After a long break, I have started publishing blog posts again. New posts are on Substack but for now the archive remains on this page. Signup below if you want see my latest posts.

TL;DR Sales people have an incentive to go after low hanging fruit. Building a business depends on doing the hard stuff. Don't be fooled into thinking hiring sales people is an easy way through.

I have two kids who are both now at University. There are many fantastic things about having children and watching make their own way in the world. One thing that is not often mentioned is the opportunity to learn. Even when you think you taught someone everything they know, they can surprise you.
 
My son has just started the final year of his computer science degree at Heriot Watt University. Having lunch with him before he started back, he offered me a startup business lesson that is both simple and profound. 
 
As close as I can remember, here is what he said:
 
“The thing that always strikes me about sales people is they have a big incentive to do the easy stuff. You know, sell to the easiest customer first because that gets them their commission. Call people who are easy to persuade rather than people who really need your product. That kind of thing. Surely in a startup, you need to do the hard stuff to get going?”
 
Note this is also framed as him asking me a question. Nice to be respected. But he is the one offering the insight here.

Regular readers will know that I am uncomfortable about using the traditional sales model for a company that is trying to innovate. For the avoidance of doubt by traditional I mean people whose sole job is sales, selling in person to enterprise customers and receiving commission as a significant element of their reward.
 
There are lots of reasons for this but Duncan nailed the core problem in a way that I struggle to articulate. Listening to what he said, leads me to two key points:
 

1. Commission is an incentive for sales. Good. In practice it is an incentive to sell to people who can be persuaded. It is a DISincentive to listening to your customers. Listening is key to searching for the right customer, exploring product/ market fit and then ensuring your SaaS delivers value to that customer. 
2. Hiring sales people and paying them commission looks like an easy way to drive growth. This is a fallacy in the same way as every other easy fix for your business. The hard part is finding product/ market fit. This means listening to customers not selling to them. You will know you need sales when you are struggling to cope with demand. Not when you are striving to generate leads. 

 
There is another problem hidden below the surface. Finding and hiring sales people for early stage SaaS is hard. There is a reason for this. Good sales people have an instinct for what sells and what doesn’t. This makes them good at picking jobs that they can succeed in.
 
So if your SaaS smells like it will be hard to sell, the good guys will turn up their nose. When you do recruit, you find yourself with sales people who talk a good game but don’t deliver.

I know that you know that doing the hard stuff is a necessary foundation for success. That lesson is the subject of one of the best business books around - The Hard Thing About Hard Things. 
 
Don’t kid yourself that sales is an easy way out. Even a 23 year old student know this.

TL:DR You need to find someone that gets value from your product and persuade them to buy it. Without this there is no business. Apologies if this sounds patronising but please don't ignore the bleeding obvious.

I have listened to three pitches this week and had feedback on one more. These are actual quotes:
 
From the feedback. The entrepreneur "was struggling to articulate a commercial strategy.”
 
During one of the pitches. Me: “Have you thought who will actually use your product.” Entrepreneur (after a bit of flannel): “That’s useful feedback, I should go away and think about that.”
 
From another pitch. “We know (XXXX) is the largest market but we haven’t included this in any of our plans or numbers.” 
 
And the last pitch. “Our initial target market is proving slow to respond. So we have found an adjacent market which is smaller but faster moving. This has enabled us to get some sales and prove the concept.”
 
Guess which entrepreneur was most likely to secure investment? And guess which one does not need funding right now? 
 
To save you trying to find the trick in this question, the answer in both cases is the bleeding obvious. The last quoted. 

Its a bit of a struggle to write anything else in this article. The point is so clear that making it feels patronising, unnecessary and dull. You need to know who the customer is for your business. 
 
At the very early stage, I can live with a plan that says “I don’t know who the customer is but here is how I am going to find out.” Provided that finding out is the number one priority on your schedule.
 
There must be a clear customer focus. This means:
 

1. You can describe your customer. Who they are. Why they will buy. What value your product offers them. In an ideal world, you will be able to name them. But this is less important than understanding who they are and what they have in common.
2. You have a plan to reach your customer. This is marketing
3. You have a plan to persuade them to buy. This is selling.
4. You can keep the customer or they will buy again. This is business.
   

