We’ve read the dumb company: how to avoid the fork in the road (part 1 and part 2) and dead company walking: avoiding the graveyard (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7 and part 8) articles, taken them to heart, admitted we’re making some mistakes and that we’re not doing some key functions as well as we could. Most importantly, we know we need to do more to avoid becoming a casualty of the next mass corporate extinction that’s coming. So, can you tell us what else can we do to avoid becoming a dead company walking (or, even worse, a zombie company^*)?

01) Get Help to Identify Where You Need Help

We’ve (kind of) said this many times, but we’re saying it again. You don’t know what you don’t know. Get help from an expert who’s been in this space for at least a decade (and seen what’s worked pre- and post- the last two consolidations), and preferably the last two decades (as this cycle is going to be the worst since the late 2000s and most of the new generation of “thought leaders” and “experts” might not have a handle on what’s coming). There’s still a few of us left. See this posting where the doctor freely directs you to long-time experts in the space (which include areas he’s not the best suited to help you and areas he is … if you’re offering a solid solution to an industry segment that is currently helping your customers, he’d rather you get help and survive than not).

02) Improve Blogger / Independent Analyst Relations

Let’s face it, you’re probably not going to get much help from the big analyst firms. They’ll take your money and throw you their standard research that is mostly useless to you (because you need research customized to your niche and your needs); then take more of your money and only give you a mostly useless write up (with limited reprint rights in that you could do the write up yourself, but then you won’t have the logo) in return; then take even more of your money and put you on the map that everyone knows mostly consists of the same big companies year after year (due to limited analyst time) who are usually paying customers (as the analysts know them best) and typically only suited for F500/G3000s (because they are high priced suites); and then, if you still have any money left, take the rest of it and write about whatever tech you want them to and provide great shill for your marketers. But not once will they tell you if you’re going in the right direction or help you innovate (only if it is the current perceived market direction). It’s not their model.

03) Double Down on Education

It’s not just about what your product can do, but what your customers need to know to advance on the Procurement maturity ladder (where the majority of organizations are still on the floor reaching for the first rung, despite all the work done in the 2000s on how to climb the ladder). You need to educate them on what they should be doing, why, and then teach them what types of technology can help them even before you tell them about your technology. As per our dead company walking: avoid the graveyard series, education first is how you win in the end. Pace yourself while your competition runs themselves into the ground and drops dead. Always remember it was the tortoise (who can live 30 times as long) that won the race!

04) Thought Leadership Trumps Marketing Madness

Not only do you need to double down on education, but once you walk them from where they are to where they should be, and show them how your solutions solves a significant number of their primary problems, you still have to show them the wonders that lie ahead and accompany them on their journey through the dark forest until they, one day, reach the light. You have to convince them up front you are going to do this, do this through the implementation, be there every step of the way through the first few months as they get their tech legs, and then always be there to lend a hand when they need it.

While it might be time consuming at first, this won’t be as time consuming or strenuous as you think on an ongoing basis if you teach them how to learn for themselves and solve problems, as time goes on they’ll call on you less and less. It will eventually just be a quarterly check in to see how things are going and offer new thought leadership to help them up their game.

05) Focus on the Community

Find where they are engaged and go there, or, if they don’t have a place to engage, create one and bring them to you. Do you have a local chapter of a professional association where senior buyers or procurement leaders regularly engage? If so, go there. And, most importantly, leave your tech behind. Just educate them on an important topic and what they should be doing to ensure they are handling it appropriately. Seeing a big problem in tail spend in your clients, educate them how to identify it, manage it, and track it before high priced or unapproved purchases get out of control. Seeing a lot of companies unprepared for a new legislative requirement about to come into effect, show them how to identify which relationships need to be better managed, which contracts might need to be updated, and how to identify which risk mitigations are appropriate. Etc. If you impress them with your knowledge, they’ll come to you if they need help identifying a solution. Then, if yours is the right fit, and they’re a private company, they might even skip the RFP.

Stay tuned for Part 2!

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 last two mistakes (mistakes 11 & 12) 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, part 6, and part 7 here.)

A) Our tech works, any failure is the result of the implementation team/org

We’ve said it numerous times before:

Any failure is your fault, no ands ifs or buts.

