How B2B SaaS Companies Can Position Themselves More Strategically

The B2B SaaS landscape is fraught with competitors who are essentially providing similar services and features that are difficult to distinguish from one another. Many SaaS firms are stuck in this cycle of stagnation not because their products aren’t good enough, but because they haven’t amplified their uniqueness to create exponential leverage.

That’s why we’re talking to B2B SaaS expert Ton Dobbe (Founder/Chief Inspiration Officer at Value Inspiration) about how B2B SaaS companies can become more remarkable and discover their hidden values. During our conversation, Ton talked about the pitfalls that B2B SaaS companies should avoid, how they can uncover “invisible things”, and provided some actionable tips on how they could become unique and ignite further growth.

https://youtu.be/xm_09fTflvA

Topics discussed in episode

The challenges that B2B SaaS companies face when it comes to being more remarkable [3:51]
What niching down or ideal segmentation should look like [7:07]
How to be remarkable? [10:05]
- Acknowledge that you cannot please everyone
- Offer something valuable and desirable
- Aim to be different, not just better
Ton explains why many companies do not grow because of things that are invisible to them [19:00], and what the 3 fundamental questions [23:54]
Actionable tips: [27:59]
- On your website, describe the type of customers that will get the most value out of your products/services; and those that are not a good fit
- Define the value that you create that is extremely desirable for your customers
- Think about how you can be fundamentally different vs. incrementally better from competition

Companies and links mentioned

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Ton Dobbe, Christian Klepp

Christian Klepp 00:03

Welcome to B2B Marketers on a Mission, a podcast for changemakers where we question the conventional, debunk marketing myths, provide actionable tips, think differently, disrupt the industries, and take your marketing to a new level, from improving your campaigns to making you a better marketer. These are the inspirational stories that will help us change the way we think and approach B2B marketing, one conversation at a time. This podcast is brought to you by EINBLICK Consulting, helping you to stand out in the market and drive revenue to your B2B business. And now your host, Christian Klepp. All right. Welcome, everyone, to this episode of B2B Marketers on a Mission. This is the show where we help you to question the conventional, think differently, disrupt your industry and take your marketing to new heights. This is your host Christian Klepp. And today I’m joined by someone on a mission to help SaaS founders fix stagnating revenue. So coming to us from Jávea, Spain, Mr. Ton Dobbe, welcome to the show.

Ton Dobbe 01:06

Thank you. Perfect introduction.

Christian Klepp 01:12

Pleasure to have you on the show, Ton. And, you know, this is a… we’ve been planning this for quite a while now, I believe. And I think congratulations are in order. Because at the time of the recording, I think Spain won the UEFA Cup. So there’s probably a bit of partying going on, on your side of the world.

Ton Dobbe 01:28

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I was sad that the Dutch got kicked out by the UK. Yeah. And that I was actually quite happy that Spain won against the UK. Yes. You know, you never win when you’re in a country where you’re Dutch and actually Spanish on the same in the same way.

Christian Klepp 01:45

Absolutely. Absolutely. So for one bad thing that happened. There’s also a good thing that happened as a result of it, you can look at it that way. But look, I’m really looking forward to this conversation, because we are going to dive into some really interesting topics today. So let’s start off like this, okay, because I understand that, according to your LinkedIn profile, you don’t have the magic formula, big surprise, to help B2B businesses, especially SaaS to grow. But what I do know is that you’ve made it your mission, to help them stand out and create exponential leverage. So for this conversation, let’s focus on the following topic. And it’s something that you’re very passionate about how B2B SaaS can become more remarkable and discover their hidden values. So I’m going to kick off this conversation with two questions. And I’m happy to repeat them. Question one is define what you mean by more remarkable. And number two is Why do you believe many B2B SaaS companies fall flat when it comes to well, being more remarkable?

