Maidsfield Blog - Partnering and Business Development

I wrote before about partnering with perceived competitors.

Paisley (MN, USA) and QUMAS (Cork, Ireland) are clearly active in the same markets, selling to similar buyers and are side-by-side on the Forrester Wave and the Gartner Magic Quadrant. They are not competitors.

Even in reviewing both company’s products and services, they are clearly providing solutions to solve similar needs. Yet, they are not competitors.

In this partnership, Paisley will embed the QUMAS DocCompliance™ functionality as a feature of Paisley Enterprise GRC™

Paisley and QUMAS fit because:

• Paisley is an industry leading provider of solutions for governance, risk and compliance (GRC) including comprehensive software solutions, training, and expert GRC professional services. Paisley have more than 1,400 large enterprise and mid-market organizations including 30% of the Fortune 500.
• QUMAS is the leader in Enterprise Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) with more than 250 customer deployments and over a decade of experience helping companies in highly regulated industries provide a proactive regulatory defense.
• Paisley have achieved great market penetration into a broad range of sectors.
• QUMAS’ have achieved great success in Life Sciences and Financial Services sectors.

Paisley wins because of expanded capabilities and enhances Paisley’s offerings:

We are excited about the expanded policy management capabilities that the DocCompliance solution will bring and how it will enhance the Paisley Enterprise GRC solution. The addition of this functionality will further support the GRC convergence efforts of our clients and extend the value of our solution to all organizational consumers of compliance information.

- Tim Welu, CEO of Paisley. Click here to read more.

QUMAS wins because of significant distribution channel and expanded visibility in a very broad market:

The QUMAS DocCompliance product offers significant complimentary functionality to Paisley Enterprise GRC. The Paisley relationship also provides a significant distribution channel for our solutions and expanded visibility of the QUMAS solutions in a very broad market.

- Kevin O’Leary, CEO of QUMAS. Click here to read more.

ALSO, QUMAS recently won Irish Software Association Collaboration Award 2008 based on the Paisley partnership. http://www.QUMAS.com/news-events/pr-111108.asp

Stacey and Tim Welu, Paisley	Kevin O’Leary, QUMAS

I compliment the vision of Tim Welu, Kevin O’Leary and their teams in Paisley and QUMAS.

Donagh Kiernan
Maidsfield Associates

“…delivering consulting services in Sales Generating Partnerships and Strategic Business Development …to established globally focussed technology companies.”

September 2008

After two years being CEO with Campbell Informatics, I’m back to pick up Maidsfield Associates. It’s been a great intensive two years with Campbell Informatics with many successes and many more to come. I spent much time building relationships and selling into the US Pharmaceutical market with Campbell Informatics and met many great people. I am continuing to support Cliff Campbell and the Campbell Informatics team as a Director on the Board and an advisor.

Maidsfield’s focus is on assisting globally focussed technology companies with Sales Generating Partnerships and Strategic Business Development support to the CEO.

Thankfully, things have taken a good start with reviving old client relationships and some new ones. I enjoy the constant learning experience and I revel in progressing and developing further and bringing this experience to my clients. In that vein, I was deeply honoured to have been one of the 32 Irish technology entrepreneurs to have been selected to participate in the Enterprise Ireland / Stanford University Leadership 4 Growth Programme over the past year. I learned so much and met so many great people.

In continuing with Maidsfield, I chose the focus of Partnering as it’s an area I had good successes in the past and when finding the right-fit can deliver great value to growing technology companies.

I chose Strategic Business Development supporting the CEO, as I enjoy it and can quickly understand the CEO’s visions and plans in developing their business and assist in their projects

Looking forward to it

Donagh Kiernan
Maidsfield Associates
info@maidsfield.com

ShareIT is a free seminar for small businesses. Damien Mulley organised the first session for UCC last Saturday, with strong feedback from participants.

My powerpoint presentation on Sales Generation is attached here.

I’ve seen it a number of times in the past few years where a company wrongly perceives another company to be a competitor. They are supplying into the same market sector and their message is not very different to yours. In reality they turn out to be ideal partners.

NOW, it’s happening to us (Campbell Informatics) and my gut is telling me that they’re an ideal partner but people in our market perceive them to be competitors.

We do indeed have some commonality in the problems we solve. We both also provide for other related areas that the other is not interested in solving, as I see it anyway.

I am calling them this week to seek to meet and discuss joint opportunities.

I bought a Toshiba Tecra Tablet PC and am still getting up to speed with the tablet functions.

But now, it’s going back. I have a strange problem with the screen. There seems to be dust just under the surface of the screen gathered around the centre. It’s irritating.

