A time comes when a B2B SaaS company starts to think about sales to big companies. Becoming an enterprise SaaS in other words. It soon becomes obvious that getting enterprise sales is not easy. Then its a short step to the place where you decide its time to start hiring sales people.
There is a bit of consensus in Scotland right now. A lot of companies are on the cusp if they can just get the right sales team onboard. The problem is great sales people are hard to find. And expensive. I sit in a lot of conversations about how much to offer sales people. For most SaaS founders it feels like a big risk. The salary alone can add 20 or 30% to the monthly burn rate. Then comes the vexed question of commission. How much should you offer for on target earnings? What is a reasonable target? At this point I like to confuse the issue by offering my thoughts. I don’t think targets and commissions are a good model for rewarding sales in general. I believe they are terrible approach for a SaaS startup. The four killer flaws
Commissions based on the achievement of targets (or quotas if you prefer) are popular for three reasons. First they are simple, clear and easy to measure. Second the targets can be tied in to your overall revenue goals. Finally, sales people generate real value. And this is the established way of rewarding them for it.
All these arguments sound attractive. Everything is a balance though. And there are four big reasons why this traditional thinking does not stand up:
There are bunch of conflicting incentives and messages inherent in traditional per head sales quotas. I love this article by Steli Efti, a true sales guru, pointing out the downside risks of getting this stuff wrong. Luckily there is an alternative that avoids many of these pitfalls. And it grows naturally with your business. How team targets work
Most of my career, I worked towards team based targets. In a startup this is dead simple. You need to have one goal. Everyone in the business has to have a laser focus on achieving that single goal. So everyone shares the same target. Hiten Shah explains the importance of this.
As you grow, different teams will emerge. Targets and objectives will grow more complex. But each person will be a member of one or more teams. They share objectives with everyone in the team. This leads to a natural process. Objectives grow and diverge with your business. They are not made up to fit with “iconic,” expensive, big name hires. In a large business, most senior people are part of more than one team. The effect is that everyone has a different set of objectives. Each individual target is shared with the team but no two people have the same combination. For example, in my last year I was leading two major account teams and part of an industry business unit team. I had shared objectives with each of these teams. Yet no other individual had the exact same combination of teams and objectives. Be clear team targets do not mean splitting objectives up into separate portions. Each member of the team shares 100% of the same target. The Chairman's View
How does this affect reward? First and foremost everyone gets rewarded better because the business performs better. Teams work towards the same goals. People support each other. Incentives are unify not divide.
Performance reward in this system has to be based on total contribution. Simple numbers matter but they don’t tell the whole story. Total contribution gives you the opportunity to look at everything. Close sales, build relationships, deliver great customer service, product innovation - whatever really matters. You can take the chance to factor in the important cultural things that get left behind in a sales culture. Respect, diversity, honesty and personal growth all matter. So recognise them. Its true that total contribution is much harder to measure. At the same time it is fairer. Leadership earns more respect. The right behaviours are supported and encouraged. Well worth the effort.
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One of the challenges with selling SaaS to the enterprise is intrinsic in the nature of big companies. We talk about an enterprise customer as a single, unified entity. Even use the ultimate abstraction by describing wins as new logos.
This is not the real world. Companies don’t buy stuff. People do. Enterprises are just large collections of people. You don’t have to convince all those people to buy. But it might feel like it! The conventional sales manual recognises this challenge. You will be advised to map the people in your target customer. Classify them as influencers, buyers, decision makers, blockers, coaches and so on. Sophisticated techniques such a Miller Heiman will be even more precise. Making distinctions such as economic buyers versus technical buyers to refine the model. The trouble is this just doesn’t work. Each large company is like a miniature country (or even a mid sized one in some cases). It has its own culture, practices and ways of doing things. There is no standard model. Time to go to the fairground
I think of this like the old fairground favourite, the hall of mirrors. You walk past a series of mirrors which distort your reflection in various ways. Tall or short. Fat or thin. Squashed or twisted. On and on, laughing or crying.