Ton Dobbe 02:46

Yeah, these are deep questions to my heart. First of all, the definition of remarkable, it’s actually quite simple. It’s worth making a remark about. And, I mean, I’ve been in the software industry for a couple of decades now, as you can see from my gray hair. And initially, I was always sort of intimidated by all our large competitors, that had budgets that were 10x the size that we had, you know, millions, sometimes, you know, hundreds of millions of budgets. And I think, when it comes to being remarkable, it doesn’t allow that, you know, or doesn’t, it doesn’t need that. Everybody can be remarkable, because it’s about the small daily things that you do. So if a software company becomes worth making a remark about, then you’re doing something right. And that can be incorporated into everything you do. And as a consequence of that, you’ll be noticed in the marketplace, people start talking about you, and then you start to run a completely different type of business.

And then your second question, right, I would say the first thing, and actually, I’m already connected, connecting it to a number of the threads that I wrote about in my book, but it’s one thing to please too many people, this notion that okay, we have to, you have to have a very large market, a very large TAM (total addressable market). And it needs to grow big numbers and so on. And everybody is going after that because in a number of cases, people say we want to be… we want to have a valuation that is millions, actually billions in a short number of time, we want to be the next unicorn. When I forget that in order to become a unicorn, you first have to sell your first customer and then your second and then your third. And these are… Yeah, in the smaller markets, the niches whereby especially in the beginning, you feel far better off with the scope that you have to start impressing those type of customers and then grow from there. Then instantly going after a market that is way too big for you. So the first one are wanting to please too many. The other thing is, this already may be connected to what I just said, obsessing over competition, not following your own path. And you cannot outcompete the world, you cannot outcompete your direct competitors, or any alternative that your customer is looking for. So that’s, I was gonna say a waste of time. Not that you should be not following what your competitors are doing. But you should be learning from it and draw your own path, and being okay, that certain parts of the market are theirs. Because then others, other parts of the markets that can be yours. And then the last one. Yeah, that is kind of the thing that gets me so passionate about being remarkable is the alternative of that, the contrast of that is “good is good enough”. And that results in too many mediocre products. I mean, it’s I think it’s already starts with this notion of what people call an MVP (minimum viable product), where people are… okay, what is the minimum, the bare minimum, we can put the market for people to start to say something about it? I’d rather say okay, if you start like that, of course, you need to start with something but make it at least minimum remarkable, minimum sellable people sometimes say, something that people are actually willing to pay something for. Yeah. And in the heat of the competition, in the issues that are in the marketplace, the short-termism that sometimes arises a very, very many companies are opting for Okay, that’s good. It’s good enough. Let’s go for it. And I think that’s where they go wrong.

Christian Klepp 06:35

Absolutely, absolutely. No, those are some really great points. And I wanted to go back to something you said earlier and it reminds me of that expression, that the riches are in the niches or in the niches, depending on where you are. But um, my follow up question to that is, why do you think a lot of companies and I don’t think this is unique to SaaS, but a lot of companies don’t niche down? They wanted to try to, like, everybody is our customer, everybody that is a potential subscriber, right?

Ton Dobbe 07:05

It’s fear of missing out. I mean, I do a lot of repositioning projects, and at some point, you get to the discussion that go, who you’re really for, and who you’re not for anymore. And people always think, Okay, well, we’re not for companies that are in manufacturing, or in financial services, because we don’t have any companies there. And that’s not… It’s really all about, you know, you focus on a certain market, where your ideal customers are, and you try to make it as specific as possible. And that’s where people don’t dare to… like you said to niche down. Because I think, okay we might be missing out on something, whereby it’s actually the opposite. You know, if you’re fishing in this wide market, I wrote a long blog about it, an essay, when people are doing the segmentation, the niching, as I call it, and to decide where they’re going to focus, what I typically do is define the firmagraphics and the demographics of the audience, and both of the company and at the persona level, it’s typically how big they are, what industry they’re in, what region they’re in, all the things that you can almost Google or find on LinkedIn. What they don’t do, is what I call upcycled graphics. And that’s where the magic happens. So I wrote this long form blog where I compared it to, okay, a lot of companies, their segmentation looks like a glass of water, you know, it has something in it. And even you, when you drink it, it’s tasteless. Whereby the ideal segmentation is what I would call your favorite cocktail, because then you start to pinch in a snippet, or you say, a sniff of the dynamics that make your customers unique, and the risks that they tolerate or not tolerate, and then a little bit of sniff of what they value, and another sniff of what they aspire to achieve. And once you start doing that, it starts to get flavor, it starts to become something that both these customers recognize, because hey, that’s us. And we talk the same language. And once you can achieve it at that level, when a customer when they go to your website, he described exactly those type of specifics. When you then meet them, organic conversations go like “yes, and” rather than “yes, but” and I think that is where the magic happens.

