Choosing a Company with the Right Value Message
If you are going to work for a tech company today, it is very important that you CLEARLY understand their value proposition BEFORE signing up. In fact, I think this should be in the top TWO reasons why you would join forces and help them sell.
Not long ago, I worked with a company that had a poor value proposition in the marketplace and it was very difficult to build sales and marketing messaging that was compelling. Here were their problems:
- They could only sell 90% of thier product line in Canada due to regulations and tax laws
- The product had to be 100% installed on customer hardware and offered no viable options for offsite or “hosted” services
- The product took 6-12 months to install and the services to do this in many cases were 2:1 as expensive as the licensing.
- It was very difficult to cost justify replacing many separate systems with this company’s single database system, due to the high capital outlay required to buy this software package. Most customers were willing to live with their disconnected systems rather than spend on a new, unified one.
- Their platform was focussed primarily on the healthcare vertical, which is notorious (at least in Canada) for being very slow to make decisions (read: loooooong sales cycles, before you get paid!), slow to adopt new technologies and fraught with a very high level of subject matter expertise required to sell it (read: your personal training commitment is going to be bigger than other companies you might work for).
Are you excited to work with a company like this?
I didn’t think so. If you’re looking for a new company to sell for, I suggest you REALLY do you homework and focus on understanding their value proposition. Companies that would be ones I suggest you consider are those whose value proposition is going to be easier to manage in your sales conversations that the one I outlined above. For example, a good value proposition would include:
- Anything with Software as a Service, where the product or software is hosted by the vendor. Companies like Salesforce.com, SugarCRM are two such examples in the Customer Relationship Management sector.
- Anything where displacing people and their jobs is the main driver towards cost savings. Even though it fundamentally makes sense at the economic level, nobody likes to lose their jobs or bring in solutions where that will happen.
- Anything where it helps people do their jobs and eliminates frustrating, long standing IN-efficiencies in the day to day operations.
- Any company that has broad adoption accross the range of industry. Unlike my healthcare example above, companies that offer solutions anyone can use for a specific problem to all or most businesses is a good place to be. The Business Intelligence vendors like Business Objects and Cognos did a great job of this in the last 15 years.
- Anything that can either A)directly help drive more revenue (such as the improved conversion in e-commerce traffic like those offered by companies like HackerSafe or The Online Sales Accelerator) B) make the process of driving revenue easier to manage (Digital River is a classic example of this type of business).
These are some examples of things you ought to be considering. Ask yourself if you understand what the company does and if you can get behind it. Does it make sense to you? Would you buy it if you were in the market for such services? If not, don’t sign up.
A solid value proposition is one of the most important things you must have in your current or next employer if you’re going to be successful in technology sales.
~Brooks.
April 2nd, 2008 at 1:27 pm
I agree this is a great blog.
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:40 pm
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