveraging champions.

[00:14:57] Vamsee Tirukkala: Yep.

[00:14:57] Mahesh Raja: You know, working closely with champions within accounts to advocate internally and drive influence with the advent of AI, which helps us to scan through an organization.

For example, if I use a real life example, I have a client which is a progressive tech company. They have 80,000 employees globally spread out.

[00:15:19] Vamsee Tirukkala: Yeah.

[00:15:20] Mahesh Raja: The question is, we have been serving this client for the last 15 years, but who are our top five champions? And how do I bring that insight into our sellers who are supporting the client and more importantly, the account managers who are serving the client?

[00:15:36] Vamsee Tirukkala: Yeah.

[00:15:36] Mahesh Raja: That's what AI helps. So those are the five things I would say We are doing from an ABM perspective with the support of AI, which is actually transforming. And I just want to say that while we talk about technology, it's important to remember that technology is best when it brings people together.

And what I mean by that is AI helps in fostering collaboration.

[00:16:03] Vamsee Tirukkala: Yeah.

[00:16:03] Mahesh Raja: Between teams such as sales and marketing, but it's those humans which actually make it happen. So let's not move away to say technology can solve all our problems. It is best when it brings people together.

[00:16:19] Vamsee Tirukkala: I think that's a fundamental thing that you highlighted there, Mahesh, very, very well.

It is the really that human machine synergies, that brings the best out of an organization or out of a process. Now, having said that, I'm like, you know, you have gone through this journey in a relatively very short period of time. All of us have gone through that in a very relatively short period of time, right, Mahesh?

So, when you think about, some unique skills that you look for in your sales organization today, that you did not look for, like, say, five or ten years ago, what comes to your mind as the top, the topmost skill that you are looking for today that you did not consider that as important few years ago.

[00:17:01] Mahesh Raja: So let me understand the question. The question you have is, what are the skills I'm looking for when I hire sellers in my team?

[00:17:08] Vamsee Tirukkala: Exactly.

[00:17:09] Mahesh Raja: And, how do I, how do they differentiate vis a vis the average performers?

[00:17:14] Vamsee Tirukkala: Or the same seller five years ago did not have that kind of a skill. And because of that skill, they are become a lot more productive or a lot more valuable today.

[00:17:25] Mahesh Raja: Okay. I think that's a good question, and that dovetails into what I wanted to share from a Ness perspective, right?

[00:17:32] Vamsee Tirukkala: Sure.

[00:17:34] Mahesh Raja: Let me use a quote and this is a quote. It's a well known quote by Abraham Lincoln, where he said, give me six hours to chop down a tree and I'll spend the first four hours sharpening the ax.

I look for that attribute in, in sellers today. There is so much of intelligence available before you go in front of a client meeting, or a prospect meeting.

[00:18:00] Vamsee Tirukkala: Yep.

[00:18:00] Mahesh Raja: And I look for people who are curious, who are inquisitive, who know about the client organization. Yeah. And learn about their business problems and technology problems.

And move away from a reactive sales approach to a predictive and a proactive sales approach. That is what is the number one quality I'm looking for. Obviously, you know, the experience of working in enterprise sales, the technologies are table stakes today that you expect from everybody. But the only thing which really differentiates one seller versus other is their ability to really sharpen the axe, if I may use the word carefully there.

[00:18:43] Vamsee Tirukkala: I think what you're saying is like, it's really the data and insights are available. How do you contextualize that to a particular opportunity or a particular executive that you are engaging with?

[00:18:54] Mahesh Raja: Correct.

[00:18:55] Vamsee Tirukkala: That last mile gap that probably doesn't exist anywhere that has to be brought to the table by the humans.

You think that that is the biggest value or the biggest skill today?

[00:19:05] Mahesh Raja: Absolutely. Especially, especially from, if you look at the sales lifecycle from a client acquisition perspective, or even if you're serving a new client, existing client and you're trying to sell a new solution or a product or a SaaS offering.

That's what it is. Now, if I just look at it from a client servicing perspective, right?

[00:19:23] Vamsee Tirukkala: Sure.

[00:19:24] Mahesh Raja: How AI and how some of this advent has changed personally. Today, we have enough tools from very reputed companies, which would help us to sync our CRM, third party AI engines, you know, our prospecting engines, our marketing automation engines, and how do you make sure that we run campaigns for our existing customers, which clearly highlight the differentiators and the solutions which we have at Ness and how do we really bring it up to our customers?

And that stickiness is important when you're actually serving a customer That's, that's where you know, if I will look at both from an client acquisition and the client servicing perspective, that's where I would do. Now, on top of it, from a servicing perspective, how do we do dynamic account based marketing campaigns?

