Harshvardhan Mishra 👹

I was in my very first Sales Job, right out of college, I was more excited than scared. 

Probably that's a good thing. 🤷 

But yeah, one fine day, I asked help from a Senior Director in my team, to give me some e-mail templates & cold call scripts, if the lord had it.

Lord smirked at me, and said: "You are a wild horse Harsh, you have not been tamed yet"

My eyes wide open, in disbelief, I questioned, 'if I was a Horse all this time?  " 

First of all: "Excuse me, what??" 😮

But come to think of, I do love open grassfields, have empathy and am intelligent but still, the confusion prevailed. 🤔 

Only to realise that he had left me on my own. 

And probably that's a good thing too. 🌼 

Because dramatically getting hurt by his one small comment, I ignited fire in me, called another founder ( Sridhar - B2Brain ) and said:

"I can't take this anymore" 

"We need to build a support system" 

"He said, 'I hear you'" 

"Let's do it" 

And thus somehow a Sales Community for SaaS Sellers was born 🥂

In the midlife, it became to be known as Sales 101, and man we did and do some great fun 🤩 

- Brunches ( Mixers ) 
- Workshops 
- Rant Sessions / Zigs 

and much more. 

So that little idea is now a movement, where we want to build an ecosystem for Indian SaaS Sellers and provide a home, a village, a shoulder to take them forward together 🫂

Account Executive

Working in SMB Sales

Harshvardhan Mishra

I have been a big advocate of Generalists. 

The Jack of all trades, master of few ( or none sometimes ). 

But after doing a lot of general work, I have started to feel the following:
_____

1. General Work helps you identify what you like the most and you are good at. 

That is, you can find where you can be a specialist, by being a generalist. 
If that is clear to you without doing general work, no worries then. 

_____

2. General work is needed at different stages of the org that you are working in. 

Either in early stage, where they don't know what will work the most for the org. 

Or in the later stages, where they need to unlock new or run experiments without disturbing the core business. 

_____

3. General work helps you develop yourself really well, you build your talent pallet across fields. 

_____

4. Generalists often find it hard to express what is that they do well?

They hit a wall, no one wants them, except if they ( the org)  have that exact problem. 

_____

5. Specialists have leverage which goes way beyond the generalists but specialists have least flexibility. 

Example - Someone who built their career by doing code review or inbound lead qualification, they are really good at it, but one day suddenly their work gets assigned to AI or people at lower pay. 

They often don't have any secondary skill or expertise to fall back on. 

But in right opportunities, no one will even look at the Generalists over specialists. ( Generalists are risky, volatile and value add to a specific field is not clear at times ) 

_____

As Bruce Lee said: 

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."

____

Conclusion: 

Be a generalist early on, and then become a specialist. 

If you are a specialist already, try more things, get an edge over other specialists.

India’s OG SaaS Sales Community | Sales 101

Go from Offline to Pipeline

B2B Companies that sell to enterprises and mid-market are investing more than ever in in-person experiences.

Ssuch companies that exhibit at or attend trade shows, events and expos, use the B2Brain.com mobile app to:
- Capture leads
- Add Voice notes
- Sync to CRM
- Schedule Meeting on Calendar
- Get the #OfflineToPipeline report

Use it while exhibiting, or walking the floor
Use it with new Prospects, to accelerate pipeline Opportunities or to expand Accounts

Try it out for yourself. Take a free trial today - https://app.b2brain.com/

Before B2Brain, I spent ~15 years building and launching products.
- I was the first VP of Product and Corporate Development at InMobi, India's first Unicorn
- I launched and managed 3 products at Yahoo! India (Maps, Local, and Jobs)
- I built multiple products at Zoho, the flag-bearer of India's SaaS ecosystem

🧠 Sridhar Ranganathan

When you have built and led products at some of the most impactful companies like Yahoo Google Stripe Twitter and other startups, and are an ongoing learner, you get a perspective that is as unique as it is valuable.

These companies have lived through multiple platform shifts, and product management essentially has to steer a company’s strategy through ongoing change.

As the current startup ecosystem comes to terms with, learns about, and influences changes brought about AI, Founders and Product Leaders have their task cut out in an incredibly dynamic time.

That is why it is exciting to hear that Shreyas Doshi is doing a Product Masterclass at the AIBoomi Annual 26!

Having built and led products across Zoho Yahoo InMobi and now running B2Brain 🧠 , I can attest to the demands for Founders and Product Leaders to seek the right questions, and relevant options to answer them, be it:
- Product Strategy (market / platform / stack layer etc)
- Building the team and grooming talent
- Managing the roadmap
- Investing in UX and building a POV on what it should be (mobile/web/app/agentic/UI-less …)

The options often make one feel like they are caught between a rock and a hard place (when someone says “This PM rocks”, you know what they actually mean :).