Christian Klepp 09:32

Absolutely, absolutely. I love that analogy. By the way, your favorite cocktail. I would just caution that maybe you shouldn’t have too many cocktails (laugh).

Ton Dobbe 09:41

You only need one, right?

Christian Klepp 09:42

Yeah, only one, only one.

Ton Dobbe 09:44

Not too many. Not too many dishes.

Christian Klepp 09:46

That’s right. That’s right. Not too many cocktails right? Fantastic. So you spoke a bit about mistakes and why some of these SaaS companies fall flat when it comes to being remarkable, but what are some other, say pitfalls that some of these companies should be avoiding.

Ton Dobbe 10:05

If I turn it around and go to do what makes companies remarkable. So what’s what to strive for? Then the opposite, of course is what are the pitfalls. So the first one in my book is remarkable software companies acknowledge they cannot please everyone. So the opposite of that is they try to please everyone, and they go wide, and they target everybody. And the pitfall there is that messaging blurs, gets too generic, and at the end, you don’t stand out. Second thing is, the second trade is remarkable software companies offer something valuable and desirable. And this is a combination of those two, that is super important, because the only variable is only so good. The desirability is where you create urgency, there’s criticality to it, there is desire… like the word says, it’s something that they want. Too many companies out there, offer something and think that the customer will get what they’re offering and have to do the translation themselves. So they stay at a level of by actually promising the same as 20 or 30 other companies, even in different type of categories, and industries. I mean, I’ve seen CRM vendors, promising the same as ERP vendors, promising the same as procurement vendors, promising the same as… you know and the list can go on. Because they all go for this big bold thing, we help you grow your revenue, for example. Well, sure.

Christian Klepp 11:35

Oh really? (laugh)

Ton Dobbe 11:38

Oh really, exactly. Then the third thing is about remarkable software companies aim to be different, not just better. And that’s also one of these pitfalls that, and it connects again to being obsessed with your competitors. But it also exists in isolation. But companies just say, Okay, I don’t like what they’re doing, we’ve got to build the same, and we’re going to make this better, and this better and this better, which can initially, of course, be something that could be tempting to a potential customer. But depending a little bit where you are, in my expertise in the sales-led SaaS business, where investments are 20,000 a year, 50,000 a year, 100,000 a year, a million a year. But you have to realize that if a customer is going to move from one solution to the other solution, it needs to be significantly better. So your 5 or 10%, incremental better is not going to cut it. So that’s where it needs to be fundamentally better, or that’s what I would call get different. So that’s, that’s a pitfull. I can go through all 10 If you want.

Christian Klepp 12:52

I mean, those are, those are really good. And I think those would suffice for the time being. We’ll save the good stuff for later on in the conversation.

Ton Dobbe 12:59

Okay,

Christian Klepp 13:00

Those are absolutely like great points. And I would even say, this whole notion of offering something of value. And I want to know your take on it. Because more often than not, I’ve seen companies that are doing more of an inside out rather than outside in approach. And what I mean by that is like they’re trying to send something out into the world that they say, Oh, definitely, this is going to be of value to the target audience. But what they don’t realize is that maybe the target audience doesn’t actually need this at all. Right. So how often have you seen okay, download the old the ultimate checklist? Right.

Ton Dobbe 13:39

Oh, yeah, yeah, plenty. Maybe actually, I might have one on my website that I still need to… from 2018.