I apologise to the 100% of readers who feel they know all this stuff. All of the entrepreneurs above have received some form of funding. Either public or private or both. All of them have been coached in their pitches by experienced investment managers. One of them was also coached a little by me. Somehow the message is getting lost.
 
You need to find someone that gets value from your product and persuade them to buy it. Without this there is no business. Without answering this question, everything else in your pitch is a waste of time. Everything else you do is a waste of both time and money. 
 
Please don’t ignore the bleeding obvious.

TLDR Personal growth and development should be an integral part of your business. It applies to founders and entrepreneurs as well as your team. Use this simple framework to help you fulfil your passion. Watching your team and grow and develop is the most fun you will ever have

When I listen to founders and entrepreneurs, the most common questions are about growth, investment and people. 
 
People covers the widest range of different areas. When to hire? Who to hire? What skills are needed? How much to pay? Improving team performance. Setting objectives. Paying bonuses. Managing people who don’t deliver. Relationships with cofounders. Working with investors. Handling non executives and advisors. That’s at least 10 problems and four or five different groups of people. 
 
There is one person missing from every question on this list. You. You are an intimate part of every decision you face as an entrepreneur. That applies to people, growth and investment. Yet when I listen to you, I hear almost nothing about personal growth and development.

This is a bit strange for me. I spent most of my career working for an organisation where growing and developing myself was an integral part of the culture. Over thirty years it became an unbreakable addiction. I can’t make any decision without thinking about what I will learn and how I can improve.
 
Its sometimes difficult to explain to people. I worked in that firm for many years before I realised it myself. I advised clients from many industries and saw few organisations that took a similar approach. Even our peers and competitors did not set much store by it.
 
We did. Hiring, performance evaluation, promotion, admission to partnership. You could not take a step with out demonstrating that you had developed as a person and had plans to grow further.

Its impossible to replicate culture. Its made up of other people sharing unique experiences in a other times and places. However, I thought it was worth sharing one of the threads that held our commitment to personal development together. 
 
At every stage from graduate to senior partner, we used a consistent framework. It was built on a set of core qualities. And we had a simple, shared scale for evaluation. 
 
The framework was divided into 7 broad, overlapping areas. 
 

• Leadership - Motivating teams, Innovation & creativity and Leadership (even in the detail we still didn’t have a better definition.)
• Business skills - Business vision, Commercial awareness, Entrepreneurial approach, Selling skills.
• Technical skills - Product or process knowledge, Execution skills, Industry knowledge, Task/ work handling skills 
• Analytical skills - Identifies issues, Prioritises, Draws effective & sound conclusions
• Management skills - People management skills, Communication skills, Planning & organising capability
• Individual social & business interaction - Negotiation skills, Influences/ builds relationships, Team work, Energy/ impact/ gravitas
• Personal & professional development 
  

 
The idea is to understand your strengths and weaknesses on each of these points. You make a self assessment on a four point scale:
 

1. Exceeds expectations of the next level above your current position in most respects
2. Meets expectations of the next level in most respects
   
3. Meets expectations of the next level in some respects.
   
4. Fails to meet expectations of the next level in most respects.
   

The same scale was used for all regular feedback. On assignment reviews, by whoever carried out your performance evaluation, by promotion boards and by HR. The balance shifted over time. More emphasis on acquiring technical skills early in your career. A shift to leadership abilities at more senior levels. 
 
Against each rating, the assessor would put evidence. Evidence had to be examples where the skills had been used in practice. This was a requirement. It applied to self assessment as well. It was always interesting to compare the self assessed evidence with the examples given by other observers. 
 
The core qualities and the scale remained consistent long term. Everyone used them so we all developed a common understanding. A few simple features contributed deep and lasting advantages.
 
Different perspectives on the same person measured against the same scale is a powerful tool. It helps maximise performance and engagement.
 
A scale aimed at the next level of responsibility baked ambition and potential into all our dealings with people and teams. 
 
The emphasis on skills ensured a continuing pursuit of excellence and improvement.  You cannot deliver this in a culture of targets and metrics.

