My villain origin story: 182-day sales cycle. That's what killed my first startup – 100K users, great product, zero sales velocity. Now I'm back with MerakiPeople, building AI agents that make sure no one else dies from death-by-CRM.
Here's the problem every sales leader knows but won't admit: your reps spend 3 hours daily on admin instead of selling. They're updating 5 systems that don't talk to each other, writing follow-ups that sound like robots, and wrestling with CRMs designed by sadists. Meanwhile your competitors' reps are actually selling because they've automated the grunt work.
Enter MerakiPeople: AI agents that kill busywork (70% less admin), coach in real-time (turning B-players into quota-crushers), and live where reps actually work – Slack, Gmail, CRM – no new tabs to ignore. The proof: SDR ramp down from 6 months to 6 weeks, pipeline velocity up 47%, and one VP Sales told me "my reps stopped rage-quitting over Salesforce."
Why listen to a failed founder? Because I've paid the tuition. After scaling myELSA to 100K users as CEO then watching it die from sales inefficiency, I became a GenAI consultant, implementing AI at SKF and ITC for 200% productivity gains, training 1000+ professionals at Hero Vired, and learning exactly what kills sales velocity.
Like Klopp's Liverpool, I believe systems beat individual talent, but unlike football, you can't blame VAR when you lose deals – you need AI that turns your playbook into plays that actually run. MerakiPeople agents automatically research prospects, draft follow-ups that get responses, update Salesforce without human suffering, and surface deal risks before they become deal killers. We're not replacing salespeople; we're giving them their superpower back: actually talking to customers.
Every founder has that metric that haunts them – mine is 182 days, our average sales cycle, and I refuse to let another founder experience that nightmare. Your competitors are already using AI in sales; the question is whether you'll implement it right or become another cautionary tale.
Three ways to engage: Sales leaders, see it work in 15 minutes at merakipeople.ai/demo. Fellow founders, swap war stories at calendly.com/sanjoy-thrivetogether. Everyone else, follow for daily insights and occasional Liverpool analogies.
Second-time founders build different because we've already broken everything once – now we know what not to break.

Sanjoy Paul

We've all been taught that marketing is a science. So why aren't we practicing it?
I've been speaking with a lot of sales VPs lately, and one theme keeps emerging:
We know the funnel. We know personalization works. We know leads need to be nurtured through touchpoints.
And yet—the reality?
Lead comes in → cold call → generic WhatsApp blast → 1.5-2% conversion → repeat.
When I ask why, I hear some version of: "This is how everyone does it. It's working for now."
But is 2% conversion really "working"?
Here's what concerns me:
The organizations investing in AI-driven personalization, in scientific sales processes, in context-engineered outreach—they're compounding gains. Every month. Every quarter.
Meanwhile, the "I don't need a CRM, I run sales in Excel" approach? It works until it doesn't.
Your relationships and reputation might carry you today. But your competition is building the same trust—through personalized content, intelligent nurturing, and consistent value—in a fraction of the time.
GenAI isn't about replacing salespeople. It's about giving them superpowers to do what they already know they should be doing—but at scale.
This isn't a prediction. It's already happening.
The question is: which side of the curve do you want to be on?
What's your take? Are we collectively underestimating how fast AI-driven sales will become the baseline?
If this resonates and you want to explore how AI can transform your sales process without replacing the human touch—let's talk.
📅 Book 15 minutes with me by sending a DM 🌐 Or explore: merakipeople.ai
#SalesEnablement #GenAI #B2BSales #SalesLeadership #AIinSales #StartupIndia #SalesTransformation
Shohini Ghosh MerakiPeople

From EdTech CEO (100K Users) to Sales Tech Founder | MerakiPeople | GenAI Strategy → Sales Transformation | Author, Speaker & Trainer| Failed entrepreneur

As we continue growing and riding this roller coaster of an GenAI startups, we believe we now have suffered enough to bring some sort of reliability in the way we implement our solutions and start predicting consistent outcomes with pretty good accuracy.
And yes, achieving work life balance for the whole team :).

MerakiPeople Shohini Ghosh

Building Better Sales Teams Through 20 Years of Cross-Industry Learning | MerakiPeople Product Lead | Here to Transform How People Communicate, Not Just to Sell

Our word for 2026: Consistent.

Not flashy. Not disruptive. Consistent.

Sanjoy Paul and I just recorded our Top 5 New Year Resolutions—and they're less about ambition, more about discipline.

Here's what we're committing to:
#ReimagineWorkflows. Gen AI has outgrown our old processes. Time to stop asking "how can AI fit into what we do?" and start asking "what becomes possible now?"

#WorkLifeBalance. 2025 was 14-16 hour days and weekends. Unsustainable. 2026 is about thinking more, hustling smarter.

#BuildCommunity. We taught 1,500 people across West Bengal to build apps they never imagined they could. Now we scale that.

#GetProfitable. We lost ₹50 lakhs. We want 150 clients. We want Meraki to pay for itself—and us.

#PutTheCustomerAtTheCenter. Not the technology. The problem. The human.

That's the list. Honest, unglamorous, necessary.

Watch us make these promises ⬇️

What's your one word for 2026?

You're tracking sales velocity wrong. And it's making you ignore your biggest bottleneck.

Most teams calculate sales velocity as: (Leads × Win Rate × Deal Size) ÷ Sales Cycle Length

Then they obsess over the numerator. More leads. Higher win rates. Bigger deals.

But here's what the data actually shows:

A 10% reduction in sales cycle length has 3x more impact on velocity than a 10% increase in leads.