As you pass through you will see images which flatter you, a couple of absolute horrors and a bunch of caricatures to keep you smiling. But everything you see is you. A merry melange of ways to see the exact same thing. Turn the kaleidoscope onto your SaaS
Your customers are the same. They experience the world differently from you. The clear, simple problem your SaaS solves is fractured and contorted through different lenses.
Yet each individual in your enterprise customer is looking at the same thing. Your product, your company and your team. Selling into this environment is about understanding these perspectives and dealing with the response. Put yourself in your customer's shoes
Every reflection is skewed by the change that your SaaS will make for the individual looking at your product. You may be dealing with managers, C Suite, users, procurement officials or just nosey finance people. Everyone is influenced by change.
So the best way to understand how your SaaS is reflected is to stand where you customer stands. Look at the product from their point of view. A good example of this is procurement. Sellers tend to think of procurement as a department that buys things. Yet more often than not this is wrong. Procurement’s job is to do deals. This enables others in the business to do the actual buying. So the way to make procurement feel good is to show them a great deal. Not to make it easy for them to buy. Meet the cast
Of course not every procurement function works like this. Like I say, there are no standards. But in every enterprise there are a few familiar characters you may recognise.
They are best identified through their own words: Your problem is my day job. Or in other words the cost reduction will be the salaries of some people influencing the decision. Your problem is invisible. This is a variant of the old Henry Ford comment about people looking for a faster horse. Sometimes people are so familiar with their environment they can’t imagine a different world. My IT guy tells me your solution is a high security risk. This person probably hasn’t talked to IT. Most people don’t understand technology risk but it makes them nervous. I love your company and your solution but there’s a fire over here and I need to put it out. Your SaaS is the most important thing in your world. It may be very small potatoes for some customers. Its not my job but I have the best interests of this company at heart and I’m not sure about you. You may be told straight up that you are too small. Or you may have found someone completely outside the loop sniffing out a risk. How do I know you will deliver what you promise. Anyone who buys IT will have a long legacy of disappointment and broken promises. It will take more than a couple of customer case studies to convince them. Can you guarantee this team will be available throughout. Often people feel they are buying S for service not for software. Services are delivered by people and customers buy people they know. We don’t like to be on the bleeding edge. There are many variations on this theme. Some people simply don’t like change. Even if they know it will be for the better. I don’t have the time and resources to implement this. The total cost of ownership is not only money. Change needs space and its not always there. The Chairman's View
You could adopt the Bruce Lee approach and take the fight in every direction. As in the famous closing scene from Enter the Dragon. Or you can learn from the sales gurus and treat all of these statements as objections rather than real concerns.
I prefer a less adversarial approach. Where possible work with these people. Change their view of your SaaS and you will help them realise the benefits faster. That is the basis for a sustainable customer relationship. You should also be sensitive and listen for problems that will not go away. If the fire is in the factory, turning up at head office with a hose will not work. When your customer is not ready to buy, don’t try and sell. The original hall of mirrors is in the palace of Versailles. It was designed to reflect the glory of the Sun King. And it closed out the real world. We all know how that ended. Don’t let the enterprise version blind you to reality.
This post is about psychology. Inspired by one specific facet of motivation and behaviour that is often overlooked. Why does winning drive some people to achieve extraordinary things and leave others cold?
Let me start with a health warning. I am not a professional psychologist. I have never studied psychology or had any training in the discipline. You could say that I am not even a rank amateur in the field. I do know one thing about psychology. It underpins everything in economics and business. If you want to understand better. Let me make two recommendations. For a great business perspective on psychology then listen to a world class amateur in Charlie Munger (on human misjudgement). Or get the professional view from Thinking Fast and Slow by the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. (Note that Professor Kahneman is a psychologist yet his Nobel is in Economics.) Celebrating victory
All I have to offer is observations of real people in all kinds of business situations over the years. Unsystematic and anecdotal evidence if you like. Much of it gathered through business activities that revolved around winning and losing. Or at least were characterised in those terms.
