ASATHOR

In young companies, the core team is doing everything. Development, consulting, sales, administration. While you grow, more people come on board and often you find yourself in a trap: it's always the same 2-3 people doing the demos. The downside: they quickly become a bottleneck. And on top: the demos are mostly too technical for a broader target group (not to speak of an also growing sales and marketing team that needs simple messaging). Let me summarise how we industrialised product demos once we passed the 40-50 people mark:

1. Focus on selected use cases: software has many features. With every release, there will be additional features. This often leads to an extensive show of each and every feature and you will lose your audience (that is the enterprise buyer). It's smarter to think from the customer's end and present some compelling use cases that generate a WOW effect. 3-5 are sufficient, nobody can remember more. There's room for the feature battle ground in a later phase where the engineers are involved (proof of concept, proof of value).
2. Don't embarrass customers: this is particularly important for security software that reveals weaknesses in a customer's environment. Show 1 or 2 examples per check and only a few checks. It's tempting to showcase how many issues your tool will find, but if you try to show them all you simply tell the customer: you are doomed, you are lost, you failed - that's what they will remember.
3. Scaling demos: I stopped doing live demos at a certain point. It's risky because you usually need to dial in to you demo system and such connections can break. Broken connection - no demo - no pitch - you lose. Recording your demo (along the key use cases) has the following advantages: a) in your script you can work on a compelling story, b) you can highlight certain statements with callouts, c) you are getting consistent (no matter who is doing the demo), and finally: everyone can do the demo everywhere, anytime.

A closing idea: if you record new features once available and update your recordings accordingly, you'll get a nice collection of "why cool" videos for internal training, education partners (scaling, scaling, scaling), and also customers.

I think a lot when exercising. This morning I reflected my own experience from the very beginning until the end of my active role as founder and my later role in sales. So there will be some historical story telling here.

When we started my company, we were just a few guys with a joint passion for breaking SAP systems. And we had the first assignments literally over night after establishing the company. We pen-tested day for day and month for month and we grew organically. We recruited many people from my "Hacker Contest" courses at the university and grew organically (I will talk about the "pain of growth" later). And then we found out that it was very difficult keeping heads above water because many project assignments came in late in the year. We couldn't deliver everything while suffering barely above the line before the first 9-10 months of the year.

That's why we decided to turn the company from a consulting to a software firm (I will also talk about making and executing strategic decisions). Having left SAP after a few years as product manager, I knew what was not in SAP's portfolio. I still have the sheet of paper with ~20 ideas but we opted for what what was later known as "CodeProfiler" - a security scanner for SAP's proprietary language ABAP. We funded this with cash flow and our own money and had our first prototype up and running for SAP TechEd late 2008 in Berlin. This attracted the first customers and we could grow the business from there generating a recurring revenue stream as desired.

While we could grow the company further, some things went wrong. Since we were funded by cash, we could often not sell strategically (executing our vision). Sometimes, we had to hunt every EUR in order to move on and we sometimes couldn't do what needed to be done. Here are three key examples:

• Custom Development: you know the stories where one customer says "I buy your product, if you implement this ..." and we did that a lot in the beginning. While this may secure a deal (it doesn't always), it doesn't help you to built a standard product that is valuable for many customers vs. only one customer. In the worst case you will end up with a highly segmented product where no customer gets the full value. We changed that over time by implementing product management functions and agile development.
• Consulting without focus: due to our history, we had a strong consulting division. Strong also means that there was high revenue generated. The downside was that many consulting services were not around our products (like getting it up and running, executing scans, working on results, etc.) but dozens of small service offerings somehow related to our topic SAP security. By nature that was difficult to transfer to the field organization since sales must be simple. You can only overcome this situation if you have enough funding for implementing your strategy - by being very focused and also by bringing in growth capital.
• Too much focus on features: I'd say that we had the best product in our domain over time. However, the best product does not necessarily sell by itself. The market might value your solution - but first of all prospects need to understand WHY they need what you have. Since we sold complex products that are not explanatory like iPhones, a lot of effort needs to be put into the right messaging with a focus on customer value. Over time we succeeded and "CodeProfiler" is still used synonymously with security scanning of SAP ABAP.

I can only encourage every entrepreneur to look for growth capital being able to execute strategically. Keep in mind that finding the right partner for this will be another challenge in your life as a founder and director of your own business.

I recently wrote about a few unpleasant experiences with one or two closings. One of the sales tools mentioned there is the so-called "closing plan". It sounds simple, is effective, but is often not used. Perhaps I can encourage you to try it at least a few times.

I'll start with an experience here as well. We had a sales colleague who was very successful in his previous company. Accordingly, we had great confidence in his numerous contacts at potential customers, but above all in his skills to design and close a deal. In fact, we had a deal in the high 6-digit range in front of the shotgun, which, however, could not be won at first.