I’m currently waiting for Toshiba to replace my screen.

A construction company was commissioned to build a really grand five star hotel in New York. They decided to use their best engineer, a founding partner with the firm, Jim O’Reilly (he was originally from Cavan, Ireland). The managing partner, Chuck Houlihan (of Irish ancestry) was a strong business man but a little hard headed.

In building the hotel, Jim was at the core of engineering design and construction until business differences separated Jim and Chuck. Jim left the company.

The hotel was completed and all went well and opening with a grand celebration.

Then one day, there was a problem with the air conditioning. This became a big problem and all the expertise with the company couldn’t pin point the cause. Chuck was forced to call Jim to ask him back to check it out, whatever the cost. Chuck asked his engineers to follow Jim everywhere in finding the problem.

Jim toured the hotel checking the system at different points, asking questions and moving on. Then after about two hours he stopped. He had found it. Taking our a piece of chalk marked an X on a piece of equipment. The other engineers saw instantly what we meant.

Jim sent in a bill for $50,000 dollars to Chuck. Chuck nearly had a heart attack and smartly replied to Jim for his billed to be itemised.

Jim responded:

$1 for the chalk, $49,999 for knowing where to put it

Very little of what we do in life is incidental. Everything we do goes towards what we build up to be what defines us as a person. This defines what we represent. This is our personal and individual brand. Companies are similiar but are defined by the collective behaviours of the team. Communicate focus on values that deliver long-term value for your company.

While at Disneyworld Florida at the ISPE conference we were told that 70% of Disney customers are repeat customers. In our businesses we should adapt this as a principle by which we do business.

Act with the long-term in mind - don’t be happy with just gaining revenue today, build value in the experience that enhances your company. Learn by the experience that betters the next time your organisation must do a similiar task.

Dont just focus on the quick sale and say “next” - I read somewhere that US based department store, Nordstrom, have a principle that every customer coming through the door should be treated as such that they will potentially spend $50,000 with them in their years of custom.

Beware of throw-away tasks - On first carrying out a particular business task for a customer, document it sufficiently that you are creating a piece of knowledge that can be reused by you company more effectivley at a later date.

Focus on the long-term value for your customer. Think beyond the current project to understand long term value for your customer then you will better understand what is required of your company in the long-term in delivering on your customers’ needs

I spent the past few days (Nov 6th to Nov 8th 2006) at the ISPE annual meeting in Orlando, Florida’s Disneyworld.

It is absolutely amazing to realise the enormous detail to which Disney people go to, to ensure they think of everything possibility to ensure that their guests get the fullest experience possible on their visit to Disneyworld. There is very little left to chance. They believe in premium pricing and well above premium service. 70% of the guests are repeat visitors. They treat everyone as an ongoing repeat visitor year in year out. They charge well and deliver value.

The photo was taken by Jeff Masten of Genentech. (Thanks Jeff)

On stepping up for my photo, I addressed the Disney pair with “Well Ladies”, mistakenly recognising Donald as Daffy (how could I!). Of course Donald took offence which I had to rectify with an apology and correctly addressing him as “Gent”. Well after all, 70% of all management decisions are wrong. The good managers know when to rectify their decisions quickly.

Disney’s manner of doing business by offering the fullest experience is a guiding principle that cannot be encompassed in a standard operating procedure. It is in the manner in we engage and are engaged as people. Disney is a great business guided by strong principles.

No matter what you do, everyday we are all always faced with situations in which we have to get a message across.

In every discussion:
i) We have to understand the views on the audience we are addressing
ii) Start delivering our message from this point of view and
iii) Then demonstrate the value of what we’re suggesting with direct relevance to our audiences’ point of view
iv) And win over agreement and support

Is this not the same as:
i) Gather market research to develop a Market/User Requirements Specification
ii) Construct and deliver a customer relevant marketing/sales message to capture their attention
iii) in order to get the opportunity to demonstrate the full value of our offering with direct relevance to the customer
iv) in order to win a sale

This is true of all scenarios whether for individual or company driven goals, within small or large organisations or generally in society.

Everything is sales….www.everythingisales.com

Donagh Kiernan Appointed CEO of Campbell Informatics.

As a result of my move, Maidsfield Business Development is being transition to Whitehorsepoint Business and Marketing Consultants.

Whitehorsepoint is a privately held Irish company providing International Marketing, Business and IT professional services to a wide range of Irish and international clients. Whitehorsepoint and its founders have a proven track record in the software and telecommunications industries and an impressive list of client relationships.