I have enjoyed many great, even elaborate social occasions in celebration of wins. I have listened to ten times as many speeches or presentations bemoaning the fact that we don’t celebrate victory enough. And sat around countless tables analysing and agonising over every detail of a campaign. In every case, the definition of victory was a business deal. Often a big sale to an important customer. But mergers, acquisitions, new hires, promotions, partnerships, procurement agreements are also seen in the same terms. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the parties (although I am getting a bit old for these things now). Yet something always felt a little hollow. I didn’t feel the same rush that bubbled and popped in many of my friends and colleagues. It took me many years to recognise the reasons. For me, winning the deal or making the sale is the beginning not the end. Selling versus doing
I was drawn into consulting because I like to help businesses become better. Since I found my way into SaaS and startups, I have kept to the same focus. Grow faster, be more efficient, develop new strategies, change culture, improve margins, enter new markets and many more. That’s how I have fun.
Making the sale or closing the funding round are means to an end. They give me the right to start doing what I love. Sales or deals are a hard and painful process. Fuelled by adrenaline, myth and lots of late nights. The energy generates excitement. But the result is no more than another box ticked. There has been no value for the client. Nothing has been billed. Closing the deal is the start of something for me. The process of creating value. The pressure to deliver. The sense of achievement. All begin after the win. I don’t feel stress in a deal. Only when the overture ends and the show begins. Delivering what I have promised is the greatest pressure. Seeing the benefits realised offers the only real job satisfaction. My world is very much services. Its an environment where the customer only pays after the job is done. The service provider is only as good as the last experience. Perhaps this means securing an engagement can never really be a win. Yet I think the same principle holds true for product. If I pick your product off the shelf and pay for it, the sale is made. Is it good for your business if I hate it as soon as I open the box. No. Again the process of value and the customer relationship only begins after the sale. Leopard or Impala - What makes the SaaS ecosystem?
I believe there are two basic types here. But the traditional type A/ type B comparison doesn’t work. So lets call them Leopards and Impalas instead. (I have also heard ducks and eagles but that was from an idiot so lets move on.)
I choose Leopards as the symbol not Lions because Lions are mangy, smelly, lazy scavengers in the wild. Leopards are the hunters. Silent killers who stalk their prey and live for the hunt. The leopard is a beautiful, natural machine. Sounds pretty cool huh? Then we have the antelope. I choose Impala to represent this crowd. It is the most common species in the Kruger Park and they are also sleek and stunning. Plus they are about the biggest antelope a leopard would take on as prey. They gather in herds to defend against predators. When one moves, they all follow. The group takes precedence over the individual every time. The alternative is death. By now its clear which type you want to be. And this type of image is common and widely accepted as a motivational tool. Hunters and farmers. Predators and Prey, Winners and losers. You can hear that motivational speaker revving up as I write. But stop a moment and consider this. Impala graze the grasses, bush and trees. They keep the savannah clear and pristine. And they thrive and grow in huge numbers. There are 2,000 leopards in the Kruger National Park……and 160,000 Impala. So which species is more successful? Which model of evolution would you rather follow? Maybe that superficial impact is not so convincing. I loved Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens. One of the ideas that struck me most came early in the story of human evolution. Around 10,000 years ago our ancestors made the move from hunter/ gatherers to farmers. We developed reliable crops and gained control over a handful of animal species. Its natural to talk about domesticating cattle and grains. But did man domesticate wheat or wheat domesticate man? The Chairman's View
Its obvious that leopard and impala are both essential to the eco system. I think the same is true in business. Those who see a sale as victory are needed to drive through the obstacles and pain of the sales process. This is especially true for Enterprise SaaS.
Those who are only happy when their customer sees value are also essential. That’s how great products get built and excellent service is delivered. A great business has a good mix of these two types. Its worth taking the time to recognise them and make sure you are developing that type of diversity in your team. Both types are equally vital to creating value in your business. Too often I see rewards skewed towards the leopards. Sales are seen as some kind of rainmakers. A special breed who deserve super rewards. This is a mistake which is embedded deep in business culture. The myth lasts long and spreads far. But sales do not generate value. They may close the deal. Success is a product of every element of the team. Remember this when thinking about incentives and rewards. And think about it when you are building a business. Building a sustainable business requires the whole team.
Any B2B SaaS needs to demonstrate a clear source of sustainable competitive advantage. Sometimes you will see this called barriers to entry. Warren Buffet likes to talk about “defensive moats”.
