“The Best One Yet”: A Busy and Productive Q2 at Glyphic
Q2 has been incredibly busy for us at Glyphic. Not only did we continue shipping new features, but we also doubled our sales (again!) and welcomed Todd Jenkins as our Head of Sales. We also finally took major steps to professionalize our sales team operations (which one can say was long overdue for a sales tech startup like ours!)
We spent a lot of time talking to over 200 sales teams across the globe last quarter. There's been a lot of discussion about the challenges in sales these days, and we’ve been hearing these concerns from our prospects and customers alike. I wanted to take a moment to share some of what we've learned, in hopes that it might resonate with others out there.
The common thread? Everyone is feeling the crunch and yet they are drowning in data.
One recurring issue is the amount of time sales reps spend on admin tasks. Many teams reported that their reps are overwhelmed with manual data entry, note-taking, and CRM updates, leaving less time for actual selling.
Regarding CRMs, we’ve heard some horror stories about messy, outdated data. It's no wonder forecasting and pipeline management are such pain points.
A lot of sales leaders also expressed frustration with coaching and developing their teams. It's challenging to provide effective coaching without the insights needed to understand what's happening in the sales process. Additionally, with reps scattered across different locations, it’s tough to maintain conversation quality and consistently reinforce best practices. Several leaders mentioned wanting more objective data on rep performance beyond just the activity numbers.
On the flip side, many reps struggle to juggle all the context and details across long, complex sales cycles. Recapping months of conversations before a big meeting can be quite a task.
We also heard from several companies who’ve invested in conversation intelligence tools but aren't seeing the ROI they hoped for. The data is somewhere there, but turning it into actionable insights remains a challenge.
For earlier-stage companies, a big pain point seems to be the lack of process and visibility as they scale. Several founders talked about the difficulties of growing from a scrappy team of 2-3 to a fully-fledged sales organization (just like we are now).
So, what's the solution?
I won't try to sell you on what we're doing at Glyphic, but the takeaway is clear: we need to help sales teams capture, analyze, and leverage the data within sales conversations.
We’re building something to address these challenges, and it’s validating to see these issues mentioned repeatedly by so many different teams.
As a sales team ourselves, we definitely made our share of mistakes, like engaging with teams too small or too large for us to service right now.
As I review the data over the next week or so, I plan to share some of our learnings here. Stay tuned, and thanks for being part of our journey!