Back to the Product Masterclass - if you’re a Founder or a Product Leader who wants to up your game amidst a lot of noise AND a bunch of signals, the investment of a couple of hours in this Masterclass is probably going to be the best couple of hours of thinking + learning + building a POV for you in March 2026.

This is a highly curated session with limited seats. So if you don’t want to miss this one, go enroll right away.

I’ve read a bunch of Shreyas’ Product Sense literature and can’t wait to engage in an in-person discussion. See you there.

#AIBoomi 

Shruti Kapoor Avinash Raghava Sehar Dabur Vivek Khandelwal Shivangi Sahu Keerthi Madhu Sandeep Todi

Open article: The Product Masterclass with Shreyas Doshi by annual.aiboomi.org

The Product Masterclass with Shreyas Doshi

“Eat your own dog food”

“Ok. Hold my coffee…”

Yesterday I was at a trade show and met about 23 different people in their booths.

Just to keep track of each of those discussions, I used B2Brain to take a pic of their badges, and used voice to add notes from those convos.

I also offered to do a detailed product demo and how it might help them with future shows - mind you, most of these companies have anywhere between 4-15 more shows just this year.

And just like that, using voice, I was able to get time on their calendars for the coming week.

After approx 4.5 hours of walking, talking, and walking the talk, here’s what my next week’s calendar looks like - the orange colored slots are all from this one show one day.

You ask what about Tuesday-Thursday?

I’ll be at another show those days, and will expect the next couple weeks on my calendar to fill up.

Trade shows are significant investment in terms of time, money, and effort.

In person face time is super valuable and context rich.

Not all conversations pass the qualification test - be it for the exhibitor or the attendee.

It’s a shame that exhibitors treat all visitors to their booth the same, by sending the same generic “thank you for visiting, we will lie quietly in your spam box” email.

Make a difference to your visitor’s business and to your deal pipeline, with B2Brain 🧠  

Get it here. I’ll take back my coffee.

https://lnkd.in/gmatBSN7

You’re welcome!

Excited to be at the MD&M Trade Shows #MDMWest in Anaheim CA

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Hemant Inamdar is one of the calmest and most collected people I’ve known. Even though it’s been 7 years since our last in person catch up, the couple hours I spent with him over dinner seemed like we’ve been meeting a lot more frequently! Thanks for the time and chat Hemant, and all the best on your new role!

How many times have you returned from a trade show, with a bunch of business cards yet to be processed, scanned, and notes added?

Sometimes these cards will be in your pocket, sometimes in your laptop bag, some strewn around in the carry on because you had very little time to complete the packing and leave for the airport ...

Sounds familiar?
We've all been there, perhaps a dozen times over

While your mind is on the weekend,

Get home, spend time with family, put your feet up.

There's still some chore to be done ...

Come sunday evening, you suddenly remember that a bunch of cards have to be scanned and notes added.

Grrr!!

10am Monday is the pipeline review call, and this event will be high on the agenda
Why will it not be?
Your company spent $45K just to put up a 20x10,
There were 6 of you at the booth, taking turns, meeting visitors, doing demos, 
At the end of the 3 day expo, your team had met over 245 visitors!!

Back to the flight

Now you're really looking forward to the weekend
Make it one where you don't have trade show hangover tasks
Use B2Brain 🧠 to get on top of all the pending cards to be scanned and notes to be added
Make the cab ride from airport to your home a peaceful, chill one

Check the sequence of screenshots for what I did while on my way home from the #MDMWest show last week

And if you want a peaceful ride back home after a tiring show, here is the route: https://lnkd.in/gmatBSN7

On the flight back home from a trade show, get productive with B2Brain

Scan a business card and add relevant notes to it

Rinse and repeat the process until all pending cards are scanned, all while your phone is on Airplane Mode

Once you land, and the phone connects to data again, the cards scanned while offline sync to the server automatically

Have a comfortable and peaceful ride back home, knowing that the entire weekend is in your full control and there's no spillover from trade show tasks! Enjoy your weekend

A few months ago, Vignesh Ganesan shared a very interesting use case if you were an exhibitor

“At events, visitors come in waves to your booth. When there’s a rush at the booth, you don’t have much time between attending to visitors. Then you have to keep discussion notes in memory and later in the day, recap + add to notes. At this moment, B2Brain 🧠 is difficult to use because it expects one to add notes to each scan before moving onto the next.”

It was a very interesting use case / scenario that made us think about how users would use the app in real world.

We rolled out Recent Leads exactly to solve this problem.

I tested it quite exhaustively at a recent show and it makes the user mighty productive.

If you’re at a show, expecting lot of visitors during rush hour, here’s your panacea. 

https://lnkd.in/gmatBSN7

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The Battle

Harshvardhan Mishra

🧠 Sridhar Ranganathan

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The Battle

Harshvardhan Mishra

🧠 Sridhar Ranganathan

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Harshvardhan Mishra's LinkedIn Performance

Performance Score🧠 Sridhar Ranganathan's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreHarshvardhan Mishra's LinkedIn Performance