Whatever the jargon, its essential. Both to your strategy and to any business plan or investment pitch. Yet its an area surrounded in myth and misconception. A changing world
My attention was drawn to this subject by a handful of well argued and fascinating articles.
Christoph Janz takes a different view of the shift by arguing that there is a dissonance between SaaS and the VC model. I won’t try to draw out all the arguments. You can read the detail for yourself or take it from me these are all smart people with good points to make. The general theme is clear. The source of competitive advantage in B2B SaaS is changing. Moving from network effects and economies of scale to a new paradigm based on artificial intelligence. Or at least smarter, more algorithm driven automation. Practical options for your SaaS
At an abstract level, these arguments make sense. The technology will pull the market in the direction of more intelligent applications.
Yet we are still only scratching the surface of the opportunities SaaS offers to drive business change. And in any case, one trend will not be the only source of competitive advantage for a whole industry. So where will the edge be for B2B SaaS? Great customer value is always first. Keep demonstrating that your customers love your product and your service. And track the value they derive from your SaaS. Customer lifetime is not just a bit of maths based on churn. Its the whole of your business. Build great team is the best foundation. There is no route to business success that does not require a team of great people. No amount of AI will change that. And its a prime source of competitive advantage. Just think about Accountants or Lawyers. There are thousands of firms. All offering the same services and using the same business model. All the big 4 and the magic circle offer is great teams. People transform them from one man bands into multi billion dollar giants. Helping your customers change is the key to growth. This is the biggest barrier to the adoption of B2B SaaS. A business only realises the value of new technology through change. No amount of clever hardware or software is sufficient in isolation. There is a huge amount of business value out in the SaaS marketplaces today. But too many businesses can’t see it or don’t know how to get it. Make this happen and you will win. Mining and using data taps an unexploited resource. Look back at Sarah Guo’s slide. Its deceptively simple. Get access to data no-one else has or find better insights from data. Its not as easy as it sounds but the potential is huge. Businesses of all shapes and sizes are drowning in information. The prevailing mood is that its all too much. More of a threat than an opportunity. This is the wrong way to look at it. Find a smart way to use data and build from there. The IP elephant in the room
This by no stretch of the imagination a complete list. Every business needs to find its own unique competitive advantage. These are just some suggestions about where to look. There is one deliberate omission - intellectual property.
I spend a disturbing part of my life listening to debates about IP. Who owns it? What rights is the University seeking? How far does the patent extend? How much can be shared in an investment pitch? Its one of the biggest areas of friction in the company growth here in Scotland. Patentable IP is not a source of competitive advantage in software. Like very rule there will be exceptions to this but they will be once in a generation rare. In reality a focus on IP and patents is a disadvantage in starting or growing a SaaS business. There are three reasons for this:
Trademarks, copyright and the unregistered skill and talent of your people (or know how as the lawyers describe it) are all worth having. Chasing patents or arguing over ownership of formal IP are not. They have the effect of strangling your business at birth. Software is not the place for this kind of IP. The Chairman's View
Customers and a great founding team are essential to create any business. Building on and protecting these requires a clear and sustainable competitive advantage.
This will be unique to each company. And B2B SaaS offers a world of opportunity to identify that edge. Make sure it is clear and realistic. Focus but remember its a fast changing landscape. Nothing lasts forever and a bunch of smarter people than me have described the future. Be aware of this but don’t be afraid. And don’t fall into the trap of fixed and defined IP. I leave you with a different way of thinking. Jason Cohen asks a great question. How would you gain competitive advantage if you build everything in public?
I have spent quite a bit of time over the last few weeks writing a business plan. Its a bit of a retro experience for me. These days I spend much more time reviewing and advising rather than doing.
Apart from a long overdue return to real work, this has been a reminder of some key challenges. The business plan I am working on is for a funding pitch. Why else would you bother? This is reality for most entrepreneurs. At some point you have to do one. Framing your sales pitchIn preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.
Regulars will know this is one of my favourite quotes. The meaning is clear when you are fund raising. The purpose of both planning and plan is to support a sales pitch. Selling shares in your company to investors. (Please never “giving equity away”.)
