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We keep missing milestones – how do we hit deadlines on time?
96 Plays1 month ago
This week’s Scale-up Confession comes from Ed, the founder of a software business focused on supporting financial advisory firms with performance analytics. Responding to Ed's letter, Rob is joined by marketing expert Nicola Anderson and technologist Tim Palmer , to discuss possible solutions.
Thanks to our panellists:
Nicola Anderson - https://www.linkedin.com/in/andersonnicola/
Tim Palmer - https://www.linkedin.com/in/timpalmer/ https://thinkbluehat.com/
Connect with Us:
Have your own business question or leadership challenge? Please email Rob at rob@mission-group.co.uk (and let us know whether you would prefer a private answer or are happy to feature in a future episode).
You can also reach Rob on LinkedIn via https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertliddiard/ or to book some free time https://www.eosworldwide.com/rob-liddiard).
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Transcript
Introduction to Scale Up Confessions
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, welcome to another episode of Scale Up Confessions, the show where we explore what it really feels like to lead and manage a growing business. I'm Rob Lyddiard. I was the co-founding CEO of a software business called Yapster that was acquired at the end of 2022. I'm now a professional implementer of the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or EOS, which means I work with entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial leadership teams to help them get what they want from their businesses.
Ed's Business Challenges
00:00:24
Speaker
Today's confession comes in from ed Ed's the founder of a software business that's focused on providing analytics um ah solutions to financial advisor businesses so in the B2B space.
00:00:36
Speaker
And he's pulling his hair out, it sounds, with um slipping deadlines and the inability to to meet customer commitments. So I've brought in two of my very clever friends again, Nicola Anderson, ah founder of CMO Circle, a London chair of Pavilion, used to be the Revenue Collective. So very, very well regarded person in the go-to-market world in the UK. And Tim Palmer, the founder of Blue Hat, that does ah tech due diligence and product like sort of ah third party product, fixing delivery and scaling typically for venture backed businesses. So there's very little that Tim hasn't seen
00:01:15
Speaker
the good, the bad and the ugly in the in in the tech scene. So between the three of us, hopefully we'll be able to get to the root of Ed's issues and hopefully suggest some solves that will help him and hopefully those of you
Deadline and Reputation Issues
00:01:27
Speaker
listening. So without further ado, ah give you Nicola Anderson and Tim Palmer answering Ed's Scale Up Confession.
00:01:40
Speaker
Folks, welcome back to Scale Up Confessions. I'm with my fearless co-panelists, Nicola Anderson and Tim Palmer. Hello, both. Hello, Tim. Right. Today, we've got a confession in from from a chap called Ed that runs ah a SaaS product that that delivers analytics to financial advisors.
00:01:58
Speaker
And boy, there are some issues. Let's hit play. And as ever, we'll dive into teasing out the issues and then seeing what we can solve for our friend. Dear Rob, My name is Ed and I am the founder of a software business focused on supporting financial advisory firms with performance analytics.
00:02:16
Speaker
Over the past six months, our implementation and onboarding teams have struggled to meet project deadlines. These delays have led to frustration among our clients who rely on us to get their systems running smoothly so they can provide value to their own customers.
Internal Conflicts in Ed's Business
00:02:30
Speaker
And recently, mid-sized advisory firm cancelled their contract, citing missed timelines as their primary reason for leaving. This is particularly concerning because word of mouth is crucial in our niche market and we can't afford a tarnished reputation.
00:02:46
Speaker
Our project manager has flagged several issues. Unpredictable custom integration requests from clients, misaligned expectations during the sales process and a lack of clear communication between the sales and operations teams.
00:03:00
Speaker
However, when I brought this up in our leadership meeting, our head of sales argued that offering flexibility is what makes us competitive. Meanwhile our operations manager feels that the team is simply overworked and needs additional resources.
00:03:13
Speaker
I've tried introducing stricter timelines and regular progress check-ins but the problems continue. Morale is slipping and I worry we're at risk of burning out some of our most talented employees.
00:03:25
Speaker
At the same time we're in a tight spot financially and I'm hesitant to invest in hiring without a clearer path forward. How can I balance the need for flexibility with the importance of meeting deadlines?