It's not just about sending newsletters anymore. I remember four years back, for me, account based marketing was sending a newsletter to the right stakeholder with the right message. Today it needs to be dynamic, real time. Based on an announcement from their CEO yesterday about what the market is, how do you dynamically change that and contextualize it like you said, to the client's current situation and how we as an organization can understand the buyer's intent and how do we change the interaction with them.

And finally, you know, in good old days, we, we had A/B testing we used to do from a campaign optimization perspective.

[00:21:00] Vamsee Tirukkala: Right.

[00:21:01] Mahesh Raja: That has evolved significantly in today's era. So I can go deep into it, but those are the top three things which I would say, which has really changed over the course of time.

[00:21:11] Vamsee Tirukkala: Mahesh, I, I can't think of a better words that you have used to articulate where we are today and how far we have come along. Let's shift the gears a little bit, here, Mahesh, and see. Now there is a lot of chatter about agentic AI, there is a lot of chatter about, you know, collaborative AI assistants or, different kind of an automated tools that are coming into the future.

How do you foresee the next five years and where do you think is the, the, the tool sets and the platforms evolving Mahesh?

[00:21:45] Mahesh Raja: It's a good question. So let me share my conviction here, right?

[00:21:49] Vamsee Tirukkala: Yeah.

[00:21:50] Mahesh Raja: You know, today we are at the incubation phase of what I would call as sales AI, tools, you know, and this is public information.

So we have co pilots for sales. We have co pilots for servicing. Every, every large technology player, whether it's Microsoft, Salesforce are actually bringing in, you know, augmented sales co pilot equivalents.

[00:22:17] Vamsee Tirukkala: Right.

[00:22:17] Mahesh Raja: From their perspective.

[00:22:18] Vamsee Tirukkala: Yeah.

[00:22:18] Mahesh Raja: So they actually act as virtual partners for organizations which are focused from a go to market perspective, recommending actions and automating repetitive tasks.

You know, I was there in a conference two and a half months back where one of the large CRM providers, you know, they made an announcement of, a LLM based tool to just support the sellers. You know, and this is public, so I will use the name AgentForce, which is Salesforce's LLM based tool to help support that.

Now what does this do today? It provides intelligent insights into accounts and opportunities to prioritize and significantly improve the ability to open new accounts and focus sales efforts strategically. Now, to your question. What am I expecting to happen the next five years? There's going to be significant investments in these areas to really, really, not only do genAI, but have those LLMs to make it into SLMs, which are small language models specific to the organization.

Today, these LLMs are taking data across multiple enterprises and creating large language models.

[00:23:37] Vamsee Tirukkala: Yep.

[00:23:38] Mahesh Raja: The next big innovation for me would be, I need to have a small language model on my device to tell me for this client and for my firm, which is Ness, what should I target. And that comes from not one variable, two variables, but multitude of variables. And with the processing capacity changing and yesterday we saw the announcement from Google about how quantum computing is changing and the processing speeds are going up these small, small language models and the processing speeds and innovation happening there is actually going to be the two fundamental shifts, which we're going to see there, right?

And especially in regulated industries like financial services, healthcare, where these large language models are not very well appreciated because of regulatory compliance reasons. I see the thrust on going from LLMs to smaller models is going to really, really advance the ship. So look at two trends.

One is the investments from a sales enablement for enterprise sales. And second is what's happening in the, in the marketplace from language models and processing speeds.

[00:24:52] Vamsee Tirukkala: Sure.

[00:24:52] Mahesh Raja: When they come together, it's when the biggest shift is going to happen. And that's my view of what is going to happen. And there's no, no dearth of tools.

The question is, what are we trying to solve for?

[00:25:07] Vamsee Tirukkala: Absolutely. I think you put it very, very well, Mahesh. I think, see, one thing that-

[00:25:10] Mahesh Raja: And can I make one quote there?

[00:25:12] Vamsee Tirukkala: Sure, sure. Please.

[00:25:13] Mahesh Raja: I remember this. You know, when you talk about what does the future look like, there's a quote by, I don't remember the person, but due credit to the person who made it, the best way to predict the future is to invent it.

[00:25:26] Vamsee Tirukkala: Invent.

[00:25:26] Mahesh Raja: That's what is happening it today, the invention of processing processors, which are quantum computing processes, the invention of language models is going to pave the way for the future. That's how I look at it.

[00:25:40] Vamsee Tirukkala: No, absolutely. We see that examples, even in the case of Ness, right? I think, you know, you just don't take our data and insights and our intelligence.

You actually combine that with your internal data, now, kind of your created that orchestration layer.

[00:25:55] Mahesh Raja: Right.

