#33 The Art of Selling: Moving Beyond Product Development - with Zoltan Vardy

00:00:03: As a founder with a tech background sales should be my

00:00:06: focus and Path to building the business that I dream about.

00:00:12: Founder that sales doesn't mean

00:00:15: Forcing somebody to buy something they don't need.

00:00:17: it's about helping them solve an important problem.

00:00:21: Welcome to business biome The podcast that explores the interconnected world of business ecosystems, co-innovation and new forms of collaboration to jointly solve problems too complex to solve alone.

00:00:35: My name is Nicholas and together with my guests I dive deep into these fascinating concepts where corporates, startups, entrepreneurs and even individuals interact, collaborate and thrive together.

00:00:48: We will uncover the secrets behind successful partnerships Explore the evolving dynamics of co-innovation and discover how businesses can harness the power of collective intelligence.

00:00:59: Follow me and my great guests on this promising journey.

00:01:05: Hi everyone!

00:01:07: Finally a new business biome recording and I'm really looking forward to talking to my today's guest.

00:01:14: So with me I have Sultan Vardy And we talk about sales.

00:