00:03:38
Speaker
And how do I ensure better alignment between our sales and operations teams without creating further tension?
Strategic Solutions for Business Issues
00:03:45
Speaker
I'm determined to turn this around, but I feel like I'm stuck in a cycle of reacting to problems rather than solving them.
00:03:52
Speaker
your insights would be greatly appreciated. Sincerely, Ed. Ed, I hate to disappoint you, but they're definitely not going to be my insights. But thankfully, we've got Tim and Nicola here with us.
00:04:03
Speaker
Nicola, after our our last scale-up confession, we've had some wonderful feedback back from the people that that listened. And you made the suggestion that we could continue to evolve this format by maybe doing it not from this glamorous Regis in Potters Bar that I'm joining today, but from my office with the whiteboard in the background. And we almost start by getting issues up on the board so we can look at them in the hole and then pick and kind of solve work our way through the issues list and solve them.
00:04:27
Speaker
Now, whilst I don't have the whiteboard behind me today, Should we just throw out some issues that we're observing now before we dive into to tackling? And I'll kind of note down the issues as you guys call them out, and then we'll we'll see how many we can we can get through. So Nicola, where's your head going to in some of the issues that our friend Ed is hinting at? and Oh, I do love a whiteboard session.
00:04:47
Speaker
So many, but I think if you get right down to the basics of it, I think there is a lack of clarity on their positioning. So what is their value proposition and how does that line up with the competition?
00:05:01
Speaker
Because one of the things he says is it's about being flexible. That's how we stay competitive. Now, Is that an assumption or is that actually the case? And is that why their clients are choosing them over other options?
Balancing Flexibility and Deadlines
00:05:15
Speaker
Because if so, then this is critical for them to fix. If not, are they over-indexing and perhaps being too generous in some of this customized work that they're offering, at least within the package, rather than it being additional cost?
00:05:32
Speaker
Love it. All right, so we've got the potential positioning issue there. Anything else occurring to you, Nicola, or are we tossing this over to Tim? I think we should let Tim give his initial feedback. I've got plenty more. Okay, Tim, where'd your head go to?
00:05:46
Speaker
So I think if we're, rather than sort of going into a solution, we're talking about a few um competitive forces which are driving the business.
00:05:59
Speaker
So the flexibility is the opposite of deadlines. So providing the flexibility and having deadlines at the same time are not good, but ah a good bedfellows.
00:06:09
Speaker
You've also got the burnout from the operation side of things versus the the the sales ability to get business react to customers' needs.
00:06:21
Speaker
and that And that tension is also driving the problems in the business and ultimately it comes down to unsatisfied customers, because we're talking here about canceled contracts.
00:06:33
Speaker
So whilst they are flexible, the customers are leaving them or a customer has left them. Now one one may not be an indicative of that being repeated elsewhere, but I think from, given that's all we've got to go on, I think that canceled contract is a warning sign that they're not keeping existing customers happy.
00:06:49
Speaker
But it also feels like they're not building the strategic platform to win new clients because of that burnout from the the team to actually keep up up to date. So that'd be my third category of of challenge which he's facing.
00:07:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's like so many things, isn't it? it's It's so interconnected and you're right, the white ball would be really helpful. So we've got here... Nicola's kind of kicked us off with the point on positioning. It seems like ops and sales are not clear on their unique value proposition. Is it about certainty and reliability or is it about flexibility? And as you say, like Tim, that might actually be ah ah ah not a false dichotomy, a hard dichotomy in some senses.
00:07:29
Speaker
We've got this people component issue possibly. We've got like, is the implementation team actually doing what they need to do? I think Tim, you referred to operations there. Of course, we've got like sales and customer success as well. We're not totally sure how their teams are configured. I think the organization sort of breaks down to sort of sales and marketing on one side and operations and technology and product on the other.
00:07:48
Speaker
i think it it does feel like it's a yin and a yang in in the setup. And I think one that i would want to add in is the scoping piece. One thing he mentioned was unpredictable custom integrations.
00:08:02
Speaker
So when the sales team are selling, what are they actually offering? What are they promising? And is that handover to operations clear?
00:08:13
Speaker
Because it feels like from that short overview that perhaps sales are offering too much and they are potentially um giving deadlines that impossible to meet.
