Become a Social Pariah in one simple step

A good friend of mine found herself single and alone after a 9-year relationship when her “soul mate” cheated on her.

The concept of dating filled her with dread, as she had not been on the social scene for quite a few years. So she was shocked when she discovered the world of dating has changed dramatically in almost every way. She downloaded Tinder on her phone and spent multiple hours a day (literally) sifting through images of prospective partners… She struck up conversations with a small number and effectively stalked them on Facebook to find out if they were genuine or not and then arranged to meet the number one pick! All the while her friends from work and family made sure she was supported throughout the whole process. Six months later and they are looking at a life together and she is far happier than she had been a year’s before.

Contrast this with colleagues and associates I have in the IT industry looking for their next role and the story is cyclic, repetitive and more than a little disappointing.

Over the past 4 years I have had the opportunity to both contract and consult with some really interesting businesses, working not only in the UK but in the USA , EMEA and beyond and with this sort of role you meet lots of new people. The cream of the crop quickly make themselves known and those are the ones even after a few short days of interaction that you keep in touch with.

Almost three years ago one of these contacts was forced to take redundancy, they had a reasonable pay-out for years served etc. but these things rarely become life changing so with three months wages in the bank he started to look for a new position. I noticed the change on Linked in and reach out to offer support, his plan was fairly standard:

• Contact recruiters
• Trawl LinkedIn Job pages
• Reach out to colleagues and friends from the industry
• Draw up a list of ideal companies and track recruitment pages
• Re write the CV and make sure that references are set up and prepared to take all the very many calls!

I offered what little support I could in this instance, I happily checked the CV (iterations 1- 99!!), introduced him to people who I knew were recruiting, introduced him to my friendly recruiters, and wrote a reference in LinkedIn. Most importantly, I made a mental note to pick up the phone to him as often as I could not, just to update or to get an update, but also to support and ensure he knew he wasn’t alone. Three months down the line and no job had materialised …. We met for a coffee to discuss strategy and potential issues, to review his CV and to ensure that every I was dotted and T crossed.

What came out of the conversation shocked me more than that fact that an A-grade player had not been snapped up within a couple of weeks.

He had contacted a number of the head-hunters and recruiters in our space and they were all happy to add him onto their systems but none of them followed up past that point. The odd recruiter would try and fit his round peg into a square hole but none of them took the time to really engage of introduce him out to there own contacts and really market him. But far worse than the apathy from recruiters not a single other personal or professional contact had bothered to respond to emails , call him back after he left messages and certainly no one picked up the phone to him to offer support , no one had referenced him or forwarded potential positions nothing of any conceivable value had been offered.

A few weeks later after putting significant effort into the task we managed to find him the perfect role, two interviews and a couple of tests later and he was working for a Tier 1 vendor at VP level earning great money. So where did he go wrong and why so badly?

Well the short answer is he didn’t. I have seen this over and over again to the point of sickening regularity and constant disappointment. I have two friends at the moment who are senior level people, very good at what they do in different departments (so this is not just Sales) and they have very little, if any, support from people they have worked with for years previously. Calls get pushed to voicemail; recruiters rarely pick up and hardly ever call back. In the few instances where they get interviews, the roles are poorly qualified so they either choose not to progress or are not put forward and even then when feedback is gold dust, they rarely get any.

This madness has to stop.

We owe it to each other as professionals to take a little time to support those we have worked with or around who are in that transition phase.

Check on LinkedIn for those people struggling to find a job, as your network is different to everyone else’s.

Pick up the phone and offer support and words of advice, actually make the intro when you promise to do so. Make time to meet them for a coffee and introduce them to other people who might help. Validation from someone is worth far more to a recruiting manager than almost anything else.

Finally if you are a recruiter or a hiring manager, please give feedback honestly, in a timely manner and every time you interview someone. Not only is it good practice but it makes your business look professional to the outside world and your feedback will certainly help the person to close out the next role.

Too soon to go international?

I started out selling Widgets and Grommets early on in my IT career. Almost always the solutions were physical and, more often than not, the only real software was the management system, which sat in a datacentre run by the customer. ASIC’s were the cool new solution with speeds and feeds all the rage where software was embedded onto a chip in a factory and then plugged into a metal case and sold for many times it’s individual build cost, where all the investment had been paid for up front in creating this piece of silicon.

Way back then international business was a risky business with directly acquired costs and impacts that needed to be foreseen before the choice was taken to actually make the first move.

Now though, many aspects of selling and supporting internationally have changed. The only real constant has been translation but, even then, many companies successfully maintained English as the only support language and, for the most part, customers were happy to work with that.

In my last company we were based in Boston, USA and the first 10 or so clients were local, almost all within a 20-mile radius from the office. At C View Technologies, we were all based in the UK but our first client was headquartered in Japan and our second was headquartered in Moscow, and neither thought that strange or out-of-the-ordinary, and so this is just one example of how times have changed.

Hardware sales have always had the extra issue of logistics to contend with; shipping, returns, customs, and installation services all add to the cost of doing business further from your office.

On-premise or installed software has had the advantage for decades as it could be shipped on disk, CD or DVD.

Nowadays that exact same software can be downloaded and installed straight from the internet without that extra cost. Granted, it still needs to be supported and updated over time, but in many cases this can be done online rather than on premise. The only real barrier with this model then is language.

