MarketStar

We create growth by helping scale your direct sales, partner channel and customer success strategies with flexible outsourced solutions. MarketStar combines skilled sales and marketing professionals with 30+ years of industry intelligence and go-to-market tools to help you accelerate sales and achieve revenue goals.

Download our latest e-book: 'Is Outsourced Inside Sales Right for You'​ here: https://goo.gl/vFF7i1

Director of Business Development

Solar Estates (vei-imot.bg)

Solar Еstates helps investors in renewable energy find the rights real estate or buy renewable energy parks.

Co-founder & Business Development Advisor

Appolica | Venture studio

I will contribute to shaping the future of the studio and its community by empowering, supporting, and elevating early-stage founders, ensuring their success and sparking innovation at a global level.

Advisory Board Member

SEEIP

South East European Innovators Program supports founders of research-based startups throughout their entrepreneurial journey through incubation, acceleration, and tech transfer services to startups from the SEE region.

Lecturer

SalesPRO - Онлайн Програма за Продажби

SalesPRO: Elevate your sales career with the first professional education program for salespeople in Bulgaria. Certified by the Ministry of Education, it offers seven practitioner-led video courses, a vibrant sales community, and direct access to instructors for your professional growth.

Partner Business Development & Lecturer

Out2Bound

Out2Bound is a sales agency that helps technology and IT companies (software development, mobile, web, SaaS) to attract b2b clients and access new markets around the globe. We develop and execute outbound sales development strategies on behalf of their brands to enrich their sales pipelines and as a result to start conversations with highly targeted potential new clients. 

Additionally, we test out new markets and validate the product or service market fit. We are able to both plug into the company as a remote sales team or support an existing sales team by enriching its sales pipeline.

Out2Bound is an official partner of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and currently working with technology companies from the USA and Europe.

Main responsibilities:
▪ Sales strategies and consulting
▪ Establishing business partnerships with public structures
▪ Managing channel partnerships
▪ Identification of client needs 
▪ Negotiation
▪ Account management
▪ Business development
▪ Social selling
▪ Lead Generation
▪ Finding new opportunities to build solutions for

Head of Business Development & Co-founder (acquired by MarketStar)

GridMetrics

GridMetrics is an analytics company that improves the efficiency of water utility and manufacturing companies by utilizing a 2-step process:
- we create digital twins of their process on our proprietary software platform; 
- on top of the digital twins we run optimization ML models to increase energy and other material efficiencies of the process. 
- the combination of the two helps us save 5 and 30% of costs for the specific process. 

Some of the optimizations need to include modules like:
- Demand forecasting; 
- Capacity forecasting;
- Price estimations; 

Alumni of Cleantech-KIC.

Co-Founder and Business Development

TaxiMeApp

TaxiMe is a mobile service that connects you to the best taxi drivers around you. Through its advanced algorithm and process for drivers approval and training, TaxiMe provides for you a comfortable ride with a new car and kind driver.

Main responsibilities:
▪ Onboarding new drivers - software demo and expectation for service excellence 
▪ Creating campaigns for improvement of service quality 
▪ Billing and debt collection
▪ Customer Support Management
▪ Working with dev team for product development
▪ Firefighting when needed

Operations Manager

AIESEC Bulgaria

AIESEC is a global platform for young people to explore and develop their leadership potential. A not-for-profit organisation run by students and recent graduates of institutions of higher education. Its members are interested in world issues, leadership and management.

President of AIESEC Sofia University

VP Sales

Danone

Danone focuses on four business lines: Fresh Dairy Products, Waters, Baby Nutrition and Medical Nutrition, to bring health through food to as many people as possible. Danone therefore has an extensive portfolio of brands, corresponding to the specific needs of each generation and to the various countries where the group is present.

Sales Executive

As Director of Business Development at MarketStar, I help b2b tech companies & scale-ups to create a repeatable and scalable sales process and generate new opportunities through outsourced sales teams (both for direct and channel). My specialties are outbound sales, social selling, market research, business development, lead generation, negotiations, closing and after-sales.

We create growth by helping scale your direct sales, partner channel and customer success strategies with flexible outsourced solutions. MarketStar combines skilled sales and marketing professionals with 35+ years of industry intelligence and go-to-market tools to help you accelerate sales and achieve revenue goals.
—
Forbes 30 under 30, class 2018 in the Business category, Bulgaria
—
AIESEC Bulgaria Alumni
—
#businessdevelopment #sales #b2b #tech #IT #outbound #strategy #socialselling

I had a discussion on Sales with a lady heading the BD team for a large tech company. 
 
Her team was hitting quota almost every month. 
 
As part of the conversation, she said something interesting. 
 
"I would have loved to get a 'no' instead of a 'maybe' from some prospects my team talk to." 
 
Prospects prefer being polite over being brutal. 
 
As a result, teams pursue deals that will never actually close. 
 
So instead of getting happy ears every time a prospect is kind.  
 
She taught her team to challenge prospects if they really are in the market. 
 
Time is precious. And people need to understand the concept of "opportunity cost". 
 
Give time to the ones who really need your help.  
 
And really want it✌️ 
 
#sales #saas #b2b #techsales

Zdravko (Zi) Zdravkov

Revenue acceleration for b2b tech companies through direct and channel sales outcourcing

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I have booked 4 meetings last week using the exact same resource. 
 