00:08:27
Speaker
So yes, they're not meeting deadlines, but how much of this is about what timelines they're setting versus what
Evaluating Business Model and Pricing Strategies
00:08:33
Speaker
the customer expects? Like if they push them out by a month, would that cause issues? Or is it actually that they're over promising and under delivering versus the other way around? So I think if there was better alignment at the beginning, when they were really understanding what that customer needs, then they would be able to put together a project plan that they can deliver against versus, oh, this is what we're going to do from sales and ops going, well, this isn't feasible.
00:08:56
Speaker
i'm glad you said that, Nicola, because that's you know I was thinking the same, but I'd say I'll i'll get a view from technology of their problem is there's clearly not a ah good communication from technology about what the cost is of doing these features, which is allowing the sales teams to go out and over promise and and build this sort of,
00:09:14
Speaker
this unpredictability to say, well, actually, yeah, we can build, we can integrate to anything that you can please throw at us, which clearly isn't the case. That's not not not easy to do. And I put that sort of technology need to be more upfront with actually what is the cost of doing that the sales team can be properly informed as to what they can sell and what they shouldn't be selling.
00:09:33
Speaker
I'm smiling because i can so see this happening on the for Absolutely, we can do that. No problem, we can do it in two weeks. We'll pull back up. That's like a three-month plan. I think one other thing I'm thinking about is what's that business model?
00:09:45
Speaker
Because is it literally a SaaS subscription? Or is there an element of professional services? Because one of the things he said was about, I can't afford to hire.
00:09:56
Speaker
Now, if they rethink the business model and say, the platform includes these integrations, which are perhaps more straightforward to do or already embedded in. And yes,
Understanding Client Needs and Sales Promises
00:10:04
Speaker
absolutely. We are offer for the flexibility and we can do these additional integrations. There is a cost attached.
00:10:08
Speaker
And then that additional cost would then provide the resource to be able to work on that. So I wonder if that also... um underselling what they're offering and i think it's really important to look at that pricing and packaging because have they actually tested out saying of course we can do this this is another 20 30 whatever it might be depending on the complexity that's heavy of course if he's thinking this is a sass business but actually there's a professional services pull from the market you know you don't hear your average law firm complaining about being busy right um
00:10:43
Speaker
Really interesting. Okay. Okay. So, so now we've teased out this potential issue between the connection between vision and then the process is required to fulfill the customer promise. Christ, we're going to have a full house of issues here, aren't we?
00:10:54
Speaker
Um, Tim, you talked about kind of low accountability, like we call it traction in my world, but it's, you know, are we probably with kind of issue solving as well? Like, are we communicating well enough to to get issues out on the table while we've still got a chance to discuss them openly and honestly and solve them, for example, before a key account churns?
00:11:14
Speaker
um Christ. Okay, Tim, where the hell do we start here? If I'm Ed, if I'm Ed and I've got to go and revisit every corner of my business, where would...
00:11:25
Speaker
Where would you start? I mean, Nicola. I think the first thing I would do is get stuck into some sales calls recordings. So I'm hoping they've got something implemented like a Jiminy or a Gong and to start to work through exactly what the client is asking and what the sales team are offering.
00:11:42
Speaker
Is it actually a deal breaker if they're not hitting these deadlines or is that the sales team over promising? And really get to the heart of the actual value of this customization. How important is it to win that deal and how important is the timelines?
00:11:54
Speaker
Because even if it's important to win that deal, is the client really pushing on we need it now, we need it now? And what would happen? You can do a little bit of testing with some of the sales rep if we actually push back on that. So think the first thing is to really understand what's being sold and then to map out the process of once we've got that, how is it then being handed over to operations?
00:12:15
Speaker
And how are they then managing that project timeline? Are they saying, yeah, absolutely, it's fine. And then deadlines are slipping, or are they pushing back right from the beginning? So I that's the first one. So start with vision first, from your perspective, yeah. And then sounds like you'll instinctively go to process next. How about you, Tim? Would you start vision as well?
