In short, as per Part 1, you

1. keep admitting to every mistake you are making and do something about it, then
2. continue by looking for cost-effective opportunities for improvement and pursue them and finally
3. never, ever, ever forget the timeless basics.

Today, we’ll continue by describing what you do when you identify, and admit to, one of the next two mistakes (mistakes 9 & 10) we chronicled in our two part introduction to our “dead company walking” (Part 1 and Part 2) series (where we helped your potential customers identify problems that signify you are a SaaS supplier they should be walking away from). (You can find part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6 here.)

9) Sales is about numbers, not solutions

While this wasn’t generally true in the early days in our space (probably because the overall investment was low and S2P+ plays weren’t getting a lot of attention from the big VC and PE funds investing in them) this has now become a big problem and at the majority of big players, or VC/PE backed players (funded before any whiff of profitability), who are focussing on numbers only … and if you don’t make them, every quarter, you’re out.

Moreover, at the bigger firms, it’s don’t worry about solving the problem, that’s the implementation partner’s problem, and their failure if they don’t, which, sadly, could only be true IF they are the one that sold the solution through a partner (referral) platform. (But still is a situation that should not happen. More later.) Otherwise, your customer’s success is entirely your responsibility, no ands, ifs, or buts,

And if you don’t focus only on customers you can support, you won’t have happy customers, which will mean a few things for you.

• unless you replaced (part of) the ERP/MRP and became the ERP/MRP, good luck getting a renewal,
• you won’t get a reference, and
• when potential customers run into your customers at events and ask about you, you’re going to get a very bad review and even if those customers aren’t CXO/VP cheque signers now, the fact they are trying to improve themselves means that they will be, and you can forget about ever getting any business from any organization they will ever work for (and we’re not in the boomer times where you had a job for life, we’re in the times where most people change jobs every 2 to 3 years because greedy corporations, instead of focussing on retention, focus on recruitment and, thus, the only way these buyers can get the raise they deserve is to switch jobs on a regular basis).

It’s time to get back to basics, and ask:

• what solutions can you sell : and focus only on customers with appropriate problems
• what upgrades can you sell later : and not only focus your development roadmap to support them, but educating, supporting, and maturing your customer to the point where they would get value from those upgrades and want to pay for them
• what’s the best price/package combo to maximize the overall lifetime value of each customer : it’s not about how much you can sell now, it’s about how much you can sell as long as you both shall be in business; and that will require figuring out how much value you can deliver over time in a controlled expansion, and pricing appropriately so your customers see bang for their buck year after year and ensure that, if times get tough, your solution is off limits as far as the chopping block is concerned
• what sales people can sell this way : you want sales people who are focussed on the long term success of a customer and willing to close a smaller deal now for a bigger deal later; however, for this to work, their remuneration has to go beyond the traditional sale, and you can’t rip a customer away from them, because you qualify that sales person as a “hunter” and want them to focus on new sales, and give the client to a “farmer” who will then get big commissions on effortless upgrade sales later based on all the hard work the initial sales person did in the beginning; you hire “hunter/gatherers” who are not only responsible for closing new clients, but keeping those clients at renewal times where they should be able to renew the license at a fair increase (due to inflation and increased core platform capability) as well as sell the new modules / upgrades appropriate for the client; and, finally, you need sales people in it for the long haul, not a sales person who jumps ship every two years (because they know they sold silicon snake oil)

X) Any temporary price cut to get those initial clients can be made up later!

This is bullcr@p and, guess what, your investors know it.

You have to ask yourself, because this is what your customer is asking, if it’s not worth it now, why is it worth it later?

The reality is that if it was worth it, your customer would pay it now. If you have to cut more than 10% to 20%, your software is not worth it, and you’re fooling yourself or your investors if you keep saying it is.

Moreover, you’re ruining you reputation when you say it’s a million dollar solution that is yours for the low, low, one time price for $200K. Enterprise buyers are a bit savvier than trusting, uninformed consumers. And the reality is that even an uneducated hillbilly who lives in the mountains and only comes to town twice a year to stock up on supplies would see through the hogwash and call you out as a con.

Your investors might want big sales as fast as possible, but the path to true success is happy, repeat, customers who buy more at every renewal. Fair, honest pricing and a bit of patience will lead to greater success than sleazy car-salesman tactics.

Stay tuned for Part 8!

In short, as per Part 1, you

1. keep admitting to every mistake you are making and do something about it, then
2. continue by looking for cost-effective opportunities for improvement and pursue them and finally
3. never, ever, ever forget the timeless basics.

