Atif: Okay, so now that I have your consent, we'll begin with, if you can, please give me a brief

overview
of what is insurance industry of Pakistan? In your opinion, what is it like? And what is the role of smart
benefits in it? And how does it play in the industry?

Sibtain: Right? Sure. So, my name is Sibtain. And I'm the CEO and founder of smart benefits. Its
employee health benefits platform. So primarily, we help companies of all sizes, be it a small company or
five employees to a 5000 employee company looking to offer benefits to employees like health
insurance and other wellness products, we help them with that entire process. And with regards to your
question, was it it was about where the insurance industry is?

Atif: What are the industry dynamics? Who are your competitors? And who are your customers?

Sibtain: Right? So we work with multiple insurance companies. So we work like a marketplace, An
insurance broker, if you put it very blatantly. So, we work with insurance companies like Jubilee, RMG,
IGI, TPL. All these are our insurance partners, official insurance partners, and we distribute their
products. And as I explained, our customers are actually SMEs, technology companies, services
companies, basically any company wants to get insurance plans.

Atif: Can you name a few for us to get the idea.

Sibtain: Have you heard of Dastageer, Limelight, routers is a cybersecurity firm, quite a few others as
well. So long list of about 350 customers that we have, who have taken our services. And your question
about insurance industry as a as in Pakistan, just to give you some background, so $2 billion worth of
insurance premium, which is which are underwritten every year, okay. And 60% of that is underwritten
by the life insurance business, which is the unit link investment based products. The other 40% is
actually non live general insurance industry where we talk about car insurance, marine, fire, travel
insurance, health insurance, so all that comes under that. So it's a $2 billion. industry there are about 10
million policyholders in pakiStan are 220 million people. So, yeah, the penetration is one of the lowest in
the region. Yeah, and there are about 30 insurance companies active in Pakistan and and about 10
Insurance Brokers operating in this space.

Atif: So you are directly competing with the brokers and not the companies, companies are on boarded
with you?

Sibtain: So we also kind of compete with insurance companies as well because they have a direct sales
force team as well. And they also obviously approach customers businesses for you know, employee
health benefits. So we do compete with them as well, but we are also partners with them with our
competitors are obviously insurance brokers who are already in this space today.

Atif: Okay, so coming to the sales part, what is the sales process like Like usually insurance industry has
call centers and ground Salesforce, and digital presence So how is the sales structure smart benefits?
Like? How do you explain it?

Sibtain: if you're asking about me, my business or overall industry.

Atif: your business specifically but you can mention about industry as well.

Sibtain: So industry is primarily made who the distribution is sales, were primarily used two channels, a
direct sales team, which are on foot, mostly,very few insurance companies have a digital footprint. And
even if they have a digital footprint, they actually do very little business from there. Most of the business
is actually coming through the sales team which are deployed around customers could directly approach
through referral network to directly their own network. The second is the banks. So a lot of insurance
companies have partnered with banks, and that's where they sell insurance from which is Life Insurance
primarily. And they call it bank assurance. Third is partners like us insurance brokers, aggregators, third
party distributors who sell their product on their behalf. If you talk about what smart benefits does, so
smart benefits is in a b2b space. Our model is a bit hybrid, it is not completely digital, it is not completely
offline. The the touch point initial touch point for our target customers is primarily digital, where they
would come across our platform and they would, you know, see all the options there. And then they
would request for more details. Since the plans which we offer right now for most of the companies to
smaller companies, they have very limited requirements. But when you talk about large organizations,
they have very customized requirements. So you can't completely fulfill that digitally on the website or
or making it happen over a phone call. It needs a lot of discussion and going back and forth primarily
with the HR and the finance team. So we have a Salesforce team in Karachi and Lahore who would reach
out to customers and then take the discussion forward with them on a one to one basis and then
pitching them the solution offering them everything.

Atif: Okay, you spoke about having Salesforce. So while you are hiring Salesforce, or your HR team is
hiring Salesforce, in your opinion, what are the key qualities? What do you expect from your Salesforce
to ideal salesperson Application Manager?

Sibtain: Well, one of the things that I’d say is, there are more don'ts than then dos actually. So what I
don't look for is a person from insurance background. So because there are certain ways, insurance is,
you know, well, I'm not going to be a good say blanket, like 40 50% of the sales team is actually made up
of people who have worked in the insurance industry in the past, but you have to really filter it out
because insurance has practices. Pakistan is not to blame for but internationally because it's because
insurance is primarily a piece of paper that you're selling. It's a promise, right? It's not tangible. You're
saying that if something happens, we'll do this right. And when you do that, it's it's I can say anything to
you right and just to convince you just to make it really rosy and very viable for you. To negate that, first
to look at is integrity thing. For me, the biggest thing is integrity.

Because we are selling something, we are pitching something, which is based on a lot of trust, nobody,
no HR person, no business, no individual would go and actually read the policies, you know, line by line
and understand what the terms and conditions are. So you have to really, you know, have that integrity
to really be upfront with customers, when you're pitching this whole thing. So integrity for me is one of
the most important thing. The second is attitude.