I hope there is something anyone in any business can learn from these principles. If you are part of a growing startup, I would argue they should be part of your life for 3 main reasons:
 

1. Leadership. Personal example is one part of leadership. If you don’t grow and learn, how can you expect your team to do so?
2. Business growth. The business you have today is different from the business you will lead in a year or three years or beyond. If you don’t grow and learn, then sooner or later you will not be fit for your current job. Never mind the next level in your career.
3. Fulfillment. Both the hardest and the easiest part. You started your business because of your passion. Learning new things and making them work in the real world is the best way to nurture that commitment. Watching your team and grow and develop is the most fun you will ever have.
   

Its been a pretty good weekend. The sun shone. I watched our resident vixen and her six cubs gambolling and scrapping on the front lawn. A game of golf with good friends and a decent score. A long run in perfect peace on Fenwick moor. 
 
These are times to reflect and think about ambitions for the future. A lot of positive thoughts spun through my head. One topic which stuck is advice. I loved Vicky Brock’s Entrepreneur Agony Aunt podcast on the subject of Telling Good Advice from Bad. Leah Hutcheon is one of my favourite people and its a question which nags at me. 
 
Almost every week I listen to an entrepreneur describing some bad advice they have received on the journey. And I have spent most of my career giving advice. So I feel I should be able to help. Its a difficult thing to get right and I have no doubt I have pointed plenty of people in the wrong direction over the years. (I was going to write there that its a tough job but in all honesty, its not.) 
 
So how do you tell good advice from bad? There is no answer to the question. Thinking about the people and the context will help you decide.

Its kind of obvious that bad advice comes from bad people. If you are dealing with someone you don’t trust then ignore their advice. In fact, don’t deal with that person full stop.
 
Most times its not that easy. I see four situations where bad motives lead to bad advice.

• There are rip-off merchants out there. People who just want to take your cash. They could be after your company and your idea as well. The good news is that these people are vanishingly rare. Don’t stress much about this because you may never meet one.
• By contrast, the most common sign of bad advice is people who treat you as another job. These people have a standard “product” and will churn your business through a standard process for a standard fee. Be careful. An advisor who thinks your business issue is the same as everyone else will miss a lot.
• Sometimes you will meet someone who wants to make you feel special. They dig deep into your problem and work to learn your exact needs. But they are doing this to serve their own ends. Making you a success is secondary. Or non existent. Being used in this way can be hard to spot but the results will be nasty.
• You will also find advisors who turn bad on you. In early stage companies, it can be hard for an advisor to earn money. So an advisor may feel they are investing in you. Sometimes this is explicit in the form of share options or debts. Working for free can lead to the same mindset. Either way, the advisor starts to feel you owe them. And pushes you in the direction that offers payback. With bad outcomes.

With the exception of the rare first category, these are not bad people. But advice with the wrong context or approach does not help your business. So how do you spot the people who are right to help you?
 
Here in Scotland at least the good news is that love is all around you. Scotland is a great place to live and work so we have more than our fair share of smart, experienced business people. And I know there are plenty happy to help anyone on the entrepreneurial journey.
 
But advice is a two way street. Finding a good advisor is half the solution. You also need to ask the right questions and listen to the answers the right way.

First you need to seek the right kind of advice. Kind of obvious - sorry. There are two basic types. Specific advice from an expert on a defined topic. And mentoring, problem sharing advice that helps you make better decisions.
 
At the risk of sounding like the script for a four box model, there are also two types of advisors out there. Some are old guys like me that have been around and giving advice for a long time. The other type are successful entrepreneurs. There is no doubt that people who have been there and done it, often more than once, have a unique and valuable perspective.

Its quite easy to define a specific professional who fills a gap in your knowledge and can suggest how to proceed. Lawyers, accountants and so on are in the phone book. Take a little care to look into specific experience and pick someone relevant.

Finding a mentor is much harder. Mentoring is a personal relationship. For me it is also a two way deal. I learn at least as much from mentoring someone as they can learn from me. 
 
This is why I talk about being lucky at this stage of my career. Working with people like Leah Hutcheon, the Mallzee founders and Paul Reid is a great learning experience.

In addition to the two types, there are two others that too many people ignore. The best advisor just might be your customer. Or it could be someone on your team. Your customers and your team are closer to your business than any advisor.