Christian Klepp 13:48

Exactly, or the 37 tips or the 5 steps to go to market and so on and so forth. Right. And keep going.

Ton Dobbe 13:58

Yeah, true.

Christian Klepp 13:59

Yeah. Fantastic.

Ton Dobbe 14:01

Now, there is no, like I said, there is no sort of golden nugget. And you phrase it in the magic formula. But there’s definitely a number of things that you can challenge yourself on. And that’s why I created these traits, because that’s something that you can, if you answer the questions around that, the right questions, you can say, okay, we’re actually now scoring a six maybe. And that’s where we are in order for us to get to a 10 to the full score that requires us to do X. And you can constantly keep raising the bar. And I think that’s important because a framework is just a framework and a template is just a template and it gets you maybe something quickly done, but it’s always average. It doesn’t stand out. To the point that of the three traits that I just discussed. It’s actually there is wrapped in what I call the foundation is like it’s your “Value Foundation”. A lot of companies, and that’s also a pitfall that I haven’t even mentioned. They keep fighting the symptoms of the problems. And they don’t realize that they might not have an operational problem where the symptoms typically are being dealt with. But they have a fundamental problem. So I recently came across a story, just to illustrate this, that a pretty large software company, I think we all know them. But it’s complaining to one of my peers. And they hired her for doing some pipeline advice, and helping to get well to fix a pipeline problem, which is typically a symptom of that they were feeling the pipeline wasn’t good enough. They actually felt also that the number of their best sales, were getting so desperate or frustrated that they left. And then they said, Oh, we got it all under control, because we hired a headhunter and these headhunters enter the race, is finding new people for us, better salespeople to replace them. Of course, also, meaning that they are paying 20, 30, 40k for headhunter fees, not realizing that it’s yeah, it’s throwing one fire out, and then yeah, putting the other on, whereby if they would make two steps back and realize, wait a minute, what we have here is not a problem that is in our sales operation. It is something that is more fundamental. It’s around who we are, who we are for, who we’re not for. It’s around what a value proposition is really about, uniquely for them something that customers really want, but they cannot easily get somewhere else. And the positioning of that, of course. And that’s like it to your point also about inside out versus outside in. Very hard to see from the inside, because you’re just living the day to day. And yeah, you’re in the rat race. And people are calling you and pushing you and your manager is on top of you. And so the only thing you can do is actually yes. Make sure that the metrics that you see, got improved.

Christian Klepp 17:08

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. There are occasions where I like to refer to that sometimes as the internal high five, right. You run it pass everybody internally, and they think it’s great. And high five and fantastic. And then you launch it, doesn’t generate the results that you were expecting. And then everybody does the… I call it the Spanish Inquisition. Yeah. Why did it happen? Yes. Maybe? Right. Yeah.

Ton Dobbe 17:42

Yeah, no, it has to do with a number of things. Of course, that’s what I see with virtually all the customers that come to me. And you cannot blame companies for it, you know, the larger you grow, the bigger the invisibilities actually become. And these invisibilities, I categorize them into three, it’s either complacency, we start to tell ourselves stories that we actually start believing, we are so great. And that dip that we had last quarter, that wasn’t because of an issue we have in sales, it was just a couple of customers that postponed. There was a hiccup with a product and so on. So it’s never the fault of us. The other thing is what I called blind spots. And the last one is bias. And the larger you grow, the bigger these become. And yeah, the only way to get around that is to acknowledge it and to find ways for people to read to unblindfold you.

Christian Klepp 18:18

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So we coined a new phrase today, unblindfold. Right.

Ton Dobbe 18:25

Exactly.

Christian Klepp 18:44

Speaking of invisible and that was such a great segue to the next question, because I believe you, you mentioned this in the previous conversation, you talked about how many companies don’t grow because of things that are invisible to them. Alright. So can you elaborate a little bit more?

