Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• Ganesh Shankar describes his company and the benefits of RFPIO’s software
• Carl J. Cox and Ganesh discuss the reasons for RFPIO’s rapid growth
• What does Ganesh do to foster a healthy company culture in a growing workplace?
• Ganesh explains RFPIO’s authentic core values and why they work for his company
• How does Ganesh keep up his energy and create balance in his life?
• Why Ganesh defines success as a moving target
• Ganesh shares a book recommendation

In this episode…

There’s something special that exists in a start-up’s company culture. Driven people band together in their sweat and tears to celebrate every small win. Sure, it can be hard work, but it’s also rewarding. So what happens when your company moves forward from start-up to success? Saying goodbye to the long, grueling hours is one thing, but how do you hold onto the vibrant energy and innovation that fledgling businesses tend to create?

Ganesh Shankar, CEO and Co-founder of RFPIO, is not a serial entrepreneur. When his company started to find success, he wasn’t interested in turning his attention over to the next best thing. He wanted to find a way to enjoy leaving the struggle behind while keeping all the best parts of a start-up alive. Today, RFPIO is a thriving and growing business. And, if tons of awards and recognition for software and company culture are any indication, it looks like Ganesh has managed to untangle the mystery of blending together the best of both worlds.

In this episode of the Measure Success Podcast, Carl J. Cox is joined by Ganesh Shankar, CEO and Co-founder of RFPIO, to talk about software, growth, and company culture. Ganesh explains how his software helps other companies boost their sales, why RFPIO’s core values aren’t the typical ones trumpeted by other companies, and the reason he views success as a continually evolving metric. Plus, Ganesh reveals some of the unique ways he’s kept his company culture intact as his workforce grows.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Ganesh Shankar on LinkedIn
• RFPIO
• Email RFPIO for more information: info@RFPIO.com
• Skip Newberry on LinkedIn
• Technology Association of Oregon (TAO)
• K1
• The BVP Nasdaq Emerging Cloud Index
• RandomCoffee
• Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets by Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead, and Kevin Maney
• 40 Strategy
• Contact 40 Strategy
• Carl J. Cox on LinkedIn

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is sponsored by 40 Strategy.

40 Strategy provides strategic planning and consulting to help organizations realize and achieve their dreams by creating and measuring KPIs for success.

Unfortunately, most organizations only spend 2% of their time—or about 40 hours per year—on building an effective strategy.

Increasing the success of those 40 hours is what 40 Strategy does because your success is their passion—and that’s why organizations look to them for guidance.

Not only does 40 Strategy help you craft and implement an effective strategy, but they’ll also work to facilitate teams with proven practices and help with your scenario planning.

Harvard research shows that you can triple your success when you use the right Key Performance Indicators. Who doesn’t want that?

If you have questions, you can reach out through their website or email them at catch@40strategy.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Measure Success Podcast where we feature top leaders on how they measure success in their business and life. Now, let’s learn from their experiences.

Carl J. Cox 0:18

Carl J. Cox here and I’m the host of the Measure Success Podcast where I talk with leaders about effective strategies that inspire success. This episode is brought to you by 40 Strategy at 40 Strategy. We provide strategic planning, consulting, to help organize organizations realize and achieve their dreams Ganesh, basically we help companies create strategic plans and measure the right KPIs for success. Basically, unfortunately, most companies only spend about 2% of their time or about 40 hour to 40 team hours per year building an effective strategy. And I don’t know about you, but that feels kind of crazy. It’s just that small amount, don’t you agree?

Ganesh Shankar 0:55

as I do, we know a lot. A lot of energy has been spent that Yeah, absolutely.