Advice is only advice. Its an opinion on the best course of action not an instruction manual. You still need to make the decisions. There are three top tips to keep in mind:
 

• Learn from mistakes. Never be afraid to ask an advisor for a story about how things went wrong. Its much more compelling than a neat case study about doing things right.
• No-one has done what you are doing before. Every business, every team, every customer is different. Never be scared to listen and then ignore.
• You are the right person to make the decision. You know the business best and you are more committed. Trust yourself above any advisor or mentor.
  

Friday 20 April 7.30pm. Back from a long run in my most tranquil place. The red, gold and black Rosemarkie beach. My brain speed is still a hundred miles an hour. Thoughts forming and then breaking into splinters every second. I am still coming down from the adrenaline rush of EIE18. If you are reading this and spoke to me Thursday night or Friday morning - apologies. Chat was indiscriminate, overflowing stream of words and ideas.
 
This is an unusual feeling for me nowadays. One of the depressing aspects of experience (ie old age) is that not much feels new or thrilling. Too often I think I have seen it all before. So its a tribute to the tiny but brilliant team at Informatics Ventures. Ronnie, Steve, Danny and Jane pulled off an event and an experience with quite an impact.
 
As a result, what follows is a bit random. It my first attempt at reflection based on the few fragments of my own thought process I could catch. I have tried to translate them into English but not to impose any structure.

As a company you live the EIE idea of more than a day. The scale of support and learning the team put together is incredible. Not everything works for everyone. But I bet each person that pitched came off stage reflecting on a few key things.

I guess if there’s a theme to this post its that personal experience. We tend to judge the event by its whole impact. But each individual entrepreneur benefits and grows in their own way. Trees not forest if you like.

I have done a lot of pitching and presenting. I am really comfortable speaking to bigger audiences on much more complex topics. I thought I had reached the stage of my life when rehearsing was not only unnecessary. It actually took away from my performance.
 
Having a fixed time of one minute changes that. You need to rehearse and practice. You need to simplify and clarify. You need to hook your audience. You will feel the pressure.
 
(Feedback note: Whoever you are, when you step off that stage you are ready for a cold beer.)

Attention to detail is often evidence of professionalism and excellence. True excellence comes from values. The EIE team don’t have the capacity to get every single detail right. Yet the event is still world class. Detail alone is not enough, its values that count.

Maryanne Johnston is the personal pitch coach. I was in a proper grumpy old man mood the day I worked with MJ. (Apologies again Maryanne). She didn’t let it bother her, gave me the attention and coaching I needed and got the results (I hope!) The quality and confidence of the people on stage was a tribute to her coaching.

EIE has jumped about a bit during its 10 years. The ’18 staging was held in the McEwan Hall. After refurbishment, it looks beautiful. The combination of stunning architecture, history and connection to Edinburgh Uni is perfect. I hope they are able to keep it there.

I have never been a big fan of the last word in the acronym - Exploit?! The purpose of the event is to connect companies with investors. That’s cool. I spent the day listening and talking on behalf of a company. I took away a whole lot more than connections to potential investors. How about a name change?

I have already mentioned a couple of times, the EIE team is small. Each and every one of them does a great job. And the whole event is a perfect illustration of a forgotten principle. The best innovation comes when resources are most constrained. 
 
Once you have a great product though, opportunities - that word again - open up. I am grateful to all the sponsors. But this thing is so good. We could be pulling in the really big names. Why not Google or Goldman Sachs or GE? 
 
To do that we need to tell a story. And it needs to be different from the Scottish norm. Too often I hear about what Scotland needs from the rest of the world. EIE is something which would be a great opportunity for anyone. So let’s make it about what we can give not what we can get.

I was there pitching Triscribe. We are building analytics based on electronic prescribing data from NHS hospitals. Our software tackles problems like prescription errors and antibiotic usage. Its part of a global digital health movement. Data has the potential to bring more benefits than any amount of new drugs over the next 10 years.
 
I walked away more convinced than ever that Triscribe can do great things. I hope plenty of other entrepreneurs did the same.

I applied for EIE18 to help Triscribe. But it was also a chance to put myself in other's shoes. The footwear of the entrepreneurs and founders I am lucky to spend most of my working time with. 
 