Today, we’ll continue by describing what you do when you identify, and admit to, the next mistake (mistake 8) we chronicled in our two part introduction to our “dead company walking” (Part 1 and Part 2) series (where we helped your potential customers identify problems that signify you are a SaaS supplier they should be walking away from). (You can find part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5 here.)

8) If there is interest, your product is the solution

Every inquiry is a lead, and every lead is one we must sell and close.

Let me be clear here: Nothing could be further from the truth!

If we go back to mistake #7, buzz and sound bites are more important than timeless educational content, a lot of inquiries are going to come from people trying to figure out what the h3ck you do and if your product has key functionality or process support that they might be looking for.

And if you pass that bar, then they need to know that it meets enough of their requirements to be a consideration — if they can get budget to put out an RFP.

Which means that, the more buzzwords and sound-bites you use, and thus the more confusing your messaging is, the less correlation there is between inquiries and actual interest in your product and, as just stated, actual interest doesn’t mean actual budget, or, more importantly, that your product is the solution.

There was a time when most vendors, with integrity (and without the constant push from greedy investors to sell first, solve later) would qualify a lead before trying to sell that lead, but these days, it seems that most vendors have adopted the Big X strategy of “everyone’s a client, close the deal, and figure it out later” — and they do so even if they don’t have a clue how to solve the problem or the software to do it, when nothing could be further from the truth.

the doctor knows we’ve all forgotten about the Miracle on 34th Street, but it had a timeless piece of sales advice you should never forget if you want to maintain integrity: if you don’t have what the customer wants, send the customer elsewhere. It doesn’t mean you’ve lost them. It means that when they have a problem you can solve, they will come back because they know they can trust you, and in the world of SaaS where they need constant support, they want a vendor they can trust.

At the end of the day, the reality is this:
if there is interest, there’s an opportunity to qualify … and that’s it

And, more importantly,
it there’s an opportunity to qualify, there’s an opportunity to learn … and that could be more important than a sale!

If you stop pushing and start pulling, i.e asking, you can learn about:

• the real problems potential customers are having,
• what they are looking for in a solution, and
• how your solution could be improved to not only solve more problems, but be more appealing, as well as
• why they contacted you, and use that insight to figure out
• how to tweak your messaging and content to get more relevant inquiries in the future

Once you get this information you can,

• tweak your roadmap appropriately
• improve your usability (which does not mean add flash to your UI)
• ensure you have the right price point for a timely, but still profitable, sale

All you have to do is fire your marketing morons^*, stop talking gibberish and start listening.

Stay tuned for Part 7!

^* the doctor is not implying all marketers are morons, there are still a few very smart ones out there, just that the percentage of morons focussed on hits and not success or meaning has greatly increased over the past decade and the odds are, if you’re a dead company walking, your marketer is a moron and not a maven.

In short, as per Part 1, you

1. keep admitting to every mistake you are making and do something about it, then
2. continue by looking for cost-effective opportunities for improvement and pursue them and finally
3. never, ever, ever forget the timeless basics.

Today, we’ll continue by describing what you do when you identify, and admit to, the next mistake (mistake 7) we chronicled in our two part introduction to our “dead company walking” (Part 1 and Part 2) series (where we helped your potential customers identify problems that signify you are a SaaS supplier they should be walking away from). (You can find part 2, part 3, and part 4 here.)

7) Buzz and Sound Bites are More Important than Timeless Educational Content

The last few years have been a barrage of quick-hit sound-bite, buzzword, influencer, and rapid-fire quick-switch focal point campaigns (to see what sticks), and the doctor can tell you that your target customer is as fed up of it as he is. Especially since they don’t have a clue as to what the h3ll you’re talking about, what your solution does, how you differentiate from 20 other vendors spewing the same nonsense, or if you even offer core Procurement functionality (and the doctor is side-eyeing a couple of the fake-take vendors here who need to be clearer in their messaging; while they are all a great fix for those on monolithic suites with archaic interfaces and no organizational process visibility beyond Procurement, they don’t actually work on their own).

It’s critical to remember that:

It’s not the attention quantity, it’s the attention quality!

Ten thousand views of a clickbait LinkedIn sound bite that only results in 100 click throughs to your website and 10 registrations to your webinar is not only unproductive, it’s counter productive. You’re leaving a negative image of your company as one that doesn’t really care about customers as you’re wasting their time with unclear messaging and then presenting them with irrelevant information or SaaS. If those individuals ever have a problem that you would be perfect for, you’re not going to be top of their list, or a company they actively recommend to peers desperate for your solution.

