Maidsfield Blog - Partnering and Business Development

The secret to establishing great Strategic Partnerships is how well the companies fit together. By firstly understanding and selecting the types of partners that best meets your business objectives, then to progress to analyse the potentially suitable companies to identify the best-fit partners. The next step is to call them up and we do the calling for you.

From project kick-off to Maidsfield calling up the Top 5 Best-Fit Partner companies is about 5 to 6 weeks. We believe in expedience and getting out there talking to the target partners as soon as possible. Maidsfield make the call as “VP of Alliances” of your company, or a similar suitable job title.

We identify the most appropriate person to speak to within the target company and then we speak to them. From this call we can pitch the partnership opportunity at a strategic level to determine the partner’s interest and qualify the fit.

Once interest is created and the target partner qualified, then we hand it over to you, to progress the discussions to establish the partnership. We step more into the background, to enable the business relationship between you and your potential partner to develop. We continue to guide the process from behind the scenes to establish a productive partnership connected at multiple levels within each organisation.

This is a sweeping overview of stage 3 and 4 in our Strategic Partnering Process that we use to help Irish Software Product Companies with their Internationalisation Strategy.

Register here https://www.eventelephant.com/SalesLeadershipIreland

The Changing World in Sales - “Buyers Are Not Buying”

This is a meet event organised by the Sales Leadership Ireland LinkedIn Group. This is a not-for-profit initiative.

A practical look at how companies and sales people might respond to the current challenges and opportunities in the market.

SECTION 1: Interactive sessions with Speakers (45 minutes)
1) Introduction to Sales Leadership Ireland- Niall Devitt, B2B Training

2) “Removing the New Bottlenecks in today’s Sales Processes” – 10 minutes
Niall Devitt of B2BTraining will lead a discussion on how sales challenges are always changing with changing markets, how to identify these changes and how to respond.

3) “Partnering into New Markets” – 10 minutes
Donagh Kiernan of Maidsfield Associates will present a case study of how corporate partnering is an effective method of entering new sectoral or regional markets.

4) “Engaging with Customers through New Media” – 20 minutes
Damien Mulley of Mulley Communications will discuss how new media can be used to communicate with your market and gain new business.

Register here https://www.eventelephant.com/SalesLeadershipIreland

SECTION 2: Key Challenges Roundtables (1 hour)
Maximum attendees 30 – 3 round tables of 10

A number of identified Key Challenges in the industry today will be discussed and debated to share insights on how challenges can and are be met by members. The key challenges will be collected from the Sales Leadership Ireland - Linked-In Discussion Group.

Structure:
a) Introduce identified “Key Challenges” – (5 Minutes)
b) One “Key Challenge” will be assigned to each roundtable. Each table will select a spokesperson to chair a discussion and collect suggested actions to meet these challenges, taking notes on a flipchart page (30 Minutes)
c) Each table’s spokesperson will present their findings to the whole group (30 Minutes)
d) Session Summary and Close

COFFEE & NETWORKING

A session report will be submitted to the Sales Leadership Ireland LinkedIn Group Discussion

Register here https://www.eventelephant.com/SalesLeadershipIreland

To grow your company’s revenues, you can partner with companies that are already selling to your type of customer. This is a fairly linear exercise in finding the companies who fit the query: “Who has your customers and wants more of them?”

To look at it a little more laterally, your company has a technology or product with a core capability – What does this capability mean to the various industry sectors and who would it bring a competitive advantage to? In Michael Porter’s five forces, who can you help become a Substitute in particular markets.

Memory of Substitute songs: The Who and The Clout

As a technically strong company eager to sell internationally, is your biggest market far away with many hard-to-open doors to break in to a lucrative market. Would a corporate partner who has access to your target customer base be of value to your organization? Who are these partners and how do you effectively get a relationship working?

Ireland has produced many strong technical companies. When you meet an Irish technology entrepreneur, notice their ease with, and burning desire to, talk about the depths of their technology. I enjoy working with people like this. They continually work to be world class at what they do at a technical level. They frequently underestimate what their business can achieve if they can effectively get to the market. I enjoy helping create partnerships to help these companies get their technology and capabilities into the market and help them gain customers and revenue growth.

Corporate Partners are a real path for these types of companies but is your business ready for Corporate Partnering? How easy is it for someone else to sell your services? Are you expecting too much of a partner’s sales team to understand and sell your services? Your service must be easy to explain, fit well with the partners offering and the sales team must see it worth their while to sell or refer your service. Will you clearly make them, and you, more money?

When it works, it’s a great feeling and well worth the effort to get everything in place.

Being sent a cheque from your partner, WITH COMPLIMENTS: “we just sold 100 licences of your software and see enclosed your share, thanks”

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.

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