Its been a profound learning experience about myself. That will make me a little bit better in all the roles I play. A perfect highland morning on the incomparable links at Royal Dornoch has cleared my mind a bit. Enough to write this post. Time will help me absorb it more. 
 
My thanks again to everyone who makes it possible.

Tech entrepreneurs love data. That makes sense but in a startup there is no reliable source of data. Every decision is made with a hundred unknowns. Instead of seeking false assurance in benchmarks and the like, keep it simple and flexible. Remember that everything is an experiment.
 
I spent a couple of hours on Thursday last listening to two early stage entrepreneurs. It was in a virtual board format run by Edinburgh Innovations.  One company had leapt forward since I last saw them by winning their first big overseas contract. The other had slowed down as a free competitor emerged in a key market area. I could come back in two months and the roles might be reversed again.
 
On the train home I chatted with a good friend and experienced entrepreneur who is working on a new business idea. His challenges were the same as the newbies we had seen earlier. Is there a market for this product? How should he price it? What features are needed for an MVP? 
 
His solution was natural and right. Get out and experiment with potential customers. The idea of a startup experiment crystallised in Eric Ries famous book The Lean Startup. Its a strong concept and has found many uses. Yet it only begins to describe the experimental nature of a new business with a new product aimed at solving a new problem. In this world everything is an experiment.

The experiment idea is built around testing for product market fit. For most startups product and market are the twin obsessions. That is as it should be. There is no other way of validating your idea. You must build some sort of product and find some people willing to pay for it.
 
The hard part is judging the outcome of these experiments. Have you found a real market or just a few early adopters? Which features do you need to expand you customer base? Will big companies pay more for your product?
 
In every case you are making choices based on limited data. But those decisions are life and death for your business. Its easy to forget all the other unknowns that affect your chances of success.

The biggest distraction from your focus is not uncertainty about product or market. Its money. How much runway do you have? When will your next round close? Which investors do you want to work with? How fast will sales turn into cash flow? Can you meet the payroll next month? Is it worth pursuing that large but slow enterprise customer?
 
None of this feels much like an experiment. Don’t be deceived:

• Marketing spend is an experiment. Can you appeal to enough potential customers? Are you reaching the right customers?

• Buying tools is an experiment. Is this the best fit for your business (when you don’t know anything about your business mind!) Would it be cheaper/ better to build or buy?

• Every hire is an experiment. So is every professional advisor you pick.

• Raising investment is an experiment. Does your idea appeal to the right kind of investors? Are you ready to make good use of the cash? Will you be able to work with the attention and challenge a good investor brings?

Investors will tell you they invest in teams above all. Getting to MVP, raising money, growing all depend on finding and building a team. Chances are everyone in that team is an experiment of sorts. 
 
Many founders have never run a business before. A fair number have never built or sold a product either. Even an experienced entrepreneur may be new to the market. And as the business grows, the role of CEO is quite different from that of entrepreneur.
 
Everyone you hire brings some of the same edge. Its one of the reasons why early stage companies are keen on “proven” performers in areas like sales. Trouble is no-one is proven in this situation. You don’t know the exact job definition. You don’t know who you are selling to, what you are building or the answers to a thousand other questions.
 
That’s why I prize the ability to listen, learn and grow above having a CV that ticks all the boxes.

So at every moment you have a series of experiments running in product, market, money and people. They all interact with each other in multiple ways. No matter how well you design your starting hypotheses, you are not going to know for sure what is working and what is not. 
 
Some things can be so messy they feel like a complete guess. That’s not a comfortable feeling so you bury yourself in all sorts of data. And find that there is no clear evidence. How do you make decisions in that environment?

One temptation is to reach for benchmarks. Google is a great management consultant as well as a top doctor. A quick search seems to tell you what is expected of a startup SaaS business. 
 
I am not a fan of benchmarking. To be specific, I hate using benchmarks to set targets. Its negative and counter productive. 
 
Don’t get me wrong. If you can find a proper, comparable data source (not easy!) then comparing your outcomes to that source can be useful. But only as a way to ask the right questions. As soon as it becomes something to aim at, you are damaging your business. 
 

• A benchmark is a comparison to the average. Did you start a business to be average? Why aim for that then?

