Meeting the CEO

Great, you have managed to secure a meeting with the CEO of your potential first customer. You have already briefly told him/her what your company does in e-mail or in a short phone conversation. He/she is extremely busy but you have been granted 20 mins of facetime to pitch your offering.

This is a great opportunity for you but now what? How should you approach this?

1. Step one: If you already have a generic corporate presentation of your company put together - bin it for now. This meeting requires careful thought and a tailored communication strategy.

2. Step two: If available download and read the financial report of your potential customer. For publicly traded companies this will be available on their website and contain very valuable information on the company's financial performance, where they have done well and not so well, and finally their strategic focus areas for the coming year(s). Also consider news reports and press releases from the company to make sure you have as complete a view and understanding as possible of your potential customer. CEOs are normally (at least the ones I have met) very friendly. However they have a lot of things on their mind, most importantly running a business and meeting company targets. They have a stressful job but they will always look at ways to address any challenges which they may have. And hey, the CEO has already agreed to give you some valuable facetime, there are most likely some challenges that need to be addressed or things that his/her company can improve.

3. Step three: Link your offering to any of the challenges that the customer may have based on your work from step 2.

The meeting:

Have no more than one or two people from your organisation attend this meeting. You want to make it as personal and informal as possible.

Dress smart, if you are a guy wear a suit and consider wearing a tie (depending on the business culture in the country where you are meeting). Yes this somehow contradicts the previous statement about being informal  but you should make sure that you are never underdressed compared to the person you are meeting, especially the CEO. You need to come across as being professional.

Introduce yourself and chit chat for 1-2 minutes when you first meet with the CEO but be very careful you dont waste your valuable minutes. You have a job to do, use your time wisely. You are looking to get two things out of this meeting and two things only.

1. Buy-in from the CEO that you can offer something of value to him/her and their company.

2. An introduction from the CEO to someone that he/she trusts in their organisation who you can continue your engagement with. 

If you get the first thing done you should be able to achieve the second.

Prepare questions and ask your questions. Never be afraid to ask the customer questions, including a CEO. Listen very carefully when they respond - take proper notes. If you ask a question and they dont want to answer then they will let you know. If you dont ask you will never find out.

DO NOT PRESENT A BUNCH OF SLIDES, 4-6 slides at most (no slides at all may even be better if you are a good communicator, perhaps meet over a coffee if you can). If you do present slides do not overload them with information. Don't create overly colourful slides, or use too much generic marketing speak with fancy words (you want to stand out from the crowd), but rather get to the point of the message you want to give your audience. How can you help this CEO! Focus less on the technical details and more on why your solution is different in the market and on the business benefits for your client..

Make sure that you come across as having a good understanding of your customer's company. Highlight in the meeting some of their challenges that you are aware of. Dont give the impression that you are meeting 5 CEOs per week and that you are telling all of these the same story. Demonstrate that you have done your homework and that you come prepared.

Make sure you save a few minutes of allocated time for the last part of your meeting. After you have communicated how you believe you can help the CEO and his/her company, ask for a follow up meeting or an introduction to a trusted member in the CEOs organisation.  If you get his/hers commitment to this then you have done well and the meeting has been a success.

If the CEO asks you to send on the slides and tells you that he/she will look at them - then you have probably failed.

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The proof of concept

Excellent, you have presented your solution, its uniqueness and it its potential value to your customer. They are very interested and are considering buying what you are offering, But before that happens they need you to prove a few things.

A Proof of Concept (POCs) is not always but often needed (it will of course depend on what you are selling) as part of a sales cycle. The customer is usually looking to validate a number of things:

• Your ability and efficiency in delivering

• How you interact with the customer and demonstration of your flexibility as a solution provider

• That your solution actually works

• A limited business case in an actual customer environment

POCs can be critical to acquiring a new customer, someone who has never dealt with you before in a business environment. It is human nature to be skeptical so its all about building trust. Remember that many companies (in a B2B environment) have solution vendors knocking on their door every day. These vendors often oversell their solutions promising the world to the buyer and how THIS SOLUTION will solve all the customer's problems. Well be careful. If you get to the stage of a POC, this is a critical phase in your business development and sales cycle. Here are a few tips on how to approach a POC.

