Despite the explosion in new technologies, many salespeople are still relying on outdated, untargeted methods of reaching potential clients.
MEDIA 7: Could you give our readers a sense of the demographic of Lusha and tell us a little about your culture?
ASSAF EISENSTEIN: Lusha was founded by Assaf Eisenstein and Yoni Tserruya in 2016 with the aim of creating the world’s largest crowdsourced data community for B2B salespeople or a “Waze for salespeople.”
Before Lusha, Yoni worked as an iOS Developer and created mobile applications focusing on the user experience, while Assaf created technology solutions for HR specialists. In 2016, Yoni and Assaf met and recognized that the process for salespeople to find accurate B2B data was laborious and time-intensive. Salespeople spend approximately 65% of their time on non-sales activities, rather than on the phone pitching prospects. Salespeople often have to search multiple online sources just to get the information they need. Lusha was created as a salesperson’s personal helper, allowing salespeople to easily identify their target audience, find their future customers, and create a personal connection.
M7: Since its inception, Lusha has been helping B2B salespeople through its simple yet powerful self-service products. Could you please give us an insight into some of these products and services?
AE: Until recently, B2B sales and marketers were using a “spray and pray” approach, reaching a high volume of potential customers with low relevance. As a result, salespeople spend around 65% of their time on non-sales and administrative activities, rather than engaging potential customers. This costs time and money that could be otherwise spent on growing businesses. Lusha’s cloud-based platform provides sales professionals and teams easy access to enterprise-grade solutions, to identify their ideal target buyer, and gain data-driven insights on who they approach as a potential customer, when, and why. The community members enable Lusha to provide the most accurate data through constant validation and enrichment of its database. Lusha’s community enables salespeople to validate contact information (that you’d normally find on a business card), and company insights, which validates Lusha’s data and ensures high accuracy. The company's community approach and affordability also ensure that salespeople from organizations of all sizes have access to the data they need to optimize their sales outreach. Since February, the Lusha community has expanded from over 520,000 sales professionals and 167,000 sales organizations to 800,000 and 273,000 respectively with little signs of slowing. We have also been hard at work developing and improving our product offerings and usability, while maintaining affordability, to provide organizations of all sizes access to the top-quality data and company insights they need in order to optimize their sales outreach. We continue to prioritize data quality and accuracy, ensuring our data remains consistently of the highest quality as well as fully compliant with world-class privacy standards and requirements.
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A major issue with the current privacy regulations is that they paint all data with the same brush and don’t discriminate protection based on risk factors or exploitability.
M7: What are the top challenges you see for the industry in general and Lusha this year?
AE: The most overarching challenge I see for the industry is the broken state of affairs for B2B sales. Despite the explosion in new technologies, many salespeople are still relying on outdated, untargeted methods of reaching potential clients. These tactics are a lose-lose as they waste everyone’s time and can even damage a brand’s reputation. Many services claim to give salespeople the data they need, but they can often be partial and cumbersome solutions.
Another challenge for companies like Lusha seeking to leverage data and change the ecosystem is privacy. There is an understandable concern for data protection and strict regulations (like the GDPR and CCPA) have passed as a result. Lusha is proud to be a leader in this field, having recently received the highly valued ISO 27701 certification for processing personal identifiable information. Furthermore, Lusha is one of the only SaaS companies whose entire legal, compliance, and privacy teams are IAPP (International Association of Privacy Professionals) certified. We understand the value of data to make buyers and sellers happier while taking all the steps necessary to ensure privacy.
M7: How do you see automation and artificial intelligence impacting the B2B landscape in the near future?
AE: With the rise of the digital era, the business has become increasingly data-reliant and -driven. Having grown to recognize that a timely and accurate understanding of data can drive unprecedented productivity and results at every level of their operations, businesses have placed data at the heart of their operations. And, with consumers having grown accustomed to highly personalized customer experiences – with many even willing to provide their personal data, such as age, gender, contact information, and more, to receive it – consumer data is more easily attainable than ever before.
As a result, issues around data privacy have also come into the spotlight, becoming a growing concern, of regulators and lawmakers are clamping down on – evidenced by the introduction of GDPR and CCPA standards. While this drive to protect the privacy of consumers is well-intentioned, the implications to businesses have been significant, as limiting their access to data means limiting the services they can provide and the level of efficiency and accuracy with which they can function. A major issue with the current privacy regulations is that they paint all data with the same brush and don’t discriminate protection based on risk factors or exploitability. This means much of the ‘shallow’, publicly available data businesses use to thrive, such as job title, work email, etc, is often subjected to the same privacy standards as sensitive personal medical or financial information. In order to for these regulations to be effective without hindering business, regulators need to aim to balance consumers’ rights to data privacy with business needs. By reassessing the handling of data to differentiate what is and is not publicly available, sensitive, or potentially exploitable, we can move away from ‘blanket protection’ to redefine privacy standards that are beneficial to consumers and businesses alike.
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The exceptional quality of products released into the market at record speed is brought on by a hyper-adoption of new technologies.
M7: What do you see as the most noticeable change right now happening in the workforce, encouraged by the rise of digital technologies?
AE: The most noticeable change, I would say, is the pace. The pace at which development, production, and delivery is happening. SaaS today is characterized by speed and quality. The exceptional quality of products released into the market at record speed is brought on by a hyper-adoption of new technologies.
M7: According to you, how should start-ups approach their branding that establishes credibility, expertise, and experience?
AE: The most important things B2B brands can do to establish themselves is to know their customer and to match their strengths to the buyers they can best serve. Lusha for example always tries to establish a direct relationship with its customers, to understand how to best suit our services to their needs. We understand what we are good at, and we understand what B2B businesses want, and the best way up is to connect the two in the most streamlined way possible. Another key concept here is improvisation. The world has been changing at a dizzyingly rapid pace over the last few years, and this means unexpected shocks are becoming increasingly the norm. Those brands that can roll with the punches, adapt, and continue to meet changing consumer expectations – are the brands that will thrive.