• A benchmark tells you about outcomes. It has no information about how to get there. Hence it might help find a question but it is never an answer.


Your people will hate it. Benchmarks are anonymous bullies wielding sticks that don’t quite fit. Targets on this basis feel onerous and unreasonable.

There is no data led, evidence based solution to big strategic choices. This is true however big and established your business. Roger L Martin explains this in the Big Lie of Strategic Planning.  If that is too academic for you watch this 3 minute video about Honda instead. 
 
In an early stage SaaS or any startup every choice is a big one so everything becomes an experiment. You are in the world of emergent strategy. This is fancy language for making decisions based on three things:
 

1. Your knowledge of your customers and the potential of your idea. Be true to your core. 

2. Your response developments in the market and the environment. In other words be flexible not fixed. 

3. Listen to the best advice you can find and use it to ask questions not provide the “right” answers. If you work with me and you don’t ignore much of my advice you are not getting any value. 


 
A startup is not a comfortable or safe environment. You have to stay focused and flexible. There is no formula. Build a strategy based on conscious choice. Keep it simple but never believe it is perfect or even right. Be prepared to change in response to new learning from all those experiments. 

"A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it's not that good"
 Martin LeBlanc, Founder IconFinder

You build SaaS products for people not companies. You sell to people not companies. SaaS for the enterprise is only different because you have a lot of people. All with the same logo on their business card. You get one large sale for a lot of yesses. Selling to SME is one small sale for each yes.
 
One of the health problems my wife has faced is with her kidneys. We are very lucky that she has had excellent treatment. In the end a kidney transplant has allowed her a full recovery.
 
She is still under the watchful eye of the renal unit at our local hospital. This gives her access to something called PatientView. It allows her to look at results of blood tests and some other specialist medical information. An example of digital health in action.
 
My wife has been using the product for several years so is familiar with how it works. But on at least two occasions in the past year she has been asked for help by doctors or pharmacists. They don't understand the system or the data. Think about that. A software product designed for patients that is not even intuitive for medical professionals.
 
Its a common problem. A recent survey by Digital Health focused on the IT priorities for the NHS. There was a sting in the tail. On social media one tweet called out the elephant in the room “most clinical systems in clinical settings are unusable by clinicians”.
 
The same disease afflicts B2B SaaS and software of all kinds. Even some of the best are vulnerable. I find Xero simple to use but I am a qualified accountant. I always have a suspicion that the layman does not have things so easy. 
 
There is not shortage of advice on good UX design. Good people are hard to find but not that hard. The root cause is much more basic. Too much software is designed for companies not people.

Companies don’t use software, people do. When you sell a thousand licences to a large enterprise you do not gain one user. You gain 1,000 users with one sale. The success of your software will depend engaging each of those users and helping them succeed.
 
Lincoln Murphy’s recent article on customer success identified the key question. What has to happen for your customer to be successful? And followed on with the specifics:

• What do they need to do in your product? 
• What do they need to do outside of your product? 
• What does your product need to do for them behind the scenes? 
• What do you need to do for them?

 
They and them in these questions mean people. The leaders, managers and workers in your customers that use your product. 

The same principle applies to sales in spades. Enterprise sales leaders. Enterprise sales teams. How to move up to selling to the enterprise. And so on. Nope. You are selling to people.
 
An enterprise is a way of organising a large group of people in a combined economic unit. To some extent there will a common purpose and goals. That varies quite a bit from company to company in practice.
 
In every case though its still a group of people. To sell 1,000 SMB customers you might need to convince 100 people. You might only talk to 10 of them and the rest would be self serve. The numbers for selling 1,000 licence enterprise SaaS deal are much the same. Talk to around 10 people. Help them convince their teams, bosses etc so maybe 100 people in the loop. 
 
There are two differences. In the enterprise deal, everyone has the same logo on their business card. The enterprise deal is one big decision rather than 100 small decisions.
 
But that decision is the result of a complex set of interactions. Every user, every influencer, every buyer has their own individual needs. Your SaaS needs to serve many people. Be careful it doesn’t become a hybrid monster along the way. 

And we come back to the key to all business success. Change. You can’t solve a real world problem unless something changes. Lincoln Murphy has it dead right. Customer success only happens if the customer changes. Nir Eyal is on the same band wagon. A hook is mechanism for change.
 