Irene McGoey is one of the principles of Whitehorsepoint. Irene did great things at Euristix in assisting with market definition and general marketing activities. I first heard about Irene at the time around Euristix winning the Irish Software Association Marketing Company of the year. Vistech was a supplier to Euristix at that time. I also worked with Irene in more recent months as fellow Enterprise Ireland Mentors. Irene is also helping us out in Campbell Informatics on the Marketing side.

I have used Microsoft Outlook 2003 and Business Contact Manager as well as an Outlook plug-in, Email Templates to manage how I work with my over 1600 business and personal contacts.

We would have sent out many mailings using MS Word, bulk personal and personalised emails through Email Templates and kept a record of all contacts with each contact using Business Contact Manager.

The system we devised worked but was far from ideal and a little error prone at times. We used contact categories to group contacts and keep track of campaign status, sales progress status and type of company.

I’m done with that system and now need something more multi-user and scalable.

Every company, no manner how small, should have a shared CRM system maintaining details of all contact with their customers and prospective customers.

It needs to be web-based to be shared with a dispersed and travelling group, so I’m looking at Salesforce.com and SugarCRM.

This post is in response to Joe Drumgoole’s post: “Is the Irish Software Association worth the price?” and on the ISA 2006 Annual conference

If you’re serious about scaling your business, then today’s ISA Annual Conference, was most definitely worth the price.

So is E800 worth the investment in becoming a member of the ISA?

From today’s event and on ISA brochure, the ISA represents the growing software business. So its not about where you are now, its about where you are going.

I thoroughly enjoyed the half-day event in the Dublin today.

Following Minister Michael Martin’s kick-off the programme started with analysts/investors views of the marketplace. We heard from Andy Malik of Lehman Brothers, Eric Hjerpe of Athlas Venture and ex-Siebel senior VP, Melinda Ballou from IDC and Sean Foley from Microsoft.

These were very practical presentations of what works and whats in flavour. We got great information on business and revenue models. (More on this at some other time)

By 11am, I was already overloaded with valuable information and with 5 more speakers to go. But what followed were 5 real Irish technology business leaders who have delivered great international business success. Fergus Gloster, Senior VP Salesforce.com, Garry Moroney, ex-Similarity Systems CEO, Pat Brazil ex Eontec/Siebel, Sean Melly CEO eTel and Peter Conlon CEO Xsil.

The conference and the structure flowed with themes presented by the analysts/investors being supported and compounded by real examples from the technology business leaders.

This was a real “Get Off Your Ass” event.

I’m a soon-to-be member of ISA, again.

Congratulations to Bernadette Cullinane, ISA Chair, and the ISA team behind todays event.

It does need to be discussed whether ISA is a national organisation and if it is assisting new business owner/managers or just experienced business people.

Regional industry organisations, like IT@Cork, should work with ISA in the regions to jointly drive the international growth and leadership agendas.

Referrals are a great source of new business but may not build your business fast enough to suit your goals.

So your product suits everyone, but who does it suit best? Who will get the greatest value from your product? Who will buy fastest?

To market effectively:
=> You need to break down your market on a sector-by-sector and/or on a region-by-region and/or on a demographic basis, even if you are operating a web-based business.
=> You need to tune to your target market defining your key messages, your language, offerings and customer support accordingly.
=> Do not market everything you can do, as the message becomes too complex. Market your company, key Unique Selling Proposition and an initial “hook” offering. You can vary the hook on various campaigns.

The purpose of your marketing efforts is to develop leads and not to educate the market on everything you can do.

A basic high-level direct market attack plan is as follows:

1. Know your business direction
You must decide what products, capabilities and offerings that allow you to put your best foot forward taking advantage of the right opportunities in the marketplace.

2. Define your offerings
- Define and detail what you have on offer.
- Create a corporate image for your company that represents your standards.
- Create Marketing and Sales materials that show what you have on offer
- Use Case Studies with client endorsements.

3. Define your Ideal Client Profile
- Know who you want to do business with, based on who you work best with and provide greatest value to.
- Detail the Ideal Client profile

4. Gather a list of your target companies and contacts that broadly fit your Ideal Client profile
Using your Ideal Client Profile, with Market Research, create a list of prospective clients. It?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s worth buying a completed list or paying someone to build a relevant list of companies, addresses, contact names, job titles, phone numbers, email addresses, systems in place etc.