Because its a pitch, your business plan is much more than a technical description of how you aim to grow your company. This is about presentation and storytelling. And its about a clear message. Not a range of scenarios for debate and discussion. Most often the value from planning is helping evaluate options before making a decision. In an investment pitch, that value is thinking through the best story to tell your audience. How happy is the ending?
Your first dilemma is aggression v realism in the numbers.
People and narrative sell the business but investors buy the numbers. As a struggling entrepreneur, fighting for your first few sales, can you really see $100 million revenue in 3 or even 5 years? Yet that is what investors want to hear. The easy option is to offer exponential growth. Creating the forecast is remarkably easy. With no track record, your projections can be anything you like. Then the dilemma hits you. Will anyone believe it? How do you convince investors that the dream is doable? How credible are the characters?
That brings you to the next dilemma. For the numbers to be believable, there are at least three other articles of faith. Team, market and product.
In each case, you need to sell investors a combination of proven reality and potential.
What are the limits of the genre?
At the risk of extending the literary metaphor, your business plan sits in a well understood genre of fiction. Investors have a set of expectations and plenty of experience looking at this stuff. And this is the true dilemma at the heart of everything.
Raising startup investment is a game with well established rules. They vary a bit between individual Angels, syndicates like those which operate here in Scotland, VCs and other market players. But the rules exist and they can be hard for entrepreneurs to learn. Once you uncover the rule book, the temptation is to play it to the letter. And you will not be short of well meaning advisors who recommend just this approach. Yet it won’t work. The hardest rule to abide by is simple - surprise me. Every investor wants to see something unique. A passion or a solution or a hook of some kind that makes your business stand out. Stray too far from the playing field (sorry drifted into a different metaphor) and people will think you are crazy. Stick within the white lines without deviation and the same audience sees you as boring. The Chairman's View
There is the ultimate unanswerable question. How do you stand out from the crowd? Emphasise the unique genius of your business proposition while playing to the prejudices and preferences of your target investors.
No answers to this one. But one big piece of advice. Make sure this is where you focus when developing your business plan.
Do the basics and use your thinking time to wrestle with the last dilemma. Surprise me!
Business tools provide handy shortcuts and improve efficiency. Used for their intended purpose good business tools can lead to massive productivity improvements. Apply them the way they were designed and you will get results.
Enterprise SaaS companies are both builders and users of such tools. And one of the clear benefits of the SaaS model is making better, more innovative tools available to every business. But SaaS does not overcome the biggest danger with any tool. Start using business tools for the wrong purpose and they can become an instrument of torture not a source of value. CRM and its reporting arm sales pipelines are one of the most misused tools around today. Your SaaS pipeline is for asking questions not making decisions
They provide an excellent snapshot of the future health of your business. Your SaaS can get a clear indicator of future revenue and with a bit of effort some good data on which sales processes or sales teams are driving growth.
However, many people take this one step too far. CRM and pipeline data becomes a tool to manage. A mechanism to make decisions. And therein lies the danger. Good pipeline data is a great way to ask the right questions. Don’t let the data get polluted by a bias towards preset goals and targets. Good decisions flow from answering good questions not just from abstract, summarised data. Enterprise SaaS sales - Dynamics not statics
This is most obvious for enterprise SaaS sales.
Each sale is the culmination of a long cycle with many twists and turns. Its not out of whack to spend six months building an enterprise relationship and another nine months to achieve the first sale. And in enterprise SaaS you are also looking for upsell. Each sales opportunity is only part of a wider relationship picture.Ongoing revenue, new ideas, expansion sales, service challenges and the rest. Your pipeline is just a snapshot at a point in time. Every stage is like an individual window that captures only those opportunities that are in a specific position at a given moment. It doesn’t matter whether you use the categories I outlined a few weeks ago in Simple SaaS Or adopt a more conventional structure. Your pipeline is a valuable yet static view. An enterprise relationship is like a dynamic living organism. Think of it like comparing your turnover to your growth rate. Turnover tells you how well you have done but its a static figure. In the past. Growth is dynamic. A much better indicator of where you are going. Manage enterprise SaaS customer one by one
Relationships are dynamic and unique. Each relationship needs to be treated as a special case and managed as such. More accurately, for enterprise SaaS we are talking about the group of relationships that forms you customer contacts for each enterprise organisation.