00:12:31
Speaker
I would definitely start there as well because I think the the core is what are you trying to achieve for your customers? I think you've always got to bring it back to what's going to sell in the market and ah you know what is their target market, what's their product market fit and all of those questions are absolutely essential because it's been quite easy to go and build something because you imagine that that's what your clients want, but actually and and a lot of companies fall down that hole.
00:12:53
Speaker
I also think there's a bottom up review as well of actually looking at the cost of ah this flexibility and the ability to do integrations is to look at actually what is the cost to the business of doing that? So whilst you might not be able to sell the professional services side, and indeed many companies would say, well, don't want to do professional services because that limits my growth potential if I have to put a professional services team in to make that work.
00:13:14
Speaker
But if you analyze that and find that actually for an implementation, it takes five days of work to integrate it into the client systems, well, actually that five days should be built into your your pricing and you should maybe have a partner you work with who does those integrations for you, which then allows you allows you to have the scale, but you're not using your core team to do like to do that work.
00:13:33
Speaker
I think it comes down to what does the client expect? And it's very easy in a sales situation to over promise and and and give something away, which you don't really need to complete the sale, but actually just makes just, you know feathers the yeah the deal for for your customer to make them be even happier with signing.
00:13:51
Speaker
But actually, that's the thing that's going to cost you and and really damage your business. But I think it's getting that customer need right
Strategic Alignment and Vision
00:13:56
Speaker
down to bare bones of what is the product they want to buy from us at at what price point. And then from that, build up from the engineering to say, well, actually, how much does that actually cost us to deliver? If you running a supermarket, you wouldn't be going to sell ah your shelves full of baked beans and not know how much they cost. You know, you you would you would you would lose money almost certainly.
00:14:13
Speaker
So they need to do that. i can... I think the other thing that came across was the founder feeling that has to do all this on his own. What I would do is start off with giving your your head of finance, sales and ops a task to go and actually really investigate what's going on from each of their departments and then bring everyone together.
00:14:32
Speaker
And i think the best value he can get is is actually having that cross-functional discussion where, right, we've got a problem here. all need to try and solve this together. Let's work through the challenges that we're seeing, what we need to do to win in this space and how we're going to get there and what that could look like.
00:14:50
Speaker
And having representatives from finance, from sales, from operations should actually enable you to get to the bottom of this. Love that. Okay. So Ed, Our recommendation is get the team together and start vision data.
00:15:02
Speaker
Like get clear on where you are, get clear on where you should be, really talking to customers rather than just burying your head in the organization, looking inwards and and and stressing out and maybe jumping to the wrong conclusion.
00:15:14
Speaker
I love that, Tim, that you make the point of the data. I mean, I was super guilty of this when I was a founder. You're so grateful every time someone chooses you, you forget that you need to like protect the sustainability of the business once the novelty of the new deal wears off.
00:15:27
Speaker
As my my mum would say, like wonderful Dagnum girl, don't know if you've ever seen Made in Dagnum, but grew up in Dagnum. She'd say anyone can sell tennis for a fiver.
00:15:39
Speaker
Your mom is a very wise lady. this They like make them wise and tag them. Right. Fantastic. Okay. So vision data, we've given there the starting point. And Nicola there, you suggested that you might then be inclined to start interrogating current processes to how we deliver against at least our current understanding of fulfilling the the customer promise. Does that still still feel right to you?
00:16:01
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm interested to get Tim's review on this from ah from an engineering viewpoint, but I think um you almost need like a rate card of this is what we offer and the timelines. So sales have a really clear picture of, okay, if it's this integration, it will cost this much.
00:16:17
Speaker
If it's this, it's this much. doesn't necessarily mean that they have to go into professional services, but they understand what the value is. That then is much easier to manage the client's expectation. If you say, right, the actual cost of us doing this integration is this much.
00:16:29
Speaker
It's embedded within the subscription if they decide to go down that route, but it will take this amount of time. I think also, and and Tim, you'll know far more of this than me, but what do they need from the client to be able to do it as well?
00:16:41
Speaker
Because that could also be a blocker because they're going to need access to some of their tools, technology work with somebody on their team. So is that causing problems too? Tim, really keen to get your thoughts on this because you're the one that's actually done this versus me.