What happened there? The colleague spoke with many departments in order to determine the customer's overall requirements. However, he failed to realize that purchasing, the legal department, etc. also had to be involved. In addition, a multi-stage approval process usually has to be followed even for higher sums. In his old company, there was a team that almost automatically ensured that everything ran synchronously. Unfortunately, that was not the case with us - smaller company, often still in a startup mode. In the end, we didn't lose the deal, but there was a significant delay, which in turn impacted all other dimensions of the company's strategy.

We have therefore introduced the concept of the Closing Plan, especially for larger deals. A Closing Plan means that you plan with your contact person on the customer side what all has to happen until the launch of the product and, if necessary, afterwards. After all, there has to be exactly this common goal: we want to get started in January in order to achieve goal xyz (if this does not exist, there is usually nothing else to do apart from drinking coffee together on a regular basis).

Such backward planning can help both sides to do the necessary things at the right time. This can be, for example, the contract review, onboarding as a supplier beforehand, naming technical contacts, agreeing the purchase price with purchasing, etc. I have also not yet experienced a customer resisting to create a joint closing plan. Depending on the customer, things can work differently, and an open, joint agreement helps everyone to also achieve the goal or to determine if there is a sticking point somewhere. Another positive result is that CRM-based reporting becomes much more reliable when there is not just wishful thinking and hope behind the individual CRM stages, but a solid plan.

During one of my larger product deals, I experienced a negotiation situation that has remained in my memory for a long time. Once upon a time ...

... the appointment was shortly before Christmas, it was cold and wet outside, so we were dressed "storm-proof". We were made to wait in a very warm hallway. 10 minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour. Then at some point the customer's negotiation manager came and said: "my boss can't come and I only have 15 minutes". Our timely inquiries regarding a review of the contractual terms were dismissed with reference to *the* deadline. Only to tell us: their terms and conditions must fit on 2 DINA4 pages, otherwise our lawyers won't look at it. Of course, it was also not allowed to simply change the font size, as a first spontaneous thought suggested. Actually, price and discount had already been pre-negotiated, but then came the final trick of the buyers: they tried to hold a carrot in front of our noses and negotiate corporate discounts right away, even though only part of the company actually wanted to take the first step.

Our sales manager actually wanted to go home after the first two tricks, and in retrospect I admit to myself that this would probably have been the better way. After all, the purchase was to take place in the calendar year on the part of the specialist department, so that a certain counter-pressure could have been built up here.

I myself feel that the above tricks are unfair, because you don't meet the supplier at eye level. This may also be one of the reasons why I have relied on sales professionals and tried to coach them from the background and develop negotiation tactics.

And that leads to the insights I have gained:

1. The owner/manager should not (immediately) join in the negotiation, otherwise there is no possibility of escalation.
2. Furthermore, it is advisable to draw up a "closing plan" together with the customer, in which all relevant milestones up to go-live are jointly defined. This then also includes the commercial and legal negotiations, as well as a realistic time schedule.
3. If all this is not given, a clear NO can also be right at the bottom line. You should not sell at any price (if you can afford it - that is sometimes easier said than done). Often the real negotiation starts only after a NO.

Of course, that's not the end of it. From a current coaching I have collected some more topics, which I will write down in the next weeks and months. Good luck and never give up!

I have written about Partnerships in Business(the Win:Win:Win triangle) before. I support some management teams of product companies and like to share the idea of selling products through partners only.

A key assumption here is that a product company is not offering consulting services (for many reasons, for example, a) because focus is getting blurred, b) because it could destroy certain partner markets, c) etc.).

Here's my view:

1. WHY NOT selling through partners? One of the first counter-arguments against selling through partners is: we are quicker if we go direct. We safe money because we don't need to pay their sales team. We can better support the customer in the after-sales phase. Etc.
2. WHY selling through partners? Direct sales might sound attractive, however, it a) takes time to establish market recognition, b) takes money to pay your own sales force, c) might destroy the partner's opportunity to offer services for your product. Last but not least: if you make your sales team all partner managers and each partner manager can support 2-3 partners, you can easily see the huge leverage effect.
3. Quick thoughts on how to get started:
   1. Define possible quick wins and focus on them. It could even be an idea to hand over some leads and prospects to partners in order to remove initial "resistance" before the wheel is turning.
   2. Go as a team and bring in your market and technical expertise("direct touch" sales) but never be a competitor to your partner. Instead your partner knows that they can start without risk since they can rely on your support.
   3. Clear rules of customer engagement: how prospects are registered, what that means, and how registrations are extended / ended. By the end of the day this is teamplay and your partner managers should be very close to your partner's sales team.

You walk better if you never walk alone!

In July, I wrote about the idea of killing Covid-19 viruses with appropriate technology. In the meantime, a lot has happened.

As the first electronic respiratory protection that kills 100% of viruses, the "Securer" should be available from fall 2022. The current status is presented in a recent press release:

"SecureAir GmbH is currently looking for technology partners who would like to produce under license and/or distribute the product or acquire the complete technology as the global market leader."

I held the current state of the product in my hands yesterday. A lot has happened here, it feels very valuable, looks good and all the reviews show that it works.

It remains exciting.