Lithuania-based AskToSell, an AI startup, announced that it has raised €100K in a pre-seed round of funding led by Startup Wise Guys and Specialist VC.
The company says it will use the funds to deploy a sales automation solution for small and medium-sized businesses.
Startup Wise Guys also invested in urban logistics firm ZITICITY, the previous startup established by AskToSell’s co-founders Laimonas Noreika and Karolis Januškas.
“Seeing their grit and teamwork, we were sure we’d invest in any new venture they build,” says Cristobal Alonso, CEO of Startup Wise Guys Global.
“And here we are, being the first believers again. AskToSell is solving a real and large problem and the team is well positioned to grow rapidly in the sales automation to SMBs market,” he adds.
ZITICITY became one of the main motives for the development of AskToSell. While growing ZITICITY, Noreika and Januškas discovered that SMBs process smaller deal sizes and must close more deals to cover their operational costs.
However, increasing deal volumes can lead to burnout among sales reps. It also significantly inflates customer acquisition costs to the detriment of the unit economics. This issue eventually leads to poor financial health, even pushing the business to close its doors.
Automating repetitive tasks
AskToSell platform enables businesses to use AI technology in performing human sales reps’ tasks, including pitching products, contacting leads, handling objections, and closing deals.
“Sales reps hate these repetitive tasks and copy-paste transactional sales, so implementing AskToSell will give you a lot of fans in the company and enable reps to focus on bigger deals,” says Noreika.
The startup claims its platform has “superhuman-like performance” that lowers customer acquisition costs by 10 to 30 times. It ensures that the unit economics of the business remains healthy.
Deploying automated agents also resolves several issues commonly encountered in traditional sales processes, such as failing to follow up on leads in a timely manner and missing activity goals. Companies can also avoid the tedious recruitment steps for sales reps if the need to scale arises.
AskToSell says that customers can activate its platform in a matter of minutes. The customer’s tasks are defining product offerings, uploading leads, and assigning automated gents. Sales reps only need to approve offers and let the AI agents do the work automatically.
SMBs can scale faster
In Europe, SMBs represent around 99 per cent of the region’s economy. In addition to supporting half of Europe’s gross domestic products, these businesses drew over 100 million workers.
The EU encourages small to medium-sized enterprises to transition toward a digital and sustainable economy. However, based on last year’s data, only 30 per cent of micro-enterprises took measures to enhance digitalisation, which includes automation. It makes these small companies lag in competitiveness than larger enterprises.
There are various barriers to automating business processes among SMBs in Europe, such as the perception that AI technologies are too expensive. Therefore, these businesses require affordable solutions to help automate their processes, including sales.
According to AskToSell, automating and personalising sales processes enables companies to grow revenue at a faster rate.
Besides ensuring profitability, automating sales allows the company to focus on other core business activities like product development and customer service. They can offer more innovative products and maintain customer loyalty.
Read the orginal article: https://siliconcanals.com/news/startups/asktosell-bags-100k/