Ton Dobbe 19:00

Well, I mean, to give you an anecdote, I recently had a customer coming to me, it’s a research planning tool. It’s been around for over 50 years, I guess, in the Netherlands, selling internationally to pretty large organizations. And the reason why these people come to me is not because the product is mediocre, actually is pretty good products. It’s not because the people are stupid, you know, the CEO is an ex-McKinsey… to be working for the big five. And, you know, he’s been capable of running the company profitably for a good number of years. It’s also not because the processes are not in place, because they have pretty sophisticated processes. It’s not about that at all. It’s just simply because they don’t see any more what makes them unique. And when he came to me, he said, we actually started doubting our own products. Like is it still as good as we think it is because they were growing. And they were stagnating and at some point they even started to almost decline, they had customers churning. And that’s what he’s struggling internally, you know, people start pointing at each other. People have to do overwork. I mean, there’s just not the right atmosphere. So he realized, Okay, pretty hands-on guy, normally he does all the things himself because that’s, or at least with the team because they have capable people and decided okay, maybe for this one we shouldn’t. So then we did a pressure cooker projects and in four weeks we resolved the whole thing. And out of them came that nothing was wrong with the products, their fans were raving about the product as it is today. It was just about clarifying where they have to ask these days. And I call this “who you for”, “who you’re not for”, but actually being very clear “who you’re not for”. Being honest, and open to yourself about a number of customers that you might have in your customer portfolio, that maybe would have been better off going to the competition. You know, it’s not that they are not good customers, because they pay the bills, and all of that. But you could almost feel from the starting point that they will never become fans. And I think too many companies out there, take customers knowing it will likely never become a fan, still do it. And what that does to organizations, it just drags everything down. To kind of elaborate a little bit on that, if a customer is coming to you, and you have to sort of bribe them already with a discount. So they buy, they don’t see the difference between you the competition. But if you drop the price enough, they buy from you, because at least they have something that’s the cheapest. These customers first of all, you’ve already dropped your margin on that level. Because they don’t see the value real value is, they’re going to use your functionality to just fix a couple of their products or problems in a way that they think you can. So they’re going to use your product in a way it was not designed. So the implementation is going to be stressful, it’s going to go out of budgets, overall, these types of things, then customers Customer Success comes, they cannot get the customer happy in the normal time, then they’re going to make R&D life miserable by asking for features that no one else is asking for. But they need them. And it seems to be that this is normal. Every other solution has them. So what you end up is that you need far more people to support this type of customers, you are going to be thrown off track. So you’re going to release products that might fix some of the problems, but no one is going to ever thank you for it because it should have been there in the first place. And it’s just a vicious cycle down. And the only way to break it is to get as far as okay, hey, we need to be honest with ourselves. These are the customers that always become a fans. And these are the qualities that these guys have. That’s what we got to focus on. And then things turn around.

Christian Klepp 23:15

Fantastic. Fantastic. So what I’m hearing you say, and this is all great stuff. What I’m hearing you say in the past couple of minutes is that the company has to really do, well, for lack of a better description, like a deep dive or some soul searching into what is the reason for being not necessarily just that the company, but what are we producing this product for? Alright, yep. Who is this serving? Does this really address the genuine challenges and pain points that this customer has? And will this help them to succeed? Will this be transformational for them or not? Right?