Customer A and Customer Y may be in the same “pot” from a pipeline reporting point of view. But they will have arrived there by very different routes. The account team will be planning their own specific next steps. And value of the relationship will depend on how those plans are executed. “Strategic” sales choices like: “lets push all of these to the next stage this quarter” or let’s make sure every customer is offered this special new feature” are counter productive. They distract from a focus on customer need and they risk upsetting the delicate balance of the relationship. The Chairman's View
Sitting on Boards, pipeline is one of the first things I look at each month. It gives me a great pulse check on the business. And it help find the right questions to ask the management team.
But I also like to listen to the CEO or the Sales Director talk about the market. This gives me a much better feel for the dynamics than the report. When I ask my questions, I am not looking for simple answers. I want to hear specifics. Plans to convert important relationships. Actions to address customer problems or concerns. Change to strategy in response to the customer’s business dynamic. All about a unique approach for each enterprise SaaS customer. Designed to maximise the company’s chance of developing a strong relationship that generates value for both sides.
Complaints about meetings are one of the hardy perennials of management. Alongside email, dealing with millennials and the stupidity of the C suite, you will hear this in along any corridor and around every water cooler.
Begin at the beginning
If you have a startup mindset, you may be tempted to think this is a real world problem and therefore a big opportunity. Spend any time on the subject and you will quickly learn that there is a solution out there already. Effective meetings are based on a well understood formula.
I could make this longer but you get the picture. And this is not new. Everyone in every business knows this. Occasionally a new wrinkle appears. For example, Scrum or lean software development often relies on short, sharp meetings where everyone stands up. This sounds new and smart. Yet the UK Privy Council has been meeting standing since time immemorial. (Note: This is literally true. Time immemorial is defined in English Law as being any time before 6 July 1189 and the Privy Council definitely predates this. Gotta love those lawyers!) And I have never heard anyone hold this body out as an exemplar of efficient and decisive business meetings. The hidden value of meetings
The truth is no-one can stick to these rigid rules. Meetings have a social value over and above their business purpose. Colleagues work in different departments or may be scattered across buildings and locations. In field work like sales, meetings may be the only time some team members return to base.
Even in small close knit teams live software developers, the daily or weekly meeting serves a purpose. Some things are just better shared with a group than in a one to one discussion. And Shakespeare’s Antony could never “cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war” over a coffee in the forum. It needs an audience, a meeting. People like getting together and chewing the fat. No amount of logic and discipline over minutes and actions and agendas will ever change this. Human behaviour will eat any rationalist meeting approach for breakfast. Along with the biscuits and the bacon rolls if they are provided. The other end of the telescope
I should apologise at this point. I will get to the other end of the telescope but my real point about meetings is that we should start in the middle. The “other end” would be working backwards from the actions to determine how meetings should be run. Tempting but no more likely to overcome human psychology than the traditional approach.
Instead my starting point is another common attitude. How often have you heard something like “I’m not sure if [insert name of meeting] is a waste of time but I always try to go along because its fun.” Malcolm in the middle
That quote is the definition of a successful meeting. The attendees are motivated to attend. They enjoy being there. And they want to participate. Given these preconditions you can achieve anything.
So instead of starting with the purpose and agenda, go to the middle and build out. How can you make this a meeting that people will want to join?
Bring together a group of people that like each other or feel they can learn from each other or have some other clear motivation to be in the same room together. Choose a time slot and venue that suits people’s diaries. If possible give them some additional motivation like free doughnuts or a couple of beers.
Once people want to be there you can think about what you want to achieve. This could be big decisions. But it might also be smaller things. For example, the core of the meeting might be to brief the team on a new strategy. The outcome you want is for each attendee to take away a couple of personal actions to make it work. There is no need to have a hard line on actions and accountability. In this situation, that will feel like bullying not management. And you want to people to enjoy the meeting. Otherwise, all that effort is a one off. They will come to your first meeting but not the next one. Agendas are not required by Law
The final element is to think about what is needed in advance.