00:16:55
Speaker
adding on Adding on to Nicola's question, i'd love to know your lived experience doing this work with clients. um If you do go in and inspect the process and it's clear that it needs to change to be sustainable, what does that typically feel like for someone like Ed or for the investors? Does it feel like we go quite a long way back or sometimes even feel like we're stopping before we can go forward sustainably?
00:17:19
Speaker
they There's definitely cases where you're going off at a complete tangent and you're you're set what you're selling and where the business
Product Market Fit and Client Demands
00:17:27
Speaker
is going next. I think it comes down to when you start the company, you're so delighted with your first customer, you kind of do whatever they want.
00:17:35
Speaker
And we're kind of taught to do that because we're trying to find product market fit. We're being agile, we're building things to what clients need and we get dictated by clients saying, oh, wouldn't it be good to have this and this? And we think that's great because we're now clients engaged.
00:17:47
Speaker
We're building more features into the into the product. Sometimes you're lucky and that's what you're building with that client and solving it for the first few clients is actually the core product you want to sell elsewhere. But in most cases, what happens is you then get this ah tension between product market fit, marketing expertise and sales expertise.
00:18:07
Speaker
and and also the the customer success team. So you've got, let's say three teams involved. Customer success wants to serve as the existing customers and stop them from being lost. And therefore they're pushing in more and more ideas of what the customers are coming back with. and that's the flexibility angle.
00:18:22
Speaker
it where tole If that's compatible with your strategy and what your marketing team is saying is where you need to take the product, happy days, because what the clients are asking for is what you want to build in order to win the next client.
00:18:35
Speaker
Unfortunately, most of the time that does not happen. Most of the time what happens is the existing clients will say, well, I now we want you to integrate to this into my homemade CRM system because actually that's what I need to do my job.
00:18:47
Speaker
And you go, well, actually we've always done that in the past, so yes, we'll happily do that. No one else is gonna buy that off you or need that that integration, obviously, because you're plugging in something unknown. So it's a case of knowing from the sales team's point of view, when they're going out is to say, well, this is the core thing that we can sell. This is what we've got on on the shelves today to sell, and we can sell it at this price.
00:19:06
Speaker
If you wanna go down this route, which is strategic, you can look at our product roadmap and see that actually those things gonna come online in the next three, six, nine months. If you don't have a product roadmap, get one. You have to have a product roadmap for your sales team to know what's been being sold.
00:19:20
Speaker
And you have to hit those deadlines in the product roadmap, which means you can't distract your team in doing it, which means when a salesman comes back and goes, actually, ah I've won this deal and we have to do this and this as well, you need an ability to spike your development resources in the short term and that means bring in externals probably to work for two three months to do the integration we're working with one financial services firm just now which says exactly that they're selling a very complicated product and when they go and sell it they will sell the standard product if they want to do extra stuff on top they come to us and say can you quote for doing this we'll quote to do the work
00:19:53
Speaker
and they'll add that onto the bill plus a margin, I would assume as well, into that client to do the work. So their sales team can only sell what's on their book of of product, anything else they come to us to say, well, can you build that bespoke for this client to do the work?
00:20:07
Speaker
That is more flexible than I was expecting, Tim. i was expecting you to say, and then the salespeople have just got to go fucking sell what we told them they're allowed to sell, which of course sounds good when you're not a stressed out CEO that has to continue to hit some sort of growth metrics to keep unlocking capital to stop the thing going insolvent. I wasn't expecting you to say, try and sell what we have, but if you need to sell what they want, then that's fine. There's an answer for that.
00:20:32
Speaker
I'm probably less of a, I'm not the guy on the ground in the technology team pulling hair out because of this, but the, ah there's no hair left. I've done it so many years, but the, ah but the, but the, the question is I'm talking really around the client base. We, we generally work with B2B businesses who are selling,
00:20:53
Speaker
ah pretty substantial contract values. If you were B2C, if you were selling a you know a payroll ah payroll system to serve as small businesses, then it's a different beast. You you wouldn't you would know that the clients don't have the 10, 20, $30,000 or whatever it might be to do that bespoke integration. So therefore, you've got to build it for $12 a month per seat or whatever it might be.