Ton Dobbe 23:54

Yeah, I would like to actually go a little bit further. In my book, I’m writing about a triangle and someone called that at some point, the broken triangle because it’s often broken. If you look at a triangle, it is strongest when of all three legs, I will say four legs, all three legs are equally in size. That’s where it’s the strongest. So what does that mean? It’s three fundamental questions. What I’m always going through with my customers to get to, to do that soul searching, particularly on the pain point side is to create a long list of 50, 60, 70 pain points that keep their customers up at night. That keeps your ideal customers up at night, because that’s a very, very important nuance to it, because some of these problems they might bother, other people might have but they don’t bother about them. Once you’ve done that list of problem definition, and that define them in a way that when you hear them and you own them, it gets itchy. That’s where they’re at the right level because a lot of times problem definition is done very ill in a very generic way. And it doesn’t help either. Then you answer three questions on a scale of 1 to 10, how valuable is this to solve? On a scale of 1 to 10, how critical is it to solve? And then a very important question in terms of why you? On a scale of one to 10, what is your ability to exceed expectations? So the first two valuable and critical, they are really important, because if it’s valuable, but not critical, it’s nice to have. And that is a disaster, you don’t want that. If it’s critical, not valuable, then they might deal with it. They don’t do anything either. So you want to have both, because that is high on their agenda. And ideally, this problem should also be high on the agenda of the CEO, because often we talk about projects. So it’s very important, very valuable and critical for the projects, or the domain, for example, around HR. But it might not be as important to the company as well, like it’s not keeping the CEO up at night. So that’s an important thing as well. So that’s two legs of the triangle, both high. And then what you’re looking for in your soul searching is okay, let’s be honest now, where can we… which are the problems can we exceed expectations? If you can solve it, and that’s where a lot of companies make the mistake. If you solve it, you score of 5, because there’s many others that can solve it. But where do you score 8, or 9 or 10? And that’s what I want to have the argumentation behind it. Because in that list, it suddenly then drops from 70, to about 10. That’s where your magic happens. I call it the magic concepts. That’s where you can find your, your what’s the deep differentiated advantage that you have, that you can then start, because you know, the problem to translate into unique value. But that requires a lot of soul searching. And often, what I see is that we do a first round of validating, and then I start… first of all, you see across the company that different people rate it in a different way where you see, hey, they’re not aligned here. So I’m always looking for the the outsiders. But what you also typically see is that the lower part of the organization actually got it pretty well, right. Because they are dealing with the day to day hassle. And top management thinks way too positive about where their strength and that is an aha moment. It’s always refreshing.

Christian Klepp 27:20

Yes, I suppose it depends on who you’re talking to right, in terms of like being refreshing. But yeah, I can totally see that unfolding. I know you’ve given us a lot of tips here. And one of the big highlights of the show is leaving something that’s actionable for the listeners. So if somebody is listening to us, you know, having this conversation here about making SaaS companies remarkable. And they want to take away something from the show, like 3 to 5 things that they can act upon, what would those things be in your opinion?

Ton Dobbe 27:59

Well, I mean, I would always start on the foundational side, because that’s the most valuable part to start with, you know, I can say, I mean, you can start with trait number 10, which is about you know, how do you think about things and how you can hit the right nerve. But it will always be easier if you get the foundation right. So on the foundational level, start having discussions internally, about who you’re for, and who you’re not for. And actually be prepared to put it on your website. Describe on your websites, these products, create most value if you like this, and if you… if it’s it doesn’t create that level of value. If you’re like that. What it does is two things. First of all, it will make your ideal customers see and recognize themselves. But once you start describing the customers that are not such a good fit. They also go on to kind of take notice of that and say wait a minute, that’s also how I feel about it. Or yeah, it’s good that you’re against that. So you stand for something. And this is really a tough one because like I said, people fear of missing out. But like in my illustration, the moment you get super clear on that, it works like a magnet for the right customers. And you credibly detract customers that are not going to be a good fit. That’s fine. To give you an example to make that practical. Very often you got… imagine you got two organizations. They are in the professional service industry. They are both 1000 people in number of employees. They’re both in the UK, and they sell to the government so on the outside of the building and on the demographics or firmographics. They are actually identical. So that could be something that you’re going after. I found almost every time I’m looking at my customers at that picture, that’s where we end up okay this is what it is. And then we find that they are on the inside, they’re radically different. Because one is, for example, going after speed, where another one goes after and cares more about quality, radically different things. One goes for compliance, and they want everything to be compliant. But the other one is more about competitive advantage. So in describing those types of things, you don’t dismiss the other that they’re stupid, but you just acknowledged that, okay, if you’re only here for checking a compliance box, you shouldn’t be with us. There’s plenty of solutions out there that does the compliance. We do as well. But you’re not gonna get heavy from us. And I think that’s where the honesty needs to start playing. Yeah. And then from there, once you got that, then go work on trait number two, which is really start defining what value that you create that is actually extremely desirable for your customers. And then last, the last trait that you can start to think about, okay, how can you actually be fundamentally different versus incrementally better from competition? And what is required from your organization? What needs to be true? I think that’s a good question that a lot of that opens a lot of ideas. Because a lot of people always say that it’s impossible, but it’s not. And I think it’s the combination of the three, that you’ll find the answers. At least, that’s where I always find the answer in.