Primarily, again, because insurance is a product which needs a lot of pushing, which needs a lot of
convincing, which needs a lot of clarity to the end customer to really make them realize the need, only
when you got attitude. because there are a lot of rejections and sales is you get you know, 95% rejection
Yeah, so 5% is actually is what your approval rate is. So you need to have that attitude to really make
through this, you know, this this line of work.

Third, I would say someone who's who has his own ambition, you know, who is ambitious person.
Because if you have ambitions, then you can succeed in this sales role because sales old is more of a self
starter role rather than someone who would give you work right?
So someone who has a self driven and we drive to earn money and interact socially. all that only comes
when you have certain ambitions in life, right? If you are a person who doesn't have ambitions, then say
that is not for you, man. Yeah, true. So yeah, these three things are really important.

Atif: Okay, great. What's the structure and size of your Salesforce? Like, particularly smart benefits? Like
are they representative executive managers, kidney stages, instruction cache, for size kidney?

Sibtian: So right now, this is a small team, we have 12 people in the sales force. Okay. So it's a very
general body simple structure. There are two business heads. One is based in Karachi other is based in
Lahore. So basically, South or Central breaker. You know, the guy who's was the business head, he has
these people under him. he defined the roles based on their targets, which is based on their, you know,
their seniority in terms of how much experience they have. So there are people who are managers, and
there are people who are executives. So but they all work on their own. It's like they have independent
work. They're not like working together on same account. Yes, they have the autonomy to achieve the
targets. Yeah, absolutely. They're not like interlinked. They're not like dependent on each other.

Atif: Okay, So since you have a very small team, so you must be very careful about the hiring. So what
are the processes and stages of hiring in your company, and once they are hired, how do you give
bonuses, on calls or on deals?

Sibtain: Okay, hiring. Well, it's a pretty small team, we are doing this one interview by the business head
of region when hiring correct well before that, yeah, yeah, it's the HR first initially actually you know,
when pepople apply to that job till the HR then person gets involved and does meaning basic screening
of salary experience and budget? based on the HR team could see the factors that then if that goes
through, then it comes to the business head. He then takes the first interview, he evaluates the judges
them based on these things that I told you about? And then if that goes through that it comes to me,
and then we decide whether to say yes or no. Once that person comes on board, then there is a training
that we conduct, which is in the first week. There are certain things that we do with that person because
we use different CRMs Well, we use one CRM which is HubSpot for managing so we explain how that
process works, how the sales process works, and we are in the middle of actually making a playbook as
well. Will your sales playbook. So which which completely gives you the entire understanding from that,
and not just for people who join, but people who've been working with us so that everyone is on the
same line? Everyone can communicate and same way. Coming to your second question, which was
about bonus. And yeah, bonus is nice when I see sales is, you know, even if you get all the three tick
marks in the beginning, as I mentioned, if you don't build the right incentive model, people won't stick
around for too long. So for incentive model like the compensation model is pretty straightforward. We
give them out actually monthly based on what they have achieved, what So basically, what you've done
is that you've set a yearly target, okay, then what you've done is that we've broken it down into quarter
targets, then those that yearly target actually met, we'll see based on the salary decidability, there's a
certain costs that you've allocated to that entire percentage is what their salary would be. And then we
broken it down into quarters. Then what happens is that in the quarter if they are able to achieve 80% of
their quarterly target, then their salary remains what we decided if they do not achieve 80% If they're
below that, then we actually reduce their target and reduce the salary as well. Okay. In terms of
incentives, whatever whatever business they have brought in on a monthly basis, they get a certain
incentive percentage you're given a fixed regardless on targets regardless of roof or ceiling, and there’s
year end bonus on sales around 1% of sales.
Atif: Can you share how much are the salaries if you are comfortable.

Sibtain: Yeah, depending it actually starts for junior roles it starts at 30 35 38 k, and for top guys it goes
to above 200k

Atif: Okay, so Are there any more KPIs?

Sibtain: so, basically we track the conversion rate of how many leads that we assigned them or they
brought themselves and how many converted actually okay, because that shows how effectively they
are working on their work, because I want to lead the consider leads basically doing it only does not
make sense. The second thing that we look at is the average client size that person signs up because that
also tells us what kind of how mature he is in sales in terms of speaking to what type of customers so
yeah, these are the two primary KPIs apart from the sales targets that that he or she does well there is
one more which is how you know what they are in updating our CRM. because everything else which is
the customer onboarding and everything begins after the signup happens and then that is when the
other teams get involved. So what happens the handover us important both so if that information is
missing, then it really creates a problem for us.

Atif: How do you control and verify the performance claims?