00:21:16
Speaker
that's the That's your limit of how much you can spend and therefore you'll be less flexible. So it very much depends on the type of business which Ed's running. But I But in my experience, when you're selling, if you' if you've got a sales team on the ground selling into a client base, then there is an expectation of some customization.
00:21:33
Speaker
If it's um um product-led marketing and you're selling a product and i maybe there's no salespeople involved, or maybe there's a salesperson to support the process, that's a different beast of selling. But I'm talking about sales-led marketing here.
00:21:46
Speaker
which is yeah but I'd like to give Niko's thoughts on this because and you're also talking about there is an element of professional services there where the client is paying for these integrations which then gives you the flexibility to go and outsource if you need to um I just wanted to come back to processing my slight obsession with definitions um Ed mentioned something about lost a contract because the deadlines were missed and actually is that a contract yet?
00:22:10
Speaker
So i'm I would be keen to understand when do we say that this is a one client? Is it when they've signed the contract or is it when we've actually delivered what we're going to say we're going to deliver? And I wonder if some of this is about how you bring those sales and operations teams together through that process with aligned objectives of we only get commission if the deadlines are here and that actually does go live within um the current expectations. And secondly, is there an element of sign off? So yes, the sales team can say,
00:22:43
Speaker
We should be able do this within the timelines. I will just need to go and confirm this. And there has to be a sign-off process from both sides. So it doesn't feel like sales just say, yeah, absolutely. And chucking it over to the ops team and the ops team are like, well, I don't know how on earth we're going to do this.
00:22:56
Speaker
If it's outside of like the standardized agreed spec, then this has to go for sign off and then comes back to the client. Yes, this is what we can deliver against so that everyone feels very aligned across those two teams and that they've got shared goals which tie up to the company objectives.
00:23:15
Speaker
Nicola, that um you've still got your hair, but that seems like, I feel like there's some trauma underlying that insight. Can you unpack that for Ed and for our listeners? Like what what have you seen go wrong in with poor definitions and misaligned incentives?
00:23:32
Speaker
I you can't name the innocent and guilty, but just give a flavor. I'm the guilty one, so it's easy to name. i just, like my my first experience working in fintech was, I was an absolute disaster in working with the sales team because we had completely misaligned objectives. Mine were all around the self-serve piece and the sales teams were all around mid-market.
00:23:52
Speaker
And I had absolutely no objectives to actually bring in leads. And so when they were coming in just as inbound, um there was no process to actually measure who was responsible for what.
00:24:04
Speaker
And so after... um I would say four months when someone said to me, my God, it is like dealing with divorced parents.
Leadership and Team Collaboration
00:24:11
Speaker
I thought, right, I better go and have a difficult conversation and and read a lot of sales books, um which I also, Predictable Revenue was the the book of the day then, and realized that I was not actually supporting the sales team in the way I should, which was causing frustration. And a lot of it was down to complete misalignment in objectives. So we went back to our CEO founder and said, well hang on a second. um
00:24:37
Speaker
What we need to do is is make sure that we, sales and marketing, understand what the goals are and how we get there together versus working in complete silos. And a lot of that comes down to to definitions. and And one of my favorite moments was as a leadership team, we were sitting around talking about um the amount of deals we'd won.
00:24:55
Speaker
And being in a fintech business, we only we only actually made money when they started using our product because it was based on transactions. And what we realized is we were calling a deal one, putting it in the forecast, and often it would take them six months to integrate.
00:25:10
Speaker
So that was causing major issues with all of our um financial planning and forecasting. So we had to completely change the definition. And when we ran the table, I'm not joking, six people in the leadership team all had a different definition for what closed one deal was.
00:25:23
Speaker
And it took a new CTO joining who asked a stupid question to which we all rolled our eyes and went, oh, it's obvious. And then... Okay, maybe it isn't. So I think it's really worth understanding that whole customer journey, the conversations that're having that having that are being had, and then the appropriate sign off.
00:25:41
Speaker
And it doesn't need to slow down the process necessarily, because if you set boundaries, if it falls outside of this, then we need to go and see what we can do. Which brings us back to actually we your original suggestion, which is get your leadership team together and collectively take take this on, which I guess brings us on to some of the other issues we teased out at the beginning, like how effectively you collaborating as a leadership team?
