So You Admit You Might Be a Dead-Company Walking. How Do You Avoid the Graveyard? Part 5

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!