My LinkedIn network.  
 
And my fellow salespeople. 
 
Whenever I prospect a new account I first connect with their SDRs or AEs on LinkedIn. 
 
Not only is it a good way to meet like-minded people and have a great conversation. 
 
But salespeople also know the struggle of prospecting.  
 
And the pain of getting rejected. 
 
And usually, they are happy to help you with information or even an intro.  
 
So, when you reach out to the right person, you already have a head start. 
 
We're all in the same boat. So don't forget to do the same when reached out to. 
 
Build bridges, not walls 🌉 
 
#b2b #sales #techsales #outbound #LinkedIn #SDR #AE

Most of my calls were conversational and didn't include a deck. 
Until recently... 
 
When I got to focus more on enterprise deals in MarketStar, the way I am handling meetings changed.  
 
The sales process now includes a bigger focus on building up the narrative of what our capabilities are as a global player.  
 
That means that I have a deck with 100+ slides, but focus on presenting just a few of them.  
 
But what about presenting a solution/an offer.  
 
Now I always insist on reviewing it together. 
 
The reason? 
 
I want to again control the narrative 
 
- add color 
- share stories 
- give context 
 
I want to ask questions and gather feedback 
 
- thoughts on pricing?  
- feedback on the timeline?  
- what’s your legal process look like? 
 
I want to ensure the prospect reviews my proposal 
 
- impossible to ignore if we review it together 
 
I use it as a carrot to get them to show up 
 
- people are curious 
 
Don’t send over a proposal for prospects to review on their own 
 
Set a meeting and review it together 
 
#sales #enterprisesales #saassales #b2bsales #techsales #b2b

To all Bulgarian founders in my network - Endeavor Bulgaria's Dare2Scale program is open for applications!

This is an equity-free program aimed at nurturing late-stage startups by offering:
• 1:1 mentorship with mentors from the Endeavor network
• 1:1 mentorship with senior PwC consultants
• group workshops
• networking opportunities from the entrepreneurial ecosystem (obviously helps with fundraising too)
• awesome community

Simply said - super smart and inspiring people help you figure out how to scale your business and reach the next level.

Theo S. Shikov, Dimitar Mitkov, Boris Georgiev and I represented Out2Bound in the 2020 edition and Dare2Scale challenged us with their perspectives and gave us a path to grow in a pivotal for our business moment!

There is a limit of the participants: 8-12 max. It is definitely worth it, so apply through this form: https://lnkd.in/d4s5YCvh

One of the biggest mistakes I see when watching sales presentations: 
 
Ambiguity - most presentations fail to deliver a message clearly and concisely. 
 
Here are 3 all too common examples (and what to do instead): 
 
(1) 
 
🔴 Trying to impress with techno-jargon  
🟢 Using visuals, analogies, and storytelling  
 
Don’t bore your audience. Engage them to make the information memorable. 
 
(2) 
 
🔴 Reading directly from the slides 
🟢 Converse - slides as support, not a crutch 
 
Your buyers can read, don't do it for them. Best salespeople I've seen only cover 3-4 slides out of 20+ based on the ongoing conversation. 
 
(3) 
 
🔴 Overloading your presentation w/ irrelevant details 
🟢 Focusing only on what your buyer cares about 
 
If you are adding complexity, probably you are also adding confusion.  
 
“A confused mind always says no” 
 
Me personally -  I don't like using any slides on a meeting.  
 
Yet there is value in presenting for some buyer personas and I try to be flexible.

There is a wrong idea in B2B sales that has been around for ages. 
 
And it's ruining the lives of sellers and buyers all around the world: 
 
"Sales is a numbers game." 
 
The more emails, calls, LinkedIn messages, demos and meetings you produce, 
 
The more successful you will be. 
 
And this is amplified by the various automation tools available.  
 
Which is an absolute nonsense. 
 
Sales is an impact game. 
 
Only high quality sales activity move the needle. 
 
So take the time to research your audience before reaching out to them. 
 
Dig deeper into your customer's business reality before having the meeting/call. 
 
Help resolve messy customer experience issues before asking for the renewal. 
 
The sales is an impact game, not a numbers game. 
 
#sales #enterprisesales #b2b #techsales #marketstar #outbound

Going through the "State of Software" Report by G2 I see some some interesting trends. Read below to find out more: 
 
• AI category grew faster than all others. 
 
• users started evaluating AI features for products in 200 different categories. 
 
• AI-enabled products scored higher in “ease of use” and “meets requirements” metrics. 
 
• besides the AI trend, there is growth in Security, IT Management, Governance and others (as presented in the 3rd image). 
 
• vertical market software is leading compared to function-focused software (example: HR tool for construction companies, Security solution for IoT companies). 
 
Next months I can see more companies adopting AI as part of their offering and some even use it as their main competitive advantage. 
 
#b2b #software #AI 
 
Which will not be so competitive when everyone is implementing it. 
 
But interestingly enough there is also a trend for AI solutions to focus more on verticals. 
 
And for vertical solutions to implement AI features.  
 
Where I see the real break though of adoption to come from.  
 
Unless AGI comes first. 
 
Interestingly enough, Jensen Huang predicted in 2017 that "Software Is Eating the World, but AI Is Going to Eat Software". 
 
#software #b2b #tech #AI #hypeORnot #AI #eating #the #world

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