Most people like to know why the meeting is taking place. So a clear purpose is a minimum requirement. A simple statement like “Monthly Team Meeting” can be enough. No need to get evangelical. For many meetings that is all the pre-work you need. Regular meeting have a rhythm of their own and an agenda is rarely necessary. An agenda and material to read in advance may be required. But there is no rule that says there must be an agenda. A lot depends on timing. In a startup or a deal situation things can move fast. Advance notice can be tough to organise. I can remember, during a takeover bid, holding a Board meeting at midnight and scheduling the next one for 4 am. Set agendas can be a straitjacket rather than a control. Especially in a startup. This week’s big issue can be superseded by the time you sit down to have the meeting. Any preparation should be set in the context of what is required for a good meeting. Not just a wish list of what you would like to talk about. The Chairman's View
So there you have it. An alternative formula for good meetings. Plan how you can make the meeting good fun and add social value. Then set out what you can achieve - be realistic. And finally do the minimum needed in advance. No agenda without a reason.
One other thing. Most of this article is written in the context of the person drive ing the meeting. I have sort of assumed the reader is in a leadership position. CEO or founder for example. And there is no doubt good meetings require good leadership. Everyone has a role to play in this. Even if you are just a small cog in the business wheel. Come along to the meeting with the right attitude. Enjoy the discussion and work to make it fun for others. Make a note of your own actions and get on with it. Don’t wait for the minutes. Leadership is about you, not about job titles.
This has lots of implications regardless of the type of customer you are targetting. The gulf between product and service buying for an enterprise SaaS customer is especially wide.
I want to point out a couple of key things in this piece. Enterprise ready is an entry fee not a sales pitch
Another excellent article which caught my eye was a product manager’s guide to moving up market from Tom Tunguz.
I can’t improve on the list of product features your SaaS product needs to be enterprise ready. If you ever enter into an enterprise procurement process, covering these bases will save you a lot of heartache. And likely prevent your bid falling at the first hurdle. But don’t be deceived into thinking this is anything like enough. As the title says this is just for a product manager. Selling SaaS to the enterprise has multiple dimensions. Meeting certain technical standards and the preconditions set by procurement is only the entry ticket. Your SaaS needs to convince buyers not just procurement
Last week someone asked me to share the basic proposal structure I used to use when selling complex professional services. Writing this down reminded me of a fundamental truth about selling services.
Every sale needs its own unique selling point. Most entrepreneurs will be familiar with the idea of a USP. A clear and distinctive advantage that set your SaaS apart from the competition. The implication is that there is a clear USP which will appeal to a range of potential customers. Services are not like that. Services are personal. So each customer likes to feel that the USP is designed from them and them alone. Back in the day, we used to refer to this as the killer slide. Every proposal had to have one page that made the buying decision for the client. Your SaaS needs to be beyond compare and score
Achieving this when you are selling to the enterprise needs a couple of things.
First, this will never appear on the procurement agenda. Procurement’s job is to get specific answers to a whole range of standard questions. This allows them to do like for like comparisons and score your SaaS against its competitors. Winning this type of scoring is an art form in itself. But it does not touch on USP. By definition this defies comparison. To figure this out you need to talk to the real buyers. The people in the enterprise that will benefit from your SaaS. Your USP for a specific customer needs to be couched in the benefits that key people within that enterprise will realise if they use your SaaS. (Note use it, not just buy it.) The Chairman's View
The service mindset is the key to enterprise SaaS. Building a product with the right operations and support to deliver behind it is a core essential. You can take account of these needs from the outset of your startup.
Once you engage with customers, you have to get on the business benefits agenda. Satisfy procurement and deliver the wow factor the business buyers. away. Or, click the Write button and compose something new.
This particular learning has been front of mind for me during the past week. And things right v the right thing turns out to be a good way of shining a light on some of the more frustrating moments.
Are we making it easy for startups to do business?
