Investor Proposes Action-Based Solutions for Digital Sales
KUALA LUMPUR - Digital marketing agency Gapture Malaysia's - Stanley Chee said he co-founded the company in Malaysia with the focus in performance media.
Professionally trained in Arizona, USA, he also worked as a software engineer before returning to Malaysia where he co-founded OffGamers before Gapture Malaysia.
He also invests in other businesses and start-ups. He told Malay Mail on what inspired him to start his business adventures here, and where he is heading with his many ideas and projects. Here are his answers to the questions posed by Malay Mail in this interview series on EO Malaysia, the local arm of The Entrepreneurs’ Organization, a global non-profit organization which seeks to “engage leading entrepreneurs to learn and grow”:
Malay Mail: How did you start your operations in Malaysia?
After running a digital agency and generating many sales leads for our property developer clients for the past six years, I saw a gap in existing customer relationship management (CRM) softwares on the lack of ability to track what the salesperson do with the leads.
All CRMs available in the market now are record-based. In other words, the CRMs rely solely on the salesperson’s entries to (honestly) update a lead’s status. That inspired us to come up with an action-based solution, in which the records are updated based on what the salesperson actually did instead of what they said they did.
What is behind the business ideas you are proposing here?
SalesCandy is a mobile app which we created for installation into the smartphone of sales personnel. It will instantly route any online or offline sales inquiry to any available salesperson who is ‘online’ (think Uber driver as an example), reducing the first-call time (from salesperson to the lead) from the usual one week to less than 15 minutes, while the lead is still super hot.
Besides that, the app tracks how long a salesperson is online, the percentage of leads accepted when he was online, how long it takes him on average to make the first call, a number of calls he made on average per lead along with each the duration of each call.
This holds a salesperson accountable for their actions (or the lack of it). The salesperson could no longer get away by simply answering to the manager, “I called but all the leads are not good” because the app tracks every single possible metrics based on the actions that they have taken.
What do you think is needed for entrepreneurs to succeed in Malaysia?
Ideas are cheap, I am writing a book on this, but the prompt execution and good timing are what matters. Since you can’t really control the timing, perseverance is important.
Can you explain the services offered by your company?
Right now, we are targeting property developers for our beta version. We will be developing and expanding this app to any businesses that:
handle more than 100 leads per month.
have a sales team of five or more.
the primary device for the salesperson is his/her mobile phone.
offer a fixed product or service.
Companies that fit into these criterias are property developers, real estate sales agencies, tertiary education institutes, automobiles, aesthetic/beauty/haircare/slimming services, financial investment products, and insurance companies.
What do you think of innovation in Malaysia?
I think that innovation is the ability to adopt current technologies in different area and industries. For example, innovation in apps such as SalesCandy can make life easier for salespeople and sales managers by using existing technologies and devices.
Tell us a bit more about yourself, your education, career choices and future plans.
I am a serial entrepreneur with a degree in computer system engineering. I’m also a Google Regional Trainer on Adwords and a Mensa Member with an IQ of 164. I will continue to be an entrepreneur and eventually retire to become a start-up investor.
Tell us something that you find awesome about Malaysia’s business environment today?
The diverse languages and cultures in the Malaysian market post a great challenge in coming up with a software that fits everyone, and an algorithm that matches leads to salespeople can become complicated. However, overcoming this awesome challenge will mean that any solution can be easily adapted to a new market.
Download the Malay Mail page here (PDF).