5. Plan and Execute your campaigns to build your pipeline
- Put the resources in place and start
- Use a CRM system to manage your Prospects, Leads, Contacts, Marketing Materials etc
- Execute, Follow-up and geneate leads
- Build a relationship with your marketplace
- Build your pipeline
- Gain new clients

Marketing should not be an occaisional activity for your company, no manner how small. Marketing is one of those good habits that when in place and done effectively will produce on-going results. This is an on-going action that will generate leads and continue to open doors to develop business.

As in everything, 10% planning, 90% effective action.

This is not just about new inventions or radical pioneering ideas. If your business depends on changing standard practice ever so slightly then this adds further challenges to achieving your business goals.

Six Questions:

1. Might you describe business offering as leading edge?
2. Do you say that you have no direct competitors?
3. Have you ever used the words ‘radical change’ in describing your offerings?
4. Will your business change the structure of the industry, even slightly?
5. Do you welcome a competitor’s marketing campaigns because they are making the concept more acceptable?
6. Does making money depend on changing consumer habits?

If you can say “YES” to any of the above, then you will be likely faced with greater challenges in developing your business.

The Challenges:

1. Identifying your revenue streams and pricing models
- Will people pay directly for your product or service?
- Putting imminent revenue aside, briefly, what core value are you building? That is, are you creating something that other businesses might make money from? Is it a loyal customer base? Is it technical intellectual property?
- If you cant achieve sufficient revenue from those using your service, can you gain revenue from those targeting a similar customer base? Can you sell them other products or services? Does advertising revenue make sense?
- For possible pricing models, seek comparables from similar business models and/or indirect competitors

2. Double the sales effort: The Concept and the Service
- Do you need to explain your business idea in every sale?
- Particularly if the benefits are less measurable, you need to get over the ‘quack’ factor
- When trying to make a sale, you need the prospective client to buy into the concept first of all and then to buy from you

3. Avoiding being stomped by a big player
- If what you’re selling threatens revenues of large indirect competitors, beware of being too prominent too soon until you’ve gotten a foothold in the market.
- You might decide to chip away at the early adopters in the market to build up sufficient credibility and track-record and then to attack the greater market.

4. Winning initial reference sites
- No one wants to eat in an empty restaurant. So do the happy hour, work hard to win your initial customers and prove your service.
- You need to remove risks from the buying decisions of future customers. Solid evidence of a track record is hard to beat.

5. Validating your business
- Customers paying for and endorsing your service validates it above all else
- Partner endorsement validates
- Investment from a known industry leader validates
- Accreditation, Certification of recognised bodies validates
- PR, Celebrity endorsement and other strong promotional activities also validates

6. Forecasting according to early adopters?
- Early Adopters buy new into ideas faster than others.
- Do you ramp up your business based on sales successes to Early Adopters?
- Be aware of the length of the period from market entry to market acceptance and the costs of doing so

7. Raising Investment
- Investment organisations analyse business plans according to Return on Investment including Risks in achieving business goals. New ideas add risk but also may offer a high return.
- Private Investors with knowledge of your industry make decisions based more on instinct and experience, but the appetite for high risk varies.

Example: Broadband in Ireland

Despite vast amounts of time and money being spent on marketing, promotional offers and government support schemes, Ireland is still slow on the take-up of Broadband.

Broadband providers are of all sizes as the market possesses few barriers to entry. There is much distrust in the market as people do not know what they are buying and services can be poor from many providers.

Dominant players are difficult to displace as it takes time to move people from what they know already AND many don’t see the benefits clearly enough.

It takes time, layer by layer from early adopters back to the luddites.

This is a companion post to this months Market Leader Monthly Newsletter.

This outlines the defined stages from Cold Prospect to developing an Ideal Client for your business. This takes time and many steps.

This is a Sales Generation Process that incorporates a good understanding of your target Ideal Client(s), good marketing materials and steady continuous semi-automated marketing and sales activities to develop a client base for your business.

Seductive Marketing incorporates both Marketing and Sales, continuing beyond the first client engagement to develop the client relationship further to being an Ideal Client.

If you have good reference clients then they are likely a definition of your Ideal Client. How do you find more and this enabling you to reduce the number of non-Ideal Clients? See the Business Case for Ideal Client Focus.

This is a typical marketing and sales process for a very established and mature organisations. The Ideal Client Focus Programme enables small and medium sized organisations to inexpensively introduce similar marketing and sales processes and activities.

Read more on the newsletter.

At the recent IT@Cork event on “Managing a Service Business for Growth” we heard from two successful Cork based IT@Cork member companies on how they built their businesses.

In a previous post I raised the question on whether service business revenue growth was directly related to employee numbers.

The two speakers at the event, Paul Hourican from PFH Computers and Pat Ryan from Abtran, clearly outlined service business revenue growth on a non-linear scale to employee numbers.