Christian Klepp 31:35

Fantastic, fantastic. Okay, so just let me quickly recap that for the benefit of the audience. So start on the foundational level. Alright, so having those discussions internally, number two, is start defining what value you create that is desirable for the customer. And the third one, I hope I captured this correctly. What makes you fundamentally different versus incrementally better?

Ton Dobbe 32:00

Exactly. The first one is part of the foundation, but it’s about who you for who you’re not for, because it’s really about looking at your customers with an honest face.

Christian Klepp 32:08

Right. Right. Right. Not not always easy to do at times, I would say, right.

Ton Dobbe 32:14

No, no, no, no, no, it’s like I said, it’s especially because of that complacency and the blind spots and the blur. The bias, you get blur.

Christian Klepp 32:23

Absolutely.

Ton Dobbe 32:26

Yeah, for a lot of people, it’s like every customer that is paying is a good customer. But it’s not.

Christian Klepp 32:30

Right. Right. Yes. I think we all know that from experience that sometimes isn’t the truth, or sometimes isn’t the case. Right? Absolutely.

Ton Dobbe 32:42

I’ll give you an illustration of that. I’m not sure how we’re doing time wise.

Christian Klepp 32:46

We’re good. Keep going.

Ton Dobbe 32:47

I came from the ERP world, like I said, and at some point, we repositioned and I was starting to do some work with the Benelux like the Belgium and the Netherlands at a region where I was living at that point in time. And I started working with those teams to get it, make it part of the DNA of sales. They picked it up and other regions didn’t pick it up automatically, at least not by free will so to say because they have always done it their own way. What we saw is that selling the same product to the same industries. It was the same functional scope to similar type of organizations, in the Benelux we started to get to raise the win rates from 20% to 80%. We’re not as stuck at 20 and sometimes even dropped to 15 or 10%. So explain that. Right. The other thing was also that not only did their win rate increased to 80%. They were also selling faster, like months were cut off the normal sales charge cycles because of the perfect fit. And the word discount disappeared. And the good part, a good anecdote around that one is that our competitors, and these were Oracle and Microsoft and SAP very often at some point in time, after a couple of months, when they realized that we were in, they qualified us, because they realized we have no business here. It’s one of those again.

Christian Klepp 34:25

Interesting.

Ton Dobbe 34:25

So that’s, that’s how powerful it can be. And it’s the same organization. That was that was so powerful for me to see the difference. Because it is something that you have to believe in.

Christian Klepp 34:36

Well, you have to believe in it. You have to substantiate it, of course, and you have to act upon it. Right. And I think that’s at least one of my takeaways of the things that you’ve been talking about in these past 30 minutes or so. And, Ton, I believe, like throughout this conversation, you have already been on your soapbox and I would like to kindly ask you to stay up there a little bit longer. Here comes the question. So specifically on this topic that we’ve been discussing today, okay, what is the status quo that you passionately disagree with? And why?

Ton Dobbe 35:12

I mean, I got a number.

Christian Klepp 35:14

Just pick one.

Ton Dobbe 35:15

If I think about it, and it’s I think it’s actually grown recently. It’s this whole notion of “at scale”. I mean, I have nothing against scale. I think it’s a good… companies have to scale. But I think what scale needs to be about is creating leverage about the things that really work that are remarkable. And that work. Because once you got that, that’s where you can drive scale about it. What is misused for, and there’s so many solutions out there these days that if you look at my websites, it says personalization of email, at scale, and, 50 different varieties of that. That means we don’t believe in ourself. But now we can spam the hell out of people, wherever they are. And at some point, some people will stick if it’s 1%, perfect. If it’s half percent, also good. I think we go in completely the wrong way there. Because it’s is the opposite of being remarkable. It’s actually being irritable. And I don’t like to see that at all. That’s my soapbox there.