The value in your SaaS is in change. Change in any business of any size happens because folk change what they do. Make different decisions. Follow different processes. Talk a different talk and walk a different walk.

This is simple. Focus everything you do on the individuals who will buy and use your SaaS. Help them achieve their goals. Make their lives easier. Deliver the change through the people.

A short road trip this week has reminded me of the potential that lies in the NHS budget. We need to stop thinking of this as a losing battle. The people and cash we invest in the NHS could be a key catalyst for future innovation.

I am writing this in Chesterfield. I arrived by train at 8.00pm on a damp Sunday evening in February. A 10 minute walk to the hotel seemed to fit with my expectations. It is a picture postcard of the left behind northern town. I pass an estate agents that has no properties for sale in the window. Only rentals.
 
There are motorways, a couple of modern retail sheds and the inevitable multi screen cinema complex. All plastered over the cracks left by decay. Take the wrong turn and boarded, abandoned early 20th century buildings lie grim and empty. Above one of the few lights an upstairs window has a Saltire draped across it.
 
Opposite one of the superstores is a newish police compound. A patrol car stopped for two minutes at the high narrow metal gate. Cautious of admitting even such an obvious one of its own. At length it swings open with a gothic menace of creaking and clanging. 
 
The gate is the only gap in a high wall topped with sharp and well polished spikes. In one corner a flag pole pokes above the razor wire. From it flies an incongruous rainbow flag, symbol of gay pride.
 
At the top of a small hill in the middle of all this is the famous Church of St Mary’s and All Saints - surely a name that hedges it bets - with its famous crooked spire. A plaque in the churchyard marks the battle of Chesterfield in 1266. Part of the endless friction between barons and nobles in England during the Middle Ages.
 
The area around has the remains of the old medieval market town, awarded its charter by King John in 1204. Wood timbered houses and twisty cobbled streets. One with the magnificent name Knifesmithgate. In another jarring image, the town square contains a victorian market hall and a thronging assortment of stalls. All in the shadow of a giant, miserable Ferris wheel.
 
The town’s information centre tells me that George Stephenson moved there in 1838. He discovered deposits of coal and ironstone nearby when tunnelling for a railway. I guess he triggered the industrial boom in the town. 
 
Tomorrow I will be visiting the local hospital on business. I anticipate I might see the real front line of the NHS winter crisis in a place like this. 

Chesterfield Royal is busy but with no sense of urgency. This is typical of the hospital environment. People work at a steady, constant, unrelenting pace. Punctuated by rushing only when there is a genuine life or death crisis.
 
Its a low, red brick complex on top of Hady Hill at the edge of the town. The inside is functional and feels cleaner and fresher than many I have visited. I saw a woman in an auxiliary uniform going round repairing tears in the red vinyl seats with matching red tape. 
 
My meeting is professional, positive and forward looking. In ePrescribing at least this hospital has been an early adopter. Ten years on they are still striving for improvement. 
 
The more upbeat image is reinforced during the day. The walk to the hospital was tree lined and the view from the entrance is of fields and river valleys. Chesterfield is near the edge of the Peak District National Park. An hour running along the Rother and the Chesterfield Canal is a delight. Every step takes me deeper into rural England. A couple of miles from the town centre I am already in the Bluebank Pools nature reserve.

What can we make of all this? Can we rescue centuries of history and tradition? Recovered from the coal fired boom and lingering bust of the past two centuries. Yes.
 
Places like Chesterfield are the real untapped potential for technology. And the NHS could be one of the keys to unlocking it. 
 

• Tech and communications can end the isolation. Dispel the forgotten feeling that hangs over many post industrial towns.
• Ancient market towns were there for a reason. Strip away the coal mines (sorry!) and they are modest, comfortable and rural. Cheap housing and decent education make them an attractive place to live and work.
• The demand for a better life is there. The bulk of the population are quietly working hard to make things better. The culture is professional not prima donna.

 
We spend enormous amounts of money in the NHS and we do it with pride. We also tend to see this as desperate struggle to keep our heads above water. Grandiose schemes of reform make things worse rather than better. Spending comes with a cold, target driven culture that beating up management and staff.