1. Identify any particular customer pain points that your POC might be relevant to

2. Keep the POC as simple as possible with a very limited but focused scope and expected output, while still being sufficient to demonstrate value

3. Have a clear timeline for delivery as well as completion of the POC

4. Set a balanced expectation for the outcome but do your utmost to overdeliver and provide 'more value' than expected

5. Make sure there is a POC owner (with a stake/accountability) on the customer side

6. Ensure the output results are relevant to the customer business and link the results to direct potential customer business value if possible

7. Ensure that all relevant people on the customer side are presented with the results

Dont be afraid of the POC. Its a fantastic opportunity to showcase your offering. But do make sure you try and follow the key points above. If not your POC could become never ending, thus draining your time and resources and even worse, result in no business for your company. 

You may get many customers suggesting you run a POC. Don't forget that if you are a small company you have limited resources available (time, money, equipment, people etc.). Therefore choose your POCs carefully. Consider the following:

• Choose POCs where you feel there is more than 50% chance of succeeding and getting a contract at the end of the day.

• Request the customer to cover all or some of the cost of the trial.

• Have some high level pricing for a commercial solution agreed before you run the POC, otherwise you could be in for a big surprise even after a successful POC.

Good luck!

Identifying a market

Wouldn't it be great to have a solution that you could just sell anywhere and that everyone would want to buy? This is usually utopia, for such solutions there are probably already a hundred vendors already out there trying to do exactly this.

What is a market? There are established markets and new potential markets. The former is often addressed by long standing solution providers and 'me too'players. A 'me too' player is usually a company offering solutions that already exist but with the intent to do it cheaper or better than existing players. Or it could be that the market is so big that there is room for many players.

A new potential market is where innovative companies try to address problems that currently can not be solved very well or it could be offering something which an industry does not realise (yet) could bring them a lot of value - hence you create a market through what you offer. Some of the biggest companies across the globe today started by doing this, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Facebook. In short you create a need for businesses and/or consumers.

The other aspect to consider when identifying a market is its value locally versus globally. A solution addressing problems that are common throughout the world and scale well are well suited for a global market. On the contrary, solutions addressing problems that are specific to a region and perhaps requires a large services component may be more suited towards a local market. This could be a state, country or small group of countries. 

Numerous industries are very dynamic and contain vendors that have to perform in a fast paced world. What was a market yesterday may not be a market today, tomorrow everything may look completely different again. Validating and identifying your market can be a tedious task, nonetheless it is important to ensure efficient use of resources and in defining your business strategy.

There are numerous factors that can influence the potential market for your offering. They range from financial outlooks (global and locally), technology availability and consumer trends to local politics, cultures and language. You should consider the following:

• Within how long do you need to be profitable?

• What is your level of investment/funding and risk willingness?

• How quickly do you want to grow?

• Is your focus confined to a geographic region or do you wish to be a global player?

These are all questions that you should consider when determining your market and your go to market strategy. Many markets are very dynamic and change very quickly with regards to both solution needs and competitor landscape. Make sure you stay up to date, keep your eye on the ball and never get too comfortable. Be innovative, continually evolve and always consider new market opportunities. A market which is very profitable today may for many reasons be very different tomorrow indeed.

Is it really a business opportunity?

I was in my mid twenties and I was in my first sales related role. A wise experienced colleague of mine said to me. "Some of the most important decisions you make in sales are which opportunities to walk away from". At the time I thought, why wouldn't you just go after every potential opportunity? Over the years however I have realised the importance of this advice.

As mentioned in a previous blog, clients are more than happy to listen to what vendors are able to bring to the market. Often they indicate that they find your offering very interesting, sometimes it is to be polite, sometimes they are indeed interested. But qualifying an opportunity is complex and requires careful thought. As a startup or an SME you are usually limited in resources; be it people, time and/or money. You must choose wisely what opportunities to invest those resources in or failure of your company could be imminent. Deciding what opportunities to pursue is critical. 