Why? Because cycle time is in the denominator. It's multiplicative, not additive.

Yet 73% of sales leaders we surveyed focus their team's energy on top-of-funnel volume.

The real villain? Time spent per deal in "research and prep" stages.

For Indian SaaS teams, reps spend 6-8 hours per qualified opp doing:
→ Company research
→ Stakeholder mapping
→ Context gathering
→ Personalization prep

That's where cycle time bleeds. That's your bottleneck.

At MerakiPeople, we've seen teams cut this prep time by 80% using AI co-pilots for research and context—while keeping the human connection in actual conversations.

Result? 40% faster sales cycles without touching lead volume.

Stop optimizing the numerator when your denominator is the problem.

What's your team's average prep time per qualified opp? Drop it below.

It's a cool way of explaining what we do. And it's completely AI generated. 
Connect with us to know more about us or just how we generated this kickass video.
MerakiPeople

Hot take: Your sales team isn't the problem.

79% of leads lost. 84% of training forgotten in 3 months. 70% of prospects gone due to bad follow-up.

These aren't people failures. They're infrastructure failures.

I spent two decades building learning systems—from CNBC newsrooms to Infosys training floors to EdTech platforms. And the pattern is always the same: we blame individuals for systemic breakdowns.

Sales teams aren't struggling because they lack skill. They're struggling because they're flying blind—no context, no preparation, no way to learn from what's actually working.

That's why Sanjoy Paul and I built MerakiPeople as a Human + AI Sales Engine.

Not AI that replaces the salesperson. AI that handles the mechanical so humans can be fully human—building real relationships, asking the right questions, solving real problems.

We just released a 6-minute explainer walking through exactly how it works.
https://lnkd.in/gEwncUCU

Curious—when's the last time your sales infrastructure actually made your team's job easier?

This is so true.. The biggest challenge still remains on the engagement rates and higher CAC and with GenAI coming in we are hoping for more profitability kicking in.

India’s edtech didn’t fail because the idea was wrong.
It failed because it was scaled too fast, with too much money.
As Byju’s and Unacademy collapsed under excess, a quieter group of companies stayed the course, building slowly, rebuilding trust, and holding on to the promise that money alone could never deliver.

By Nikhil Patwardhan

Read more, link in the comments.

The quiet comeback of edtech

63% of CRMs fail within 18 months. It's not the tool. It's not the training. It's this one thing.

Friction cost.

Your sales team doesn't resist your CRM because they're lazy. They resist it because every minute logging data is a minute NOT talking to customers.

The math is brutal:
- 30 minutes of daily CRM hygiene
- 5 deals in pipeline per rep
- That's 2.5 hours/week updating fields nobody reads

Why CRM projects actually fail:

→ 41% cite "too time-consuming" (Forrester)
→ 79% of sales data goes unused (CSO Insights)
→ Reps see zero personal ROI for their effort

The villain origin story: We built systems that serve executives, not reps. Clean dashboards for leadership. Carpal tunnel for frontline sellers.

At MerakiPeople, we don't ask reps to feed more data into systems. Our AI co-pilot captures context automatically during conversations—research, next steps, qualification signals—then syncs it. The rep focuses on connection. The system handles documentation.

CRM adoption isn't a change management problem. It's a value exchange problem.

Stop asking reps to do more admin. Start giving them tools that do admin FOR them.

What's the #1 reason your team avoids your CRM?

We helped one of India's largest EdTechs turn 50,000 daily Meritto leads into actual conversations. Here's how GenAI changed the game.
Most admission teams are drowning in data while starving for context.
Your counselor sees: "Lead #47382 - Inquiry submitted"
Our GenAI sees: "Parent called twice, downloaded fee structure, hasn't opened curriculum PDF. Price-sensitive. Ready for testimonial video."
The difference? Memory architecture.
We built a Meritto integration that converts every interaction—2-minute check-ins to 18-minute deep dives—into chronological intelligence. Not scattered data points. Complete stories.
What this unlocked:
→ Personalized follow-ups that reference actual conversations, not templates → AI-powered lead prioritization based on behavioral patterns that actually convert → Predictive timing: when to call, what to send, how to close → Zero hallucinations. Zero duplicate data. 100% verified intelligence.
The result? Admission teams that walk into every call already knowing the prospect's journey. Sales that feels like service. Conversion that feels like enrollment.
For educational institutions still treating leads like numbers:
You don't need a better CRM. You need better memory.
GenAI at scale isn't about automation. It's about giving your humans superpowers.
We did it for one of the largest. Want to reimagine your admissions process?
Let's talk.
#EdTech #Meritto #GenerativeAI #AdmissionsTech #EducationInnovation #HigherEd

Aetna, a CVS Health Company

Staff Software Development Engineer

ValueMomentum

Sr. Lead Programmer Analyst

Technosoft Corp.

CCM consutant

Infosys

* Created different healthcare related correspondences using HP Exstream in Mainframes.
*Experienced in advanced features of HP Exstream (V6, V7, V8).
*Working experience in GMC inspire designer, automation, Dynamic Communication
*Experienced in xPression document composition software
*Worked on post processing tools like stream weaver.
*Experienced in MVS system ( Cobol, JCL< DB2)

Senior Associate Consultant

Technology Analyst

Customer Communication Management, Document composition solution install

Senior Systems Engineer

DOCCCM professional with working experience in various document management software like Opentext/HP Exstream, Quadient Inspire, SmartCOMM,EMC expression. Around 10+ years of experience in Correspondence management.

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