2 or 3 years ago, this paradigm shifted in a way few expected thanks to the introduction of off-premise offerings or ‘The Cloud’, mostly notably in the form of Software-as-a-Service (or Saas) offerings.

Cloud had been a buzzword in tech for nearly a decade and analysts, vendors and industry spectators have been waiting with baited breath to see how this development would manifest itself within the industry.

The beauty of Software-as-a-Service offerings lies in that they need never be installed or updated onsite and rarely need direct support. SaaS provides a stage, not only for small start-ups, but also for tiny businesses to sell their wares on a global scale.

In a similar way to the App store from Apple or Google Play, SaaS offerings are gaining ground attaching to platforms like Salesforce.com, Microsoft Azure and others besides. This allows businesses to evolve quickly with lower risk and, because contracts can be a fraction of the cost of an installed software or hardware solution, customers take a much lower financial and physical risk trying out new solutions.

My company, C View Technologies, is a prime example of this.

When we started, it was just me and my Co-Founder working out of my home office. Yet, after only 6 months, we had a raft of customers and not a single one of them was smaller than $1b business.

And guess what? None of them cared that we were early stage or that we were only two people.

The same applied to CVT when it came to global engagement with customers. CVT now engages with customers across 23 countries on 4 continents and we are able to offer the same level of service and the same high standard across all our clients, not least because we built a product from scratch that enabled multi-lingual support.

I strongly believe that “For a region to invest in a company, the company must first invest in the region”. This ability to invest in, and focus in on, a region is the only limit to how many areas you can work in or reach.

If you are looking to expand into regions outside your own the best advice I can offer is this:

Find a sponsor or confidant in that region that can help you escape the pitfalls and traps and partner with those organisations where a win/win comes from them supporting you where you are weak, and you supporting them with a product or service that they would struggle to create themselves.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to ask and I will answer them as soon as I can.

It's not WHO you know, it's HOW you do it!

When I first started to hire enterprise sales people for our North American sales team, the advice from recruiters and other Execs was very similar, “Hire lone wolves with an impressive rolodex”. Much of the time I took this advice and the lone wolves would start off at a significant pace often hitting target in the first quarter. At the same time I would be hiring inside sales people who would join and be trained and integrated into a strict program. While at Proofpoint I was introduced to one of the most process-driven people I have ever had the pleasure to work with. Jim would sheep dip any new inside sales starter and then sharpen and hone the skills they had to within an inch of their lives while also identifying where they needed help and support. I have used my version of this structure ever since and continue to be amazed that not every business does the same.

I found the problems would normally start at the end of the first year, when the rolodex that the lone wolves had brought to the business, and the personal contacts they dined out on, would begin to dry up. This did not happen every time, as the very best Enterprise sales person will always be growing contacts and connections, but still it struck me that I needed to rethink my strategy. Using Jim’s methods for managing and building the inside sales team would never run out of opportunities or new contacts to connect with, constantly filling the funnel and growing the pipeline daily.

In Direct Sales, the numbers don’t lie or at least rarely. However, the same cannot be said of Channels. Channel sales can seem like a numbers game but this is a critical mistake to make.

Anecdote time… Last year I was working with a mid tier IT vendor who sold 100% via channel partners. They had almost 4000 partners globally with 99% of their revenue coming from just 42 partners; that’s 1%!

The Head of Channel was asked: “How are you going to grow revenue in 2014?”

The answer? “Increase the number of contributing partners by doubling the partner base from 4,000 to 8,000.”

Imagine the time and cost it would take to find and contract with 4,000 new partners!

This is an extreme example of a dysfunctional channel model. However, with a minor amount of adaptation this could have been transformed faster and more efficiently while also increasing the chance of success 100 fold!

Most large vendors will need to apply a degree of standardisation to channel programs and individual partner relationships. The key to ensuring success and scalable success for that matter, is in the hiring of dedicated Channel sales staff. This is a difficult task as in my experience very few “lone wolf” Channel sales people are out there. You will find many relationship focused Channel managers who believe that the road to success is through infinite alcohol-fuelled weekends away and a constant supply of Pizza on the sales floor. This model perhaps works when you have a handful of partners but doesn’t scale, is difficult to model and certainly doesn’t help anyone to forecast.

There is a more functional model!

It involves having well-liked, well-respected Channel sales people who focus on a defined program, adhering to the rules without constantly trying to break them. These people will be able to manage 5 or even 10 times the number of partners, and often much more effectively, than the lone wolf.

When we review data around regularity of contact and communication, it is very clear which model is used across partners with a higher overall level of satisfaction.

Both the process-driven sales person and the lone wolves have their roles to play. Early stage companies looking for the “impossible win” are best served by the go-get-it attitude and historic relationships of the wolf. However, businesses looking to for a mature Go-to-Market model, a scalable solution with predictable results need an operationally sound plan and focused, structured, professional players to make it happen.

To be a successful sales organisation, you need to apply a degree of standardisation to channel programs and direct sales processes. If you can create a great partner program, and find and build solid talent you will then watch your effective partner numbers rise , your close ratio will build and your revenue will soar but only if you are supporting that with an equally effective direct sales model.