To start off there are some basic things you need to verify at a minimum, these include:

• Does the customer have a problem that you can solve?

• Is there budget allocated to invest in a solution for this?

• Is this allocation in the client's current financial year (and when does that year end)?

• What is the sign off level for the ballpark amounts you are looking to charge, is it CEO level sign off or further down in the organisation?

• Do they have to follow a formal vendor selection and procurement process (which typically goes through and RFI, RFP, trial face-off between vendors etc.)?

• Are they looking at other solutions and speaking to other vendors? Is there an incumbent?

These are boxes that you have to tick. Ask hard questions when speaking to the customer, you dont want to waste their time and most importantly you dont want to waste yours.

Even if all the above boxes are ticked and confirmed, there is one more thing you need to determine - can you actually win? Many opportunities sound like great opportunities, unfortunately that doesn't mean that you have a realistic chance of winning. There is no single easy way to determine if an opportunity is winnable and if you should pursue it but a few things to start with are:

• Do you offer something tangible over and above your competition - something that is important to your customer?

• Does your competition have an existing strong relationship with the customer?

• Do you need a local business partner? If you do make sure you choose someone with a strong and long term relationship with your customer.

• Do you feel you can trust the vendor selection process or is the outcome pre-determined?

• What level of resources will you have to invest in to win - is it worth the risk?

• Do you have other opportunities that you should prioritise over this one?

Very often you get a sense of whether you can win. This can take some time (though sometimes you can sense in one meeting that you can not win) and it may require building a deep relationship with your customer. Make sure you do this well.

To me the secret of winning business lies in empathy. Empathy is a very valuable characteristic in many facets of life. In business no less so. Always put yourself in the position of the customer, see things from their perspective. Understand how they are thinking and what they are feeling. Every time you speak to a customer do this, especially if you are a startup or a non incumbent with no previous dealings with this customer - it will help you immensely.

You will never know for sure about winning an opportunity until a deal is finalised and you have a purchase order in hand but if you have a lot of doubts and sense negative signals along the way, consider making that really important decision - to walk away.

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A good idea

We have all been there. Perhaps while watching the sun set. Perhaps after a glass of wine (or two). Perhaps in a brain storming session. Yes, we have come up with that brilliant idea. The idea of something which is revolutionary, something which has not been done before. Something that will change everything.

We start playing around with it. Perhaps we even write some code, perhaps we design the shape and look in our mind. Heck we even start playing with the numbers, looking at how much money this will make, how this could be become such an great company, how we will solve everyones problems.

An idea is just that however, an idea.

The complexity of the human mind is funny. People have different emotions, different interests, some see opportunities, some only see challenges. In the business world it is always nice to hear about great ideas. Customers will happily meet vendor after vendor to listen to new opportunities. They are presented with exciting new propositions, fancy slides and presentations, maybe even some nice graphics or a prototype solution. In a highly competitive world across most industries, the customer will however always sit and think one thing while listening to your idea. "How is this going to help me, how will it help my business".

An idea should be innovative, it should be thought through, it should be exciting. But most of all, it has to do something for the customer. It has to solve a problem. That problem is most often reducing costs,  reducing complexity or bringing additional revenue for the customer.

Everything starts with the idea, but where do you go from there? Many spend a huge amount of time and money executing on their idea, however it turns out at the end of the day that, perhaps it is an exciting idea but the market does not see the value of it. Without a market the idea will only remain an idea.

Companies fail for a multitude of reasons, the first thing to make sure for startups however is to have a market for your idea, a market which is willing to pay and invest in your proposition. A market which is not flooded by other vendors offering similar solutions thus giving you a chance to make your business profitable and allow it to grow.

Take good care of your ideas, follow your vision, but make sure you ask yourself the right question. Is it a good idea both for you and your customer?

Olav Tjelflaat