Sibtain: if I'm talking about that, you salesperson of the claim correctly when you come here. Yeah. So,
basically everything you know that happens. It has to it involves other teams as well. It involves finance.
Once you sign up the customer, then it is the finance who gets involved. Then there is a customer
success team who actually onboard the customer. So whatever benefits we've actually given to the
salesperson has offered to the job and then handover to the customer success team and then the
customer success team also then coordinates with the insurance company. So So basically, when these
guys gets involved, everything starts to really figure out whether there is any misrepresentation or mis
selling happened at this point in time. Because then we also onboard the customer and the training
happens so whatever, let's say the HR of the of the company gets in you know, is the one who's getting
the training and as customer success team is the one who's actually giving the training and then
explaining the benefits and if there is a difference, because this customer success is not just listening to
the salesperson is listening to the insurance company so insurance company gets out , Sorry, benefits go
and roll of our employees ends for this stage, you know, a lot of things really get, you know, can be
caught if something happens and this has happened. It's not that it was not more about
MisrePresentation, it was lack of communication, you know, given by the salesperson within the system,
so there was not enough information put in the CRM system which made the customer success team
you know, did not realize that they were missing all this information. So, so yeah, this these are the two
controls that we have in place finance and customer success.

Atif: So we are moving to the last few questions. your target setting technique, which formula is there
any process of target setting you have basically?

Sibtain: So obviously, there is a logic behind it. And that logic is based on the target segment that we are
going after, and looking at the capability of the person and size of the client. So and there is a certain
number of sales that he can do in a month. So because we have past history, we have historic data,
which has sales, which guides us where this can lead to and how much we can do because we have the
data of the best performer and the worst performer. And based on that we decide on the other target
that we assigned to a certain salesperson.

Atif: And as a head of the organization, head of the sales part of organization, what is your
responsibility? What is the responsibility of the head of sales? How do they manage their day to day
activities with the Salesforce, the follow up mechanism, feedback.

Sibtain: Having such an important day, as a leader you built systems and processes, which gives you
transparency on the on the funnel on your sales funnel. Because at the end of the day, whatever
business that you are going to generate, it is going to come and happen only if there's a sales funnel.
And you can see the progress happening through that sales funnel. So I'm a believer of building that
transparent transparency through building processes. And for that, we have CRM in place where we do
all the reporting from there, we do all the incentive calculation from there. We do all the KPI
measurement from there. So if you build those things in place, and put those in KPIs in place, and you
tell your sales person this is how you're going to do it. And you're not gonna look at Excel sheets or
you're not gonna look at emails are I don't care what email or receipts are your damn about it. So that's
where things start to fall in place and everyone start to fall in line. And the second is, is really assessing
your team in terms of performance, how will grow as a team performance initially. And whatever the
lessons are, you can actually support them by building maybe a personalized training, doing one to one
sessions, maybe going to clients with them, and sitting down with them and telling them how to tackle
that's a good practice so, so yeah, you need to have those things in place and you kind of have to open
doors for them as well. If you can open doors for them. At the end of the day is all about confidence and
confidence, initially this is what I've seen is that if you can help your sales team with the sales, they build
that confidence and then they at some point, I would say I will need you or they won't even come to you
with questions.

Atif: That's what my last question was about. What's the structure of your sales pitch? Like? How do
salespeople go forward with it? Key features, attribute benefits, yada, yada, product details are the key,
how do you go about it, your sales pitch?

Sibtain: See, we get it, we are not an insurance company. When we are not an insurance company, we
have to show the value that we bring. And our value is is actually giving free and fair advice. So we have
to sound more like friends of the company that we talked to. And that's that's how it works, right?
Because we have to show them that we are on your side, we are not on an insurance company side. It's
a customer centric thing. Yeah, it that's how it has to be. Because regardless of how many benefits you
show, if you can't show your value, why we should work with you, you know, nobody's gonna work with
you, in our case. And then obviously, then, obviously, we've built our tech, we've built our product,
which, which then creates that wow factor for the things that we talk to. But that only happens once
you build some kind of rapport with the customer. You can't just show your tech and your product on
day one, right? If you show it on day one, and say, Okay, that's good, right? That's good, that's fine. But
why should I work with you? Right, still telling me so you need to address that head on first. So we try to
address that first head on and that's usually most of the questions because Pakistan as a country is is in
terms of businesses, they are actually not accustomed to third parties. Working with third parties
they're not accustomed to working with insurance brokers do me a favor may 60% of the business which
insurance companies get is actually to insurance brokers not directly and 90% of that business is done
directly by direct sales force team or or bank assurance. So broken market very small, so even customers
don't understand why they need to work with us. So we addressed that very ahead on that the first
thing that we will talk about.

Atif: would you be able to share a sample of a pitch or any version of it from which we can get idea key
strategy or model used?

Sibtain: with us, if they didn't really conversation or the it's more like a conversation that there's just no
reference point for your Salesforce to look back at. as I said, we are building that sales playbook. Oh, it's,
it's it's a work phase right now we have a presentation and everything in place, but yeah, one
presentation they use it they work.

Atif: Okay, thank you so much. That's it from my side if you have anything to ask.