If you sell the product, you are responsible for making sure it can work before selling the deal, does work after the implementation, and gets used. Otherwise, you failed.

Moreover, when it comes to external implementation teams, it’s up to you to make sure they are up to snuff.

Put together an implementation partner certification program, and don’t allow anyone to implement your product until their personnel takes your program and passes your course.

Now, it’s true that certification alone isn’t enough to make sure the partner’s personnel puts in the proper effort, but at least you have certainty that they do know how to implement your product, and if a partner will actually go through the effort, they are probably serious about doing a good job on the implementation, which greatly increases the odds of success.

And if they won’t get certified, then you know they don’t care about customer success, just revenue. And, to be blunt, that’s not a “partner” you want!

B) We know what we’re doing.

Okay, the doctor will admit he misled you and is only offering up a solution to one of the mistakes in this article because this is the one mistake you won’t admit to, and he knows it. You think that because you raised a lot of money on a great story that you know how to write the story all the way to, and through, the ending, and that the ending will be a great one. And nothing will shake you from that belief. He’s seen it too often in recent years. Big money creates big egos, and they don’t reset until the walls come crashing down.

Now, for any of you dumb companies reading this for whom it’s not too late, here’s the reality of the situation that you must do everything in your power to avoid.

The reality is that you, like everyone else, can write a story if you put your mind to it. It might even be a good story. But here’s the reality: there’s no guarantee that story is going to sell (or at least sell anywhere nearly as well as you are predicting, or that the ending is going to be the one that you want). The only companies that have achieved both have done so either through luck (which is rare and which you can’t count on) or through learning (by consulting with the best experts they can find across multiple areas of their business).

You know what you know, but you don’t know what you don’t know. And if you

1. can’t admit this
2. can’t recognize when someone is right when they are telling you that you don’t know something (or are missing something critical)
3. can’t recognize when someone is giving you (part of) a solution

You’re in trouble.

You’re also in trouble if you assume that because you are a great leader or a great sales person you are a great CEO, or if you assume that because you are a great CEO you can make the right tech decisions, and especially if you assume that because another great CEO told you something was the right tech move (for their company), it is the right tech move for your company.

Everyone has a particular set of skills they are best at, and a set of skills they are certainly not best at, and that’s okay — especially if the set of skills you are best at puts you in the top quartile or higher and brings a lot of value to your company. No one can be an expert at more than a few things. If it takes at least 10,000 hours or five years, and sometimes 20,000 hours, or ten years, to master a subject, then it should be clear that a person will only be able to master a few skills in their lifetime. And if it’s a hard skill, very few will even try (which makes you incredibly valuable).

For example, just because the doctor is one of the leading experts in the Americas and Western Europe on Strategic Sourcing Decision Optimization^* (SSDO), is a great architect of optimization and analytic products, has been a great CTO for SaaS companies building advanced tech problems, and can model almost any business scenario mathematically — including the most complex financial models you can dream of, that doesn’t mean he’d be a good CFO. In fact, he’d be a p!ss p00r one and knows it! (That’s one of the reasons he won’t start his own company and be a CEO because startups require a core mix of skill sets, and the right core team, as per the great Garry Mansell’s Simplify to Succeed, and he only has half of them; and in a pinch, he’s a better [acting] COO than CEO, but even then there are better COOs.) And that’s fine. The skills he has are immensely valuable, so why should he pretend to have skills he doesn’t?

So if you have anyone on the executive team who thinks they know it all, or don’t need help, you only have one recourse: get rid of them. It’s harsh, but nothing will kill a startup faster than one that won’t get the help it needs, and it will need help until it can afford a team with all the skill sets it needs to make the business successful. Big money only takes you so far, because if you aren’t selling big deals, that tap will be turned off faster than a speeding bullet.

^* who at one point not only built or consulted on the majority of SSDO solutions between 2000 and 2015 across the Source-to-Pay market but also built models over a decade ago that were only equalled by CombineNet (acquired by Jaggaer) [Sandholm] and Trade Extensions (acquired by Coupa) [Andersson], and only surpassed by Coupa (who acquired Trade Extensions).

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.