B2B “Growth Hacking” Is the Wrong Mindset
Short cuts make for long journeys, so the saying goes. However, if you were to walk around in the frenzied world of startup SaaS companies today, you might be forgiven for thinking that nobody had ever said this. Ever.
Permit me to take you on a journey with me. By way of qualification, know that I spend almost all of my time working with people who build (both engineers and business people) SaaS/Cloud Services businesses, after a career of selling a lot of enterprise technology, mostly software of some sort. I am in the heads of such folks you might say. Yet I’m also on the ground engaging markets with them — my efforts have yielded 6 new prospects for early phase companies just this week. You might say that “I get my hands dirty” so I’m not some keyboard jockey or an old guy who hasn’t closed business in today’s setting. Okay, enough of my prefatory framing.
The entrepreneurs and VCs and engineers I deal with usually feel overwhelmed with respect to how to got to market effectively, but are afraid to show it. They are constantly barraged with hype from every angle about how to grow their startup(s), with the latest “growth hack” breathlessly spewed at them. The vibe is one of always feeling like you are missing something and that the next blog post, the next conference, the next book, the next meetup holds some special magic about selling your product.
Guess what? There is no magic. Selling enterprise technology isn’t a trick you can learn in a weekend or by reading some blog post. Yet so many of you keep running to the next shiny object and then getting disappointed. It becomes almost like an abusive relationship after a while as the cycle is the same. Infatuation with a new idea (lover), then disillusionment, then depression and then it starts again. But the entrepreneur keeps a sunny demeanor up for the outside world, because hey, optimism is key! Mindset is everything, right?
Nonsense. Do you want to know what my favorite book on enterprise sales is? Hope Is Not a Strategy, by Rick Page. Most of the baller, top reps I know aren’t boosters and super positive people, no, they are what I call pragmatic optimists. They realize the limits of attitude and even hard work. One learns after a while in sales that if you are pushing all the time, you are losing.
But don’t say that, no, no. Some VC might look at you sideways and hey who is this guy writing this blog post anyway? He’s just some old dog sales rep, no, go back and read Predictable Revenue again, after all Boiler Rooms are the state of art for sales and marketing, right? Augmented by robots that puke vast amounts of content at your “prospects” which sickens them and makes them loathe you. Sure, right.
So, what to do then? Here’s an approach. It’s not quick and it isn’t a silver bullet, but it may just work. First, identify your target market and understand them deeply. Find out how they do their work. What is their pain? How do they generate value for their companies? What do they care about? Who are the stakeholders in their companies that doing their work effects? Where do they sit in the value chain? What is the strategy of their company? What are the trends in their industry? What do they read? Who do they listen to? Who are their competitors?
Whoa, slow down you are saying. That sounds like a lot of work, and won’t that take a lot of time. Uhh — yeah. Guess what, your job is to actually deliver them something that generates value for them and their organization. To do that, you must really make a difference for them. Not just something cool, but something that actually helps them in a real, practical way. In fact, much software in the world isn’t glamorous or cool, but it does do something practical that helps business people do their work and support their organizations better.
It gets even worse in reality. Because once you’ve done the above you then have to map it out against your target market segment’s competitive choices and substitutes and alternatives. You have to understand the other ways they might solve the problem. Then you have to figure out how to talk about what you do in a unique way that puts you at an advantage compared to all those alternatives.
Wow, again, more work. And it’s not about writing code, is it? I think one of the worst developments in our business has been the fantasy that great products and companies are built because some whiz kid wrote a genius bit of code. That happens sometimes, for sure, but in reality? When you look at real enterprise tech companies? Nah, it’s because they have a great fit for the businesses that they serve. And nobody ever looks at the freaking code anyway. Of course good engineering matters, but a poorly engineered product that does something very crucial will sell anyway while a well engineered product that doesn’t have the right capabilities and isn’t marketed and sold properly never will. Seems basic to me, yet…
I know, I can hear lots of VCs and other “seers” in the business laughing at my comments about engineering — wait, I can see their unicorns dying…I guess we are even. My point?
Value delivery is everything. Or at least a good starting point. Because then it becomes about engagement in markets where too much capital is being frittered away on “marketing”, with automated robots spewing garbage and hype and lies and nonsense out at your prospects. You are going to have to be great at sales and marketing to punch through all that and make sense to folks, and remember, they are “folks”. Human beings who should be engaged thoughtfully and richly, again that’s just not easy to do. Fortunately for you, many of your competitors are caught up in the nonsense too, so standing out — if you do the above correctly — isn’t as hard as you think. You see, your competitors are busy taking shortcuts for the most part, “hacking” their way to nowhere fast...
So, where does that leave you? Let me ask you a question to put this in perspective. If you wanted to build your product, you know, actually write the code, would you just read a couple of blog pieces and then just start coding? No, of course not, that would be crazy, right?
Well why do you think you can sell your product without understanding how to sell? Why do you think you can do it with no experience or formal training whatsoever? Why is it that professional sales people selling enterprise tech take years to become any good at it and really aren’t great for maybe 10 years? Could it be that you would benefit from having someone involved right away that knows how to take a product to market and sell it and engage with customers?
Of course this is not just selling. My colleague Michael Centrella calls such people “Smarketeers”, people who are able to sell and also do marketing/strategy in early phase enterprise tech companies. You’ll find most successful startups have someone like this in the background somewhere. Go find one and stop “hoping” that things will magically just work out. They won’t. Believe me, they won’t.