00:26:03
Speaker
How rigorous are you about getting to what you think the root of the issue is, taking the solves, moving forward, and then coming back together ah again, right? so I'm assuming implied in what you've just said there, Nicola and Tim, I can see you nodding.
00:26:17
Speaker
This isn't just a one-time offsite thing, right? This is, you've got to be coming together as a strong leadership team repeatedly and keep moving the ball forward, Ed. So if you don't have good people around you or you're not in the habit of getting together to take these these problems on as a cross-functional team, you're unlikely to get there.
00:26:34
Speaker
Tim, Phil Wright? It feels right. And I think, you know, we've gone through the EOS process with you, Rob, but um it recently as a business, and that's helped us bring together all the different voices in the organization. And I think in this case, you know, how do you facilitate that? that's ah It feels like a very awkward conversation, but I think by bringing in something like EOS and a facilitator to run that,
00:26:56
Speaker
that would help put all of these issues on the on the table in some form, which allows people's ability to sort it out. Before I met you and before we did the EOS process, I tried to do this in a previous company when I was CTO.
00:27:09
Speaker
And what we did was we encouraged the sale. We called it Hager Techie because the techies were basically were seen as a different different ah breed of people.
00:27:20
Speaker
And the sales and marketing and customer success team sat in one half of the building. The technology and the finance team sat in the other half. Never the two should meet. They met in the kitchen, but never actually really engaged with each other.
00:27:32
Speaker
So the Hug a Techie initiative was, you know, just because you you haven't met this person before, and so don't be scared of them. Give them hug and talk to about what the work is. ah So the upshot of that was that the technology guys, some of them at least, were much more ah engaged with the sales process. They would go out and join sort of nights out and things for one thing.
00:27:54
Speaker
But the more important area was that they were getting involved with clients earlier on and being encouraged to go and meet clients and actually help ah understand what the clients wanted. Now, the sales team loved this because they could go with someone very technical who understand understood the product inside out and could answer some very interesting questions.
00:28:11
Speaker
The tech team loved it as well because it meant that they would understand, well, actually, why is what we're so being sold? not Why are we being penalised for not being able to deliver this? And they could actually start informing the sales team about actually some of the complexities of of what they're promising and over-promising and under-delivering.
00:28:27
Speaker
And by having that sort of yeah cleaning of the cleaning of the ah the communication lines, it meant that there was more ah there was more understanding between the teams to to to be
Final Recommendations and Conclusion
00:28:37
Speaker
successful.
00:28:37
Speaker
You know, Tim, I think this is such a valuable point. I've seen the rise of the sales engineer and actually they are hugely valuable in these sales discovery calls.
00:28:48
Speaker
One, they add that real layer of gravitas because they're not selling. um And I think clients really enjoy hearing ah about how the whole process is going to work and from a specialist in this space. But two, it enables them to really manage expectations.
00:29:02
Speaker
And three, it's great feedback for them to take back to the product and engineering teams. And there's so much discussion about sales and marketing alignment. And I think more and more we're seeing there needs to be more alignment between sales, marketing and product and engineering. Because as as you said, sales and marketing, I'm hoping are now starting to work better together. But then there's that silo about what's being promised and what's actually feasible to be delivered. And then also on the other side, is the product roadmap correct based on what the customer needs? Right.
00:29:29
Speaker
absolutely So perhaps a great at bringing um some of that operations team or the engineering team into that discovery call could really help understand what's going on and manage those expectations.
00:29:44
Speaker
love it. it's It's funny, isn't it? It's like so many of these things. It's it's simple, but not easy. And we've ended up on on team health. Nicola, I know you're a big fan of five dysfunctions of a team, the Lencioni model all about building trust. um So ed You heard it here. I know we've come up on our on our allocated half an hour, but ultimately you've got to think about being a leader of human beings and people and bringing those teams together.
00:30:10
Speaker
um As ever, Nicola and Tim's links are in in the show notes. If you need some help taking your folks or given functions on this journey, reach out to them. And otherwise, join us within the next couple of weeks for another Scale Up Confession. Nicola, Tim, thank you both so much for doing this again.
00:30:27
Speaker
Thanks for having us and looking forward to the next one. too. Thank you. Thank you very much, Rob.