Author: web25982625

So another day, at another venture backed and exciting new company. Great team, highly educated, well backed – and yet I see an upcoming SQUEEZE.

Can they grow their sales model and still make a profit? Can they grow their sales faster than their marketing and sales expense?

Questions to ask your executive team:

Are you providing a tailored solution, an expert solution that focuses on that particular customer‘ s needs and particular industry? Yes or no?

When you focus on a particular vertical and provide a specific solution in that vertical, enterprise customers will appreciate your expertise, insight and experience in that industry. This will also establish a closer and longer relationship for higher revenues.

Can you provide the outcome, the customer is looking to achieve with your solution?

Work backwards – this sounds almost too basic – but customers will actually pay considerably more and feel satisfied, if you are able to do so, effectively. What are your particular customer needs today? With what can you provide them today to offer a differential advantage?

Total cost of ownership and return on investment

In particular with the (SaaS, PaaS) software and information technology offerings, today’s potential customers are able to compare features and potential costs fairly quickly. Merely, having a closer inside relationship will not help to move an entire team of internal buyers from making their decisions based on total the costs of ownership. So what are your total cost of ownership and basic features, compared to the SaaS / PaaS competition?

Sales performance means having the ability to retain high-value customers

How is your team up-selling and cross selling to expand the customer relationship? This will most likely be the only method to keep the customer over the longer term – if you do not offer more, the customer will feel „locked-in“ and try to break out of the product and pricing arrangement with a new solution provider.

Are you selling a solution based on expertise or just another software product?

Given the open nature of software APIs and cross-functional platforms – customers will benefit most if you tie together various functions from selective bundles to offer a particular solution, fit to the circumstantial needs. (Open tools and service platforms to add additional functionality to your core product)

Consultative selling

Customer will pay more if you understand the industry and business need. Covering this need with expertise, will provide the return on investment the customer is seeking.

Your sales team

Does your current sales team have the background and expertise to specifically talk to your customers and their particular needs? Do they have the industry expertise and experience to talk the language of the customer? – If not, are you providing the necessary training? (Major growing expense, and hit on profit margins and reputation, if you do not have this very basic module in place.)

Repeatable sales model to exceed expenses

Where are your highest value market opportunities?

Can you build a high margin growth model for accelerated sales growth? – Is your process repeatable?

Customer confidence and your company credibility

In closing – yes, as the technologies we offer grow in complexity – we need to continuously train our sales teams to offer expert advice and avoid employee turn over. Training plus concentrated experience within the domain of the customer´s environment lead to more customer confidence in building high value solutions with proven return on investment. Higher ROI will also build your company´s credibility and sales growth.

A team of developers is more effective in solving technical challenges at a customer site with a “group approach” of brainstorming, open communications and flexibility.  A similar method and process should also be  valuable for the  account management of larger enterprise customers, given the complexity across multiple departments for the deployment of key technologies.

Building trust,  strong credibility and open communications with customers are important. Two heads are better than one.

Idea : From the very beginning of building a prospect pipeline, place at least 2 account managers,  as team members, to educate and continuously consult with one another in “real-time”,  per enterprise customer. This added communication will build momentum, provide much faster insights to potential customer solutions and scale your competitiveness plus sales growth.

This two person approach strengthens company loyalty and intelligence, by improving team communications in absorbing new ideas and approaches.

Exchanging  individual team members in sales management over time will also foster more creative brainstorming, more enjoyment at work, and deliver more intelligent and competitive solutions to customer success.

When attending to US early stage software companies, I need to remind the marketing and developer teams that “Privacy is considered a fundamental right for all individuals living in the European Union.”

“The first and foremost principle for the ethical use of data is to ensure that the whole process is done with the intention of providing tangible benefit to both the users and the data researchers.” (Ronald Van Loon)

The prospect should “opt-in”  versus “opt-out”, when it relates to marketing emails and phone calls, and customers should also understand what is being done with their enterprise data, and how it is used by the application “services” provider.

As an intelligent and well educated person, who´s Linkedin profile probably appears as blase and boring  as everyone elses, i.e  often the same family demographics, you may feel to have done everything correctly when engaging with potential investors. Logically and based on the advice of many mentors, boot camp lectures and web based resources, requesting cash should eventually work, if you and your team do it long enough.

No, probably not.

Even after the 100th time, learning and modifying your strategy and presentations, this approach may not bring you any further. You will remain you, intelligent, possibly boring and well educated.

May I suggest getting a few domain and industry experts on your  1) board of advisors,  2) documentation and  3) multimedia, to add a VERY visible and differential personalized advantage ?

This approach can also convince those early prospects to make an initial purchase and contribute to your sales growth…  provided your operational logic and intelligence are still included.

It would seem almost out of place and certainly not a software sales strategy I could endorse, surprisingly, in today´s world of open API´s and numerous cloud based solution providers for developers. Recently, I came across a ventured backed enterprise software company that sells its sophisticated software solution as a “black-box”.

Should you consider a “black-box” enterprise approach, intelligent customers will not feel comfortable and this distrust will scare them away.  By instinct, they will run to find an alternative platform or solution.

Should you feel uncomfortable to “open-up” for fear of the competition – it most certainly is already too late. Try this..

To improve your company sales growth and your board of directors satisfaction – offer your  “black-box” solution as a professional service and tell your customers exactly what you are building and integrating, step by step. This will also establish trust and a longer term  “service” relationship for future cash-flow.

Please – no more “black-boxes”, this will impede your already slow enterprise sales (?) even further.