Christian Klepp 36:21

Yep. No, nope. 110% agree with that. And I think there was another guest on the show, who I interviewed probably two years ago, now two or three years ago. And he posted something on LinkedIn, which really drives this point home of this whole mass emailing, or email blasting or whatever you want to call it. And the you know, everybody’s trying to sell that as like you’re trying to, to reach people at scale and try to do outreach at scale. And perhaps maybe you’ll get three people that are interested, and you’re pissing off everybody else.

Ton Dobbe 36:59

True. And the stupid thing is, that’s another… It’s kind of like, I’m extending the soapbox. I mean, the bulk of my customers are sales at SaaS companies. So they sell to mid market and enterprise. For them to have a good year. They’re often… if they close 30 new deals, 50 new deals, sometimes maybe 100 new deals, depending a little bit on where they are in the market, they got a fantastic year. Going back to the notion of okay, if you can get to a close rate of 60%, 70%, 80%, but you only need for 30 customers, you need 40 leads, why would you go after them at scale? And still they do, because marketing has to kind of go out and they have to find leads. And, anyway.

Christian Klepp 37:48

That just does not make any sense at all. Yeah, but yeah, exactly. All right. So here comes the bonus question. So some of the listeners might not know this, but you’re originally from Holland and you’re now residing in Spain. And so the bonus question is, what is your favorite place to go to in Spain and what makes it so special?

Ton Dobbe 38:09

Well, I mean, I would say the town where I live. It says the small town called Jávea. And maybe not doing myself a favor because now more people will come to Jávea. But it’s one of those little pearls. It’s in microclimates on the east coast of Spain, between Alicante and Valencia. I already think Instagram has already spoiled it because a couple of the beaches are in the top 10 of Spain. But the summer is not too hot, Celsius… it’s 32 At the moment, whereby in other parts of Spain, where everybody’s going at the moment, Madrid and Seville, it’s 42-45. And in winter, it’s also pretty mild. So it’s like San Diego. The differences are not too bad. So that’s one. And I think if every time I speak to people from outside of Spain, the first thing they say I love Spain, I love to go to Madrid I love to go to Barcelona until people have actually been to, for example, a city like Valencia. And then they say, Okay, I was wrong, because this is something that feels, it feels… it’s a city, but it feels like a village. And it’s the pedestrian area. It’s just a vibe there. And the atmosphere is fantastic. So that’s one of my cities that I favor the most.

Christian Klepp 39:39

Wow. You’re really selling it man because I have bought in. Fantastic. I can imagine. I can imagine. I went to Spain many years ago and yeah, I’m sorry. It was very cliche. We went to Barcelona. Yes. But in my defense, we also went to other towns around Barcelona. So we can see the Catalan countryside. And that was truly amazing. And yes to your point, we were there in December and it was 20 degrees Celsius. So sunny blue sky, very pleasant weather. So yeah, it was a very, very memorable experience. But indeed, I would love to talk about sunny Spain and sunsets and beaches for another three hours. But in the interest of time, I would like to thank you so much for coming on the show. And sharing your expertise and experience with the audience. Please a quick introduction for yourself and how SaaS founders or anyone interested out there can get in touch with you.

Ton Dobbe 40:38

Oh, okay. Oh, that’s, I mean, if you if you’re not bored with me already. If you want to know more about me, I think the best way to kind of connect with me is on LinkedIn. I don’t think there’s a lot of Ton Dobbe. But find me there, my website valueinspiration.com. This is where you can download my book. And a number of other goodies that I have for free there. But just say hi, and let’s have a conversation.

Christian Klepp 41:08

Fantastic, fantastic. Ton, once again. Thank you so much for your time. Take care, stay safe, and I’ll talk to you soon.

Ton Dobbe 41:13

Thank you. It’s a pleasure.

Christian Klepp 41:15

Bye for now.

Get the future of podcasts.