Five learnings from building Uber's first B2B team

Most people are surprised to learn that Uber completed close to one billion rides before ever hiring its first sales person. That’s because Uber has always been focused on the people in the car - the driver and the rider.  As we’ve grown and our technology has evolved, we realized there was more to it - we identified a clear opportunity to embrace the enterprise in a big way. When you want to incorporate a B2B strategy in your organization, and you start to hire a team to develop, market and sell business-ready products, your model needs to shift. This can cause new obstacles, which is why many fail in the process.

So how do you make sure that your commercial tech company avoids the potholes and finds success instead? In the last few years we’ve been building the first B2B sales team at Uber and I’ve learned some valuable lessons along the way. Here are the five most important things I’ve discovered:

1. Do your research and get executive buy-in early on.

Getting executive buy-in for a B2B product at a B2C company can initially be a tricky proposition.  

We knew that people were using Uber for work and that it was becoming an important part of how they get their jobs done, but that wasn’t enough to prove that going after the enterprise is a good idea. To do that, we divided the looming question of “will this work?” into two critical, but slightly smaller, questions: Is the market demand strong enough to support investing resources in a business product? And, if the demand is strong enough, do we need a traditional sales team to distribute the product?

After doing thorough research and answering these questions to the best of our ability, we were able to go to our leadership team and make the case that Uber for Business was worth putting resources behind, both on the product side, with dedicated product managers and engineers, as well as from a go-to-market perspective, with sales and marketing headcount.

2. Hire people that can help you grow the right way.

Hiring the right people is the most critical component of creating a new business unit, and it’s especially important when you’re building a new business model. Everyone wants self-starters, people that are up for a challenge and team players when they’re building something from the ground up. Those attributes have become table stakes for many, but it’s not just about growing, it’s about growing in the right way. We asked ourselves, “what kind of people will steer this business in the direction we want it to go?”

What we learned is that many of our most successful team members have experience with B2B, but also can think with a consumer mindset. Uber for Business has been successful because we’ve continued to prioritize creating a simple, easy to use product. The magical experience that our riders have everyday with the Uber app is what made us successful, so when we’re building a dashboard for admins and travel managers, this is just as important. So when we’re making new hires, we look for people who are not only ambitious and driven, but can also relate to the needs of the individual just as much as the organization.  

3. Invest in creating a well structured sales process early on.

When we made our first sales hires, we didn't even have any infrastructure in place - with no Salesforce instance or structured way to capture leads, we struggled with setting sales targets and paying out commissions. I was lucky to be connected to a number of sales leaders, and I got their advice on how to build the best sales organization. I heard over and over that many folks had hired a sales operations specialist too late, and that it was important to invest in infrastructure early.

We thought it was a good near-term bet in order to build a long-term infrastructure, systems and processes. Turns out, we were right as many of the processes were scaled for our business today. The first sales operations lead we hired is still at Uber today, where she manages a global rock-star team that make sure our sales team is effective and efficient. It’s hard to imagine where we’d be today if we didn’t prioritize that hire early on.

4. Consider dynamic ways to engage with customers.

In B2B organizations, most people make a decision to either set up a system that allows customers to enroll on their own or one that requires them to interact with a sales rep. We realized that the two weren’t mutually exclusive and decided to launch a self-service product. Administrators could simply go online and click, “Yes, I want Uber for business,” and a minute later they were in the product, adding employees. Because of this, more than 50,000 businesses enrolled in the first year.

The product has evolved since then and we now have different flows and lead forms online. But we still have a very popular self-service angle with our Business Profiles product, where any individual can sign up, create a profile, and begin tracking work and personal rides separately. Today, millions of customers have created Business Profiles, and they’re activated for hundreds of rides every hour.

You might think these self-service channels would hurt our ability to sell into the company. We’ve found the opposite to be true. When business units within a company or numerous individual employees have already made the decision to use Uber, they’ve made the case for us.

5. Don’t lose sight of the individual user as you build for businesses.

More than ever, employees are driving corporate purchasing decisions. Consumer technology in many ways, is out pacing the technology that corporations purchase. Employees now expect the same sort of intuitive and accessible mobile technology that they use in their personal lives at the office. And that expectation is driving purchasing decisions at the corporate level.

We’ve seen dramatic evidence of this with the success and pace of Uber being used for business travel, whether the employee is heading to the airport or a meeting across town. In fact, just last year, Uber surpassed Starbucks as the most expensed line-item! All this happened simply because employees found that calling an Uber with a click of a button was the easiest way for them effectively get around -- whether it was for personal reasons or work, that doesn’t matter to the employee.  Think about delivering the best possible individual experience, and the business will often follow.