Sales Solutions.AI
B2B SaaS Design to Automate Sales Calls With AI
Sales Solutions.AI was a startup developing an AI that can make sales calls over the phone. They reached out to me with their concept and a technical prototype to demonstrate it.
Research, ideate, and design the MVP for Sales Solutions.AI. I'd need to create the go to market strategy as well requiring me to expand my usual scope to encompass sales, branding and marketing as well.
I designed the product's MVP to attract 8 B2B customers before launch and created website and product demo to convert at 62%.
Lead UX Designer
Branding
Marketing
UX Designer
Developer
SME
SaaS MVP
MVP's need to do one thing uniquely well. I start by talking to users to understand where they are now and where they want to go so I can shape my product into a superpower to get them there.
I spoke with real estate agents and service industry professionals as potential target markets.
The problem became that focusing on one specific industry required a wide range of functionality and integrations. I needed to target the product towards something we could easily get up and running while still delivering unique value.
Rather than choose a specific industry, I decided to focus on a target use case. This lets my team build the perfect offering that can instantly be implemented across a wide range of users to establish a foothold to build on.
Discovery calls became that use case. One customers alone had 10,000 discovery calls to make and couldn't get them off their plate fast enough. They offered to be our guinea pig to help us create a uniquely great product.
My formula for creating an obviously awesome value proposition is Generic Result + Extraordinary Delivery.
I love this framework because it's not just a great marketing hack, but also helps me develop my product in the first place. If I'm not delivering a generic result people probably don't value or understand my product in the first place. And, if I'm not delivering it in an extraordinary way then what's so special about my product?
Sales Solutions.AI's generic result was to make discovery calls. The extraordinary way was to automate them with AI. So the value proposition became "Automate discovery calls with AI". This lets my customers easily understand what the product does and how it does it.
Most startups fail because they build something no one wants. I focus on validating my product before I build it. This helps my team get immediate feedback to pivot or iterate our product before it's even built.
I designed our demo to serve as both a demonstration of our product and a discovery call. By pressing 'Start Demo' users initiate a discovery call with our own AI sales agent who pitches our product and answers any questions our customers may have about it.
I created a landing page to share our product demo to validate our product. If customers want it we can build the product, if they don't we can find out why and make improvements.
I started my design career as a project manager. This makes me extra attentive to ensuring everyone is on the same page. I visualize the experience to create a single source of truth for my team to collaborate and iterate.
A user journey map helped us shape the initial user experience and created a foundation to iterate from going forward. I especially enjoy the low barrier to entry they offer for non-designers at Sales Solutions who don't feel as intimidated to contribute ideas as they might be for wireframes and hi-fi prototypes.
The bottom sections are left blank for now. Without user feedback from a functioning product, we'd just be guessing about how users might enjoy each phase of the journey. Once we have that data we can begin to fill out the rest of the map and prioritize raising each to delightful.
One false assumption I made was that making 10,000 phone calls would work just like sending out 10,000 emails. But by working through the user flow with our CTO, I learned that we still needed to call from a single phone number which can only make one call at a time.
This uncovered more questions my designs would need to answer such as "How do we make sure sales prospects are called at the right times?"
An MVP's value proposition needs to be innovative, but it's user experience doesn't. I create an intuitive experience by designing products to feel familiar to products people already use.
I designed Sales Solutions MVP to look and feel like an email service. Each call appear in the form of an email. This makes my product feel familiar and helps users intuitively understand how it works.
Features are the superpowers that products give their users. For an MVP, I focus on only the core features that fulfill my product's obviously awesome value proposition. My goal is to validate the product with users fast so I can double-down on what works and pivot away from what doesn't.
To deliver on our MVP's value proposition I needed to enable users to do three things:
1. Train their AI. The AI needs to learn about the users company, products, and services.
2. Make discovery calls. That's why we're all here right?
3. View results from those calls. There's no point in making the calls if you don't know how they turn out.
Products should be optimized for user success. My goal is to understand what my user wants to accomplish with my product and make it as easy as possible for them to do it. This requires understanding my users mindset and circumstances to anticipate their needs before they have them.
Our users will naturally want to run a few tests to make sure their AI is properly trained. I made this easy with a 'Demo Call' button on the training page so users can easily verify how their AI will function with their clients.
Users may have training data in different forms. Some may already have PDF's with all their company's information ready to upload, others may have to compile the information manually. My design needs to accommodate both.
Users need a way to schedule who their AI sales agents will call. Integrations with CRM's take time, and manual inputs are out of the question, so I opted to allow users to upload CSV files. Many of our users already use them to track their sales prospects, and those that aren't can easily obtain one from their CRM.
It's never too early to think about a product's design system. I design products with the future in mind by creating components that can be reused to help my team design and develop products faster next time.
I introduced the modal component when configuring calls to create a focused and seamless user experience for Sales Solutions primary function. Its design is also flexible enough to scale to fit any future use cases our customers may need in the future.
A favorite quote of mine is that 'Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.' With this in mind, I focus on removing any non-essential elements from my design to keep them as simple and clear as can be.
This part was a bit tricky. I tried several iterations of color schemes to create the clearest possible visualization before settling on using just one color exclusively for the key result from each call. This helps users instantly grasp the key information from their call while minimizing visual weight.
Blank screens are confusing, particularly in complex B2B applications. Empty states are my opportunity to educate users and help them get started with their key tasks fast.
This empty state had 2 objectives. First, I needed to communicate how to create a call. Second, I needed to prepare users for what would appear once those calls were completed.
The sub-header communicates how to create a call, and the greyed out column headers prepare the user for what to expect after each calls completion.