[00:25:55] Vamsee Tirukkala: To, to kind of support your own processes. That is custom for you. That is individualized for you, right? I think we already absolutely, I think we are kind of peeking into the future of what you just said already with people like you kind of, bringing it all together. But one thing that I want to bring it up, Mahesh, I think, some fabulous work that your organization Ness has, done, you actually have studied the impact of AI on software development, and you have recently released a white paper. I want you to do two things. First, share some very high level insights of that white paper, Mahesh, and the second, I want you to, kind of take a similar approach and say, if you want to quantify, of course, you have not done the study like you have done for software development.

What does that mean to your organization from the quantum of the impact that AI tools had had on your sales and marketing efforts?

[00:26:52] Mahesh Raja: Sure.

[00:26:53] Vamsee Tirukkala: But first the software study though.

[00:26:55] Mahesh Raja: Yes. Before I answer your question, let me set some context here, right? We are in the business of serving customers. While the examples I cited to you were more about what we do to serve our customers, we are also helping our enterprise clients, you know, in their ability to enhance their sales organizations also.

For example, we have a Salesforce practice within our organization. We have a CRM practice within our organization. And many of the tools which we use, and some of the tools and innovations we're talking about, we actually try to help our customers do that. So that is important in what we do there. Now coming to your question about software engineering.

It's a very similar approach. We are a 4000 people organization and we take pride in building software for software companies. That's kind of the original product engineering company mindset when we believe that there is innovation happening in software engineering. We also believe in making sure that we share that with our customers, our partners, and that is where this research report, which we did along with Zinnov, in publishing that report, of how we can enhance, software engineering productivity for

our clients for our partners for our peers and for our own organization. And that is kind of gotten crystallized by having our own platform which we share it with our customers to benchmark software engineering productivity so what I mean by that is sometimes we have to eat our own dog food so when I say that we haven't.

We can help you enhance your software engineering productivity, the first question customers is, I don't even have a baseline to say how it goes up.

[00:28:40] Vamsee Tirukkala: Right.

[00:28:40] Mahesh Raja: And how do I baseline my current productivity and my partner ecosystem productivity for me to really see if Ness can really enhance that for me. So that is where we actually bring in a product and a tool.

Now going to the other part of your question, you know, what we did from a software engineering perspective, if I just bring it to enterprise sales. We haven't done such a deep dive research, if I have to leverage my experiential learning and my experience over three decades, then it's a very similar trend coming out of that. It is about how do you maximize sales KPIs and productivity with the advent of

these tools and how do you really maximize your investments in sales, marketing and all the related functions?

[00:29:36] Vamsee Tirukkala: Yep.

[00:29:37] Mahesh Raja: I work for a private equity owned company. And this is something which we talk about in terms of how do we drive higher return on investments in S&M budgets.

[00:29:47] Vamsee Tirukkala: Right.

[00:29:48] Mahesh Raja: I'm sure all my clients and the other large enterprises are also thinking about in the current market conditions, how do we really stretch the dollar?

And that's really where I think we can help lot of our customers in partnership with firms such as yours in driving sales productivity and increase sales efficiency for them. And tools, methods, technologies are only going to augment us, but end of day it is about clearly having that focus to drive better outcomes and we are here to not only drive outcomes, we engineer that for our customers and that's what we are good at actually.

I hope I answered your question.

[00:30:34] Vamsee Tirukkala: No, this is the absolutely you answered the question right very well Mahesh. And, with that, we will conclude this podcast. I can't thank you enough. I think you summarized the value of that. So first of all, you summarize the transformation that we have seen so far very well, and the transformation that we are going to probably see in the very near future.

And the second most important thing is I think you, you know, the big takeaway for me, Mahesh, is how you articulated this five major areas where you are able to create the value in your sales and marketing processes, whether it is account management, account intent driven decisions, signals driven, reactive- you know, going from reactive to more of a proactive approach.

I think these are the real takeaways for me. I think that that's exactly how we envisioned when we were building Draup. And it's so gratifying for me, at least to see that, you know, how you are able to adopt a platform like Draup and kind of supercharge your own processes. So with that, thank you very, very much, Mahesh, for generously giving your time and sharing your, your knowledge and your best practices with us.

[00:31:43] Mahesh Raja: Thank you, Vamsee, and thank you for having me. Just as a closing remark from my side, let me say this. You know, and this is something I'm taking inspiration from another, researcher and a leader. Success isn't just about getting noticed. It's about being remembered for the value you create. And I hope what you do, what I do, we want to leave a lasting impression and value for our clients.

And within the domain of enterprise sales, there is so much to be done.

[00:32:19] Vamsee Tirukkala: Yep.

[00:32:19] Mahesh Raja: And there is so much value to be unlocked and hopefully this podcast just the beginning for that.

[00:32:26] Vamsee Tirukkala: Absolutely. On that high note, Mahesh, thank you very, very much and you have a great rest of the day.

[00:32:33] Mahesh Raja: Thank you and I really appreciate this.

Have a great day.