The two businesses have defined their services on the basis that they have:

As they are human, the two speakers outlined where they also learned valuable lessons in:

Tom Raftery posted photos of the event Paul Hourican and Pat Ryan

Do check out the next IT@Cork event on “Business used of RSS”

The insights by both speakers provided lessons for all businesses even if you a custom development services businesses.

January’06, Cork, Ireland

Decare Systems Ireland (DSI), a leading provider of software and Internet solutions, based in the University Technology Centre in Cork have secured a partnership agreement with Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer.

Amazon’s online retail business involves selling product from their own warehouses but also acts as a channel for other merchants to sell their product on Amazon. The size of the merchant companies vary from 1 person selling used DVD movies to established wholesale/distributors/resellers selling a wide range of products.

DSI’s successes already include Avon.com and Figis in the development of their ecommerce platforms but also integration into the Amazon US platform. DSI are also the leading developer of Health Insurance Administration Systems within the US market.

In creating, recognising and realising opportunities Maidsfield have been a tremendous assistance. Working closely with the DSI management team over the past year in development our partnership with Amazon, Donagh has demonstrated the real value of what Maidsfield have to offer, getting things started and producing results. DSI and Amazon have a real sales-generation partnership bringing real value and immediate increased revenue to Merchants, Amazon and DSI.

- John Murphy, General Manager, Decare Systems Ireland

Tradesman’s home…

two separate clients in the past few days expressed the gratitude to what Maidsfield have done for them….

you have, most definitely, directly and indirectly increased our sales and our overall business

excellent stuff, exactly what it says on the tin

over the coming month (February’06) I intend to follow my own advice in developing my own business and spell out what I do for my clients.

so what barriers have I helped overcome in the past year: Helping Business Owners and Managers get want they want with their businesses. Sell this business, build that business, Sell More, Decide Direction, Secure Funds, Clarify Value, Establish a partnership with a global player, make the sales work, mentor, support….Business Plans, Marketing Plans, Marketing Materials - Website layouts and contents

I will also be introducing, a bit more widely, The Market Leader Framework for extracting the value in your business in targetting your Ideal Client….. bring greater sales and focus to higher value in your business..

Also in implementing the defined strategy with Seductive Marketing techniques in the The Market Leader Sales Generation Process… being outlined in my next few Newsletters…. - you can subscribe on www.maidsfield.com

Time to pick it up a bit -

I really like Larkin Cunnigham’s post on the Decare Systems blog recently,

Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company in 1903, had a great philosophy. Get the laziest man to do a job and he?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ll find the quickest way to do it. It turns the negativity of laziness on it?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s head and turns it into something positive.

Laziness is not a bad thing in Software Development either, it turns out. I say this because like most people, I am lazy. I don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t like to write excessive code and I don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t like too much of a configuration overhead in my frameworks. It slows my creative process. That?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s why I am an advocate of Convention over Configuration.

Similiarly Jim Corbett’s Post on innovation on the EirePreneur blog - Ideas are a dangerous drug.

Is it Laziness or a driving belief that

There’s got to be a better way….

Creative people are not good at steady, routine work and would fail a bank aptittude test…..

So many techies would revel in the task of “Find me a better way to do this”………. but we all need a balance

Richenda, my wife, remembers when U2 played at Waterford Regional Technical College, now WIT, at a price of 50 pence per student. She didnt go, she was a bit young. Who was U2 then anyway? But no doubt they were great. Many people missed their opportunity to see this U2 greatness in the making.

How do you become great? It’s not by one great deed nor one great goal nor one great success. Many people rest on one thing of greatness and it fades.

I’m so lucky to regularly meet so many great people today in business in Ireland and further afield. I am always keen for these people to share their knowledge and experience with the industry, within an industry organisation such as it@cork for example.

The it@Cork annual conference is coming up and many great people are speaking and attending. do see www.itcork.ie for more information.

I am really looking forward to hear Jim Mountjoy speak. A great person indeed, both for his achievements and his contribution to the technology sector in Ireland. Jim doesnt speak in public very often and maybe curses the thought of it. No doubt his to-the-point approach will come across from the podium as much as it does across the table. If you dont know of Jim, just do a google and you’ll see.

Other great people speaking at the conference include Charles Handy, Robert Scoble, Joe Gantly and many more.

Great People will gather in the 100’s in Rochestown Park Hotel, Cork - November 30th - Book at www.itcork.ie

In your mind, Who are the great people in the Irish Technology Sector? Do we do enough to reward them for their leadership and contribution?

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