This road trip has convinced me more than ever that we need a different approach. We should view NHS spending as an investment catalyst. Open the doors to new ideas and new technologies. And its not just the money. Anything new would be supported by some of the smartest and most dedicated people. 
 
More money would be good but we can also do so much more with what we have. Think of NHS procurement as akin to defence procurement in California in the 1950’s. This was the trigger for today’s Silicon Valley. We can make health the fuel for our own tech boom. Powered by the NHS, the benefits would reach every corner of the country.
 
I am expecting there will be announcement later this week of £100 million of NHS spend on old technology. Something that could be done better for a tenth of the money. There is a different way.

I have never been to Davos. The closest I got was running into our senior partner in the queue for coffee at London City Airport at 5.45am one morning. He was on his way to the Swiss junket looking as miserable as everyone else at that hour.
 
Nonetheless I do have a Davos story. 6 or 7 years ago, I helped organise a discussion between one of the world’s largest mobile operators and the retail division of a global bank. My firm advised both companies and we wanted to explore ideas on how they might co-operate in mobile banking.
 
The upshot was a small dinner in a room in the bank’s London offices. I brought along a regional sales director from the mobile operator. The global head of retail from the bank attended along with 3 or 4 hangers on.  
 
Everyone there was a committed leader, smart and engaged. We threw around a lot of ideas and it is fair to say the senior guy from the bank was blown away with the outcome. This nearly didn’t happen. Andy - the mobile guy - started talking about their coolest new ideas. The bank did not respond well to this kind of cutting edge stuff. But Andy was a good listener and dialled it back to more routine solutions. Some of these were already being used by the bank’s competitors and that really got the conversation flying.

As a firm we did a little work developing ideas for this potential partnership but nothing ever went anywhere. There were two reasons. First the bank had a rigid and structured procurement process backed up by a strong and influential procurement division. This meant that technology suppliers were not allowed to talk to bank executives. They could only respond to requests for proposal generated by a business need. 
 
This sounds logical but the practical impact is not so good. The most senior person Andy was allowed to talk to after that dinner was four levels down the organisation chart from the regional head of procurement. A role that was another 5 levels below the senior individual who had attended the dinner. No amount of friendly chat could change this.
 
The enthusiasm for the whole concept finally died at Davos. Andy had reported back after the dinner. So his Group CEO was briefed on the opportunities generated. The bank guy on the other hand had kept it to the people in the room. He did not want anyone in the organisation getting excited until the time was right.
 
The two Group CEOs met at Davos (as these people do). The MNO guy mentioned this and his bank counterpart knew nothing. This was exactly the kind of uncontrolled situation the bank guy was trying to avoid. Disaster.

If you are still here, you are no doubt wondering what this story from my previous corporate life has to do with the world of early stage B2B SaaS. Its simple. The individual concerned was not a bad person and the bank is not a bad business. Yet a great opportunity was killed before it had a chance to breathe.
 
The opportunity was mashed by two things that are common in the corporate world. Both have been created in response to an endless stream of enterprise sales people. Sent to corporations by big traditional software companies. 
 

1. Procurement departments have been set up as a defence. They stop sales people bothering busy executives. This is partly to control spending. And also because busy executives on average hate being sold to.
   
2. At every level, executives are nervous of talking about new IT initiatives. There is a long and bitter legacy of failure to overcome. Investment in IT has become a delicate and difficult sell internally. Its even harder for CEOs who have to sell it to shareholders.
   

In B2B SaaS you are asking your customers to take on real business change - a major risk. Plus at early stage they are also taking a smaller risk on the credibility of your business. Driving that proposition straight into the jaws of the procurement/ don’t tell my boss monster is a fool’s errand.
 
B2B SaaS can and will change the world. Realising this potential means changing the biggest and best companies. Unless you offer something different they will never notice you are there. 
 
Your product and its benefits already meet this test. Why try to push them through the same tired sales channel? With the same commission led suit and tie sales people? Its time to differentiate enterprise sales as well as enterprise SaaS:
 

• Evergreen SaaS is a service not software that needs complex implementation.
• Teams sell better than point sales by one individual.
• You are selling business change not features and not benefits.