Category Archives: Best Practices

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!

Digital Procurement Transformation Requires Strategy and Design …

… not just new technology! (As THE REVELATOR would say, an agent-first approach, not an equation-first approach.)

A recent article on Turner and Townsend noted that while effective digital-first procurement strategies are key to capturing the necessary data and providing the comprehensive visibility needed to manage complex and multi-faceted risks, a digital-first procurement strategy demands a strategic overhaul – it cannot only be about adding technology to existing processes.

Furthermore, it needs more than a cultural shift to integrate a digital golden thread that aligns the organization’s overarching commercial vision and the enterprise-wide digital ecosystem. It needs a technological shift, one that goes from looking at technology as a saviour to technology as what it always was, just a tool, and a tool that only works if

  • properly selected,
  • properly used, and
  • placed in the hands of an appropriately educated, trained, and skilled individual.

Furthermore, it doesn’t matter how modern the tool, how much “AI” inside, or what provider is offering it. Just like a power drill won’t screw in a nail, a Gen-AI solution won’t provide a strategy, won’t analyze generic data in a meaningful way to select a sourcing strategy, and won’t properly parse and automate that invoice. (That’s not what it’s for. It will summarize large supplier RFP submissions and crawl through your contracts for common clauses, or lack thereof, but that’s it … it’s just a huge document parser and summarizer.)

Only the right platform will solve your problems, and you’ll only be able to select one if

  • you analyze your processes and identify the data you need
  • you analyze where the data comes from
  • you analyze who has to create / enter any data that needs to be manually vetted …
  • you determine the TQ level of all those individuals who need to use the system
  • you analyze the potential systems with respect to their ability to store the data you need, collect it automatically from any data feeds it is available in, and collect it through manual submission in easy-to-use interfaces that minimizes the chance of error on data entry
  • and when you find ones that meet the data need, then you confirm they can support the process needs …
  • and then you do vendor diligence.

But without the right platform, no progress will be made and, in fact, if you consider the failure stats, chances are the wrong platform will worsen the situation. Technology is NOT an easy button. You still have to do the work of vetting it, implementing it, configuring it, and even when it can automate a task, verifying it on a regular basis (as well as identifying when an exceptional condition arises and dealing with that regularly). Technology can make your life (much) more efficient, and easier, but it’s not an easy button. Never forget that.

Always Start Your Vendor Qualification with a Deep-Dive Demo!

In a recent article, THE REVELATOR asked how many practitioners do a pre-demo discovery call to determine whether seeing a demo is even warranted??

It was a fair question, but for most practitioners, the question is unnecessary because,

  • if you agreed to the demo as a practitioner, then you should have confirmed from the initial sales call that there was enough to actually see (by listening to a rep that sold a solution, not software, and that answered your tough questions);
  • the demo will tell you if it’s worth diving into the vendor’s background, philosophy, and services approach; and, most importantly,
  • if you’re not a senior executive at a large enough company, there’s no way you’re going to get the attention of the right people for that discovery call. (As a [perceived] unqualified lead, you’re not getting a senior person on that pre-demo interview … just a Sales VP who knows what to say to hook you, whether it’s true or not!)

The reality is that any discovery beyond an initial demo to confirm the vendor actually has a solution and, more importantly, a solution that might actually help you by solving some of your problems, is meaningless. Company history, philosophy, and go-forward don’t matter if they don’t have anything worth working with them.

It’s important to remember that technology cannot overcome a solution provider’s misaligned business values and goals. If the tech is wrong (or just not there), the tech is wrong. Not only do you need real tech (and not vapourware), but you need tech that solves one or more problems you have.

As such, if you dig in on a company before seeing the tech, you could be wasting your time. Especially if you do it for every provider given that you will likely go through half a dozen potential providers before you even find one worth to include in your RFP (when you consider all the overhyped marketing and misleading marketing you need to work your way through).

Moreover, forcing a demo early will quickly cause some vendors (without a solution) to self deselect! If you insist on a demo that shows how they solve the problems they claim and how it’s relevant to you, and they don’t have a deep solution and/or knowledge of your industry, they will likely decide it’s not worth the time trying to bluff you and save you the time and effort of invalidating them as a potential provider. (And, in effect, bypassing the technology-led equation-based providers off the cuff, since they won’t even get the demo if they can’t convince you they are about solving problems first and tech second.)

However, if you get through the demo, put the vendor on your shortlist, and tell them that, you can be sure your follow-up company deep dive call will include the right senior people at the vendor, and not just a say-what-you-want-to-hear Sales VP.

So You Admit You Might Be a Dead-Company Walking. How Do You Avoid the Graveyard? Part 4

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 5 & 6) 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 and part 3 here.)

5) An innovation burst is enough, especially if it is disruptive

A successful innovation burst is great as it can get you noticed, and as it’s very hard to get noticed in an overcrowded space (again, see the Mega Map), that’s a great start. But someone noticing you does not mean they’ll engage with you, and engagement does not mean they will buy from you.

Moreover, it’s never long before a one-trick pony loses the limelight as fast as he enters it. If you want to stay in the limelight, which wants to move on to the next story as soon as you’ve had your 15 seconds of fame, you need to keep innovating, or at least developing the core functionality necessary to flesh out the value message to the point the overall message is so compelling people want to hear it and repeat it.

The reality is that it is continued development, especially around core processes your technology is being designed to support, that will at least keep you on the periphery of the limelight, and that is where you need to be to not only attract enough potential customers, but convert them into customers who want, as we’ve been stating repeatedly, solid solutions to their problem and not shiny tech that looks cool but doesn’t do what they need it to do.