Carl J. Cox 0:58

Absolutely. And so at 40 Strategy, your success is our passion. That’s why organizations call on us to help. Not only do we come up with strategy, but when we facilitate teams with proven practices. Harvard research shows that when you actually use the right key performance indicators, you can triple your success. And I don’t know about you Ganesh, but I think everybody would want something like that you agree. Do do. Absolutely. So email us today at like, catch@40strategy.com, or at 40strategy.com and our website and you can learn more. So before we get to introduce our guest today, we’d like to like to have a shout out to Skip Newberry. He’s the CEO for Technology Association of Oregon. If it wasn’t for him, Ganesh and I would not have met, it was actually a dinner that we met and it was a wonderful conversation. And through that we that was when back in 2018, when you actually got some your first investment from K1 for RFPIO. And with that, we’ll start the introduction for Ganesh Shankar. Ganesh is the chief executive officer and one of the founders of RFPIO, the industry’s leading software for sought response management. using cloud based automation technology. Our Pio fills a critical enough and missing part of the sales process and helps organizations increase their sales win rates. Across the board. Ganesh has a very strong background in product management and today leverages that experience to the to the Excellence for his employees and customers of RFPIO. He is recognized from early young as Entrepreneur of the Year in 2020. He was voted top CEOs to work for in Portland, top CEOs for women and top CEOs for diversity by by comparable and included in the Portland’s business Journal’s 40 under 40. And with that, Ganesh, welcome to the Measure Success Podcast.

Ganesh Shankar 1:03

That’s called an honor to be here and appreciate you inviting me for this podcast. I’ve listened to this pretty insightful. I’m looking forward to it.

Carl J. Cox 3:05

Thank you. And and so while we want to start out tell us a little bit more about RFPIO and for for people who haven’t been haven’t been your website?

Ganesh Shankar 3:14

Yeah. RFPIO is a SaaS based product that helps companies to respond to RFP security questions or any sort of responses that they have to fill out during the pre and post sales process. That’s where we come into play. Our customers use our platform to seamlessly collaborate with internal stakeholders to complete those questionnaires. And then completed once that is completed, they can send it to the prospective customer of theirs. So we basically help them to centralize those responses that they typically use in those RFPs are fives are facts, you have various different kinds of questionnaires that has been used during the sales process. That’s where we come into play.

Carl J. Cox 4:01

And I’m curious when when organizations end up using your tools, what type of benefits do they experience and get does it does it end up is it quicker for the process for them typically, to do the sales cycle, do they save money in the process and they get higher win rates, what do you what do you typically see? Oh,

Ganesh Shankar 4:17

oh, first, you know, thing is improving efficiency. When I say improving efficiency, you know, when a person or when a company receives an RFP, the RFPs that are tend to be received by the sales reps are the frontline force of the company who will receive the RFP, it may mean a document when an RFP has been received is no longer a document, it becomes essentially a project you know, you you have to plan for people who are going to be part of the responding team, you know, not one person because RFPs need a village to complete. It’s not one person job, you know, he or she cannot complete one person as such, it needs a village to complete it. So when They receive an RFP, they can upload it into RFPIO what RFPIO does is basically it designates into smaller pieces, it’s more, you know, it can dissect into smaller sections. And those sections can be easily assigned to the quote unquote what are called as subject matter experts in our sales people can take on the the pricing and about the company, but anything beyond that when they need, you know, subject matter expertise responses, like you know, from finance team, from operations team, from product team from engineering team, they can route those questions to those different teams using RFP or platform. You know, the benefit of benefit for the subject matter experts is when they received such questionnaires to respond, they don’t need to break their head because they just completed that last year RFA automates that process by automatically filling those responses, what we call it as a recommendation. And then we use artificial intelligence to bring on those recommended answer based on how you have responded to questions historically. So a subject matter expert, they don’t need to break their head a lot. They just need to fill out those systems so that they can become a reviewer of the content. And then they complete it. And they can say, Yes, I’m done. The sales rep gets an alert saying, okay, the subject matter expert is done. Second subject matter, but it’s done so that they can get a consolidated view, and then they will now know exactly how much worse portion of the RFP is being completed. Otherwise, it becomes a manual process. And so that’s where we come into play, you know, that becomes a manual process you have to track because of that you asked me about what is the immediate gain. Because of this efficiency, what we have seen working with 1000s of customers, is today they are responding to more RFPs that they were not able to do before, because they had to spend a lot of energy and time, because of responding to more RFPs they are bringing in more revenue to their employer, which is their company, you know, that is where we are part of revenue generating revenue generation process in RPL, helps our customers to bring in more business revenue.

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