In comparison a clear, Plain English, to the point description of a new functionality and the problem it solves might sound boring, and might only get 1,000 views, but what if 100 click through to your website and 50 register for today’s webinar. That’s 10X the initial click through rate (percentage wise) and 50X the initial registration rate (percentage wise). Think about that. Especially since there’s a good chance that half those fifty will have a problem similar to what you described in your messaging and half of those could be immediate sales targets.

Taglines are okay, but you need real content that resonates to the target’s needs.

Especially if they are clear and centric to your actual solution capabilities. For example, “Mid-Market Procurement for Hospitality and Service” is very good as it specifies the industries, market size, and core offering (and Procurement has basic requirements) and a mid-market customer in hospitality and service knows that it is a potential solution, and even if it’s not perfect for them, researching it won’t waste their time because they’ll learn something (regarding what they need, don’t need, why, and what a good solution should do).

On the other hand, “AI-powered supplier performance for margin multiplication” is utter bullcr@p as “AI-powered” doesn’t mean anything (as it is misused and abused by 6/7 vendors, and sometimes is simply “Applied Indirection” as there’s no real AI at all, not even of the artificially idiotic variety). “Supplier Performance” is vague … it has a few standard meanings … it could be simple measurements, it could be the creation and management of development plans, and it could even be risk or compliance mitigation (even though it shouldn’t be). And it’s been abused by sourcing, procurement, and supplier management vendors alike. And margin multiplication is among the most meaningless manure to be produced in the current cycle of buzzword madness. (Why do you think the doctor is insisting it’s time to start calling out the hogwash for what it is!)

People WILL read and listen when they are seriously evaluating you

the doctor knows we’re in a generation where no one wants to read anymore, where attention seconds are barely long enough for 15 seconds of fame, and everyone is overworked, underpaid, and just short on time when it comes to listening to the tsunami of messaging being targetted at them.

But here’s the reality the marketers desperate for an oversized share of your budget won’t tell you. When it comes to enterprise software, that doesn’t matter. No one commits $1M+ a year on a multi-year software purchase without doing their research and diligence. (They might not do it right, but they will do it.) (And, as per mistake 3, when you factor in maintenance, hardware & software updates, services, data feeds, integration fees, etc. most “six figure” SaaS licenses are usually pushed into the realm of seven figures from a TCO [Total Cost of Ownership] perspective.)

The situation is different when you get to an RFP and are among the final three. Unless it’s a fake RFP (where the buyer has already selected a solution being sold by his buddy Bob) being forced upon the buyer by public sector or corporate rules, the buyer, and key affected shareholders, will do their research. They will read your responses, and they will read any meaningful pieces of literature you put in front of them. As well as watch appropriate pre-recorded demos and webinars. Even if they don’t fully understand it (which is another problem), they will do their diligence because their jobs depend on it! (If they screw up, and their bosses decide it was a result of them not doing their best effort, they will be fired.)

Plus, if they are going to be stuck using whatever they buy day in and day out for the next 3, 5, 7, 10 years, they are going to want to make sure it does the everyday tasks well.

So give them real, solid, educationally focussed content, and when they are truly ready to buy, they’ll eat it up and lick the virtual plate clean (and come to you begging for seconds).

And even if they’re not ready to buy now, if you repeatedly given them real, solid, educationally focussed content (in short, easily consumable, mini / single point white papers / webinars), they’ll build up a positive view of your company and offering and you’ll earn their respect and you will get called when the budget is approved.

This is fact. This is the same advice the doctor has been given companies since he started independently consulting with leading companies in this space in 2006 (and given away for free on SI since 2007), and every single company who took this approach that the doctor worked with before joining Spend Matters in 2016 either

1. had a successful exit on their terms (including all of SI’s sponsors and most of the doctor‘s original clients) or
2. had a successful raise on their terms and grew. (i.e. not a single one of these companies went out of business!)

And while it does’t work quickly web statistic wise (i.e. you’re not getting those thousand of eyeballs quickly, but as we just demonstrated, that doesn’t matter), it always works. Enterprise software is NOT consumer sales — people aren’t making high six, seven, and even eight figure purchases on sound bites and buzz.

But, at the end of the day, the reality is

All I got is an online blog, these words and the truth.
All I got is an online blog, the rest is up to you!

Stay tuned for Part 6!