I like to focus on helping entrepreneurs and companies. There are plenty of other smart people and organisation trying to help in the same way. You would think that making life easy for founders would be important. And on the face of it, Scotland and the UK should be a good place to achieve that.
There are a handful of key measures Economists like to turn to when explaining the relative economic performance of different countries. A favourite is the Ease of Doing Business index compiled by the World Bank. The UK ranks 7th in this list and 16th for the specific category “Starting a Business.” Yet it doesn’t seem to work out that way. So often a promising startup pitch becomes entangled in a web of process and bureaucracy Or tangling SaaS in a web of complexity?
One recent experience sticks in my mind. The entrepreneur had a strong, simple idea in a high value life sciences niche. Life sciences is not my speciality but this lady was the best entrepreneur in the sector that I have seen in the last 4 years. It was all clear and compelling. Questions were answered with confidence and little bit of brio.
Then we got to IP. And found what felt like dozens of unanswered and unanswerable queries. Many of which lay in then hands of an organisation that I know is committed to helping companies like this get started. Yet the founder was left unable to get to any clear answer. Never mind a simple one. And there are plenty of other areas where the ecosystem designed to help has enmeshed startups in complexity they don’t need. On the very same evening I heard about challenges related to complex shareholder arrangements for a company that has not product yet and has not started trading. Questions surrounding the best way of ensuring that a startup qualifies for EIS or SEIS, the two excellent tax incentives that exist in the UK. And another entrepreneur worn down by the time and effort required to go through the process for a pitching competition designed to give startups free money. This happens all the time. Sometimes its the founding team that initiates the problem. In other cases, the system designed to help is just too process heavy. But every time there is more people like me and other senior mentors could be doing to help. Matters of shareholder law and contracts, tax incentives, distribution of public money and IP are all important to get right. Risk and complexity do exist in these arrangements. The way this reality is approached is wrong. Complex solutions are offered and pursued. Or worse, the situation is allowed to go unresolved. Professionals and others weigh the options while the startup tries to move forward. In time, the weight of this uncertainty becomes crushing. A huge obstacle to investment. And a real drain on the time and energy the founding team needs to get things moving. The Chairman's View
Too often (and I include myself in this) experienced professionals hear the problem and switch straight into doing things right mode.
We all need a big dose of doing the right thing mentality. In the shareholder example above, there was a lawyer in the room. The entrepreneur explained what he wanted to achieve with his co-founder. Rather than taking him at his word, she challenged the underlying thinking. Take an alternative approach and get a simpler, faster, cleaner solution. Great work Julie. Advisors need to look for the simple way through. Resolve obstacles and move forward. Or to be clearer, get shit done. There is nothing worse than confusion and uncertainty. Not knowing your IP rights or shareholder structure kills any investment and the business with it. So the job of an advisor is to make it easy for entrepreneurs to focus on innovation getting in front of customers. That is doing the right thing.
The start not the end of a customer lifetime
All that aside, a different thought struck me as I was driving home. In my mind, these guys are already a customer. They are busy people with high pressure jobs that are literally life and death. And they gave up 3 hours of time between them to help me out.
Since I have gained value, I must owe them more value in return. Its an obligation plain and simple. Retention first not acquisition first
That took me back to thinking about this article from Price Intelligently which argues for a retention first mindset rather than an acquisition first approach. The authors have approached this from a metrics standpoint. And they demonstrate clearly that reducing churn can be a straight path to rapid growth.
But metrics are outcomes not strategy. Churn and its relative LTV are good examples. They capture an important concept. Yet they result from measuring customer lifetime at the end not from the beginning. That can’t be right! Nonetheless, I liked the principle when I first read the post. I was also a little bit doubtful to be honest. Retention first sounds very attractive to someone who prefers building relationships to cold sales. So was I just playing to my own preferences? My customer meeting has put that niggling doubt to bed. Good business works on human relationships. Not just transactional benefits. That’s why numbers and benchmarks are useful tools but no way to run a business. B2B SaaS - relationships not pipeline
So for me, retention first is a simple principle. One that applies to any B2B SaaS from day one. And it works like this:
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AuthorKenny Fraser is the Director of Sunstone Communication and a personal investor in startups. Archives
September 2020
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