6) Too much investment, too soon, against an overly ambitious plan

This is one of the biggest threats to your success, especially since you will be pushed to scale up fast to support the rapid growth, that won’t come, or at least not early in your corporate development. Falling for this will burn the cash well before you are even close to break-even, and if you can’t raise additional funds fast when you run out, you’re dead.

The first thing to do when you raise too much money is to stop dead in your tracks, stop all external hiring and engagement, and step back and do the detailed market research described in our first mistake and figure out the MVP you’ll actually need to build a significant market share, and focus first on hiring the talent / or acquiring the third party tech, to get there as soon as possible.

Then you need to figure out what not only makes a good customer, but one that is easy to sell. It’s likely that the majority of these customers will need education to get them there. The next thing to do is hire the product people who can build these educational assets for marketing, sales, partners, and customers.

When you get close on the product and the marketing, then you start to ramp up marketing and high-performing sales (who can work without a lot of support and incomplete, but progressing monthly, assets) to start building the initial funnel when you are ready to go hard.

Then start building up your services teams with senior resources who can do multiple roles and initial implementations with little support.

And only once all the pieces start falling into place do you start scaling up.

And in the process, be sure to:

  • review the marketing plan: cut the funding to anything not focussed on education and thought leadership in the early days
  • review sales: cut the “leads” to those truly qualified with problems that match your solution; and definitely cut the spray and forget power washer lead blasting from 3rd parties, you want well qualified leads only
  • review the development plan: make sure it’s 90% steak and only 10% sizzle; sizzle doesn’t solve problems, or fill bellies, and that’s why customers want steak
  • review the budget: anything not going to educational/thought leadership marketing, qualified solution-based lead generation, or solid development is extraneous and needs to be cut ASAP to ensure the money lasts until the solution is broad and deep enough to serve the intended market, command the expected price tag, and get the interest you need for steady, continued, growth

Stay tuned for Part 5!

Want A Good Solution, Ask Vendors The Hardest Questions Off The Bat!

Even though they don’t always do so with their slimy sales and misleading marketing practices, be sure to keep it above the waist as you repeatedly hit them as hard and fast as you can. (You don’t want to dance around with a vendor unless you know they can take a few hits and are in it to win it, because once you start to dance they’ll duck and dodge until the end of time).

This post was inspired by THE REVELATOR who asked us What are the most important questions to ask a potential solution provider partner?

1) Can, and will, you show me (not tell me) live … preferably on use cases or data I give you on the spot?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Dear Procurement Practitioner, when it comes to solution selection from today’s vendor, your mantra is Show Me, Don’t Tell Me! There’s too much hogwash out there today, buzzwords don’t solve problems, and when you dive into the marketing madness, you see there’s absolutely no value, or even core capability, in what’s being sold by many vendors.

You need solid solutions with substance, not glitzy fake-take UX, broken Gen-AI, or slack-like conversations that don’t do anything. You also need solutions that digitize and automate the 80% of Procurement / Sourcing / Supplier (Data) Management / etc. that you do day-in and day-out, week-in and week-out, month-in and month-out, and year-in and year-out and not the odd special case that comes up once a week, month, or year. And you definitely don’t need solutions that don’t fit your domain.

Moreover, you want relevant demos. If you’re buying janitorial and building maintenance supplies, you don’t want a demo on how the catalog makes it easy to buy sneakers and shoes. (FYI: I’m not being unnecessarily ridiculous here. I have been in demos where a primarily MRO buyer was demoing the top three platforms, and one showed them how to buy sneakers and shoes!) If you get such a ridiculous demo, you want to show that vendor the door as fast as possible because you have one of two situations: they didn’t do their homework on you (and don’t have a clue if their solution is appropriate), or their solution was built, and over customized, for one niche industry and will not easily support yours.

2) Once you show me the core use cases, can, and will, you explain the breadth of use cases you developed your solution for and how they are specific to my business?

You want someone who both understands what they are selling and how it might help your business. Any less and you might as well just roll the bones to select your solution provider. At the end of the day you need to understand the following:

  • there may be 666 logos on the mega map but there is no perfect solution; and nothing that will meet all of the requirements in your RFP
  • the best solution will meet the majority, and, more specifically, the requirements related to the tasks you do all the time, not the ones that you do once a quarter or once a year
  • the best solution for you will be one that comes close and comes from a vendor who both understands this and makes an effort to customize their solution for you in a manner that will achieve maximum results … from the first demo
  • the best solution provider will take the time to explain that which they don’t have time to demo, or can’t demo without your data; even the sales person will attempt it at a high level, and then bring in a product specialist for where more depth is needed

3) Once we tell you the extent of your solution we feel is appropriate, can you talk us through what the implementation and integration to our environment would require without bringing in a paid third party “expert” consultant? And how long will that take?

A great solution provider for you will be one that understands your needs, their platform, and what will need to be done in order to implement it for you, integrate it into your stack, and prepare it for you to extract the value they promise. They won’t need third party help to figure all this out and walk you through it. If a lot of integrations or data migrations are required, they, or you, may need to partner to get it done, but they should still know what’s required.

And, as we said in the introduction, while you should keep your rapid, one-two-three punch, above the belt until the vendor sales rep goes below in their tactics, you should also endeavour to hit ’em as hard as you can with that 1-2-3 combo. If they can’t take it, you want them knocked out before you waste any time on them, because any good vendor will be able to take them and come back with the best damn demo, details, and arguments as to why they are sure their solution will work for your problems, with concrete examples, in a very short timeframe. (And yes, odds are you could be unlucky and have to knock out the first 6 before you find that first 1/7 that is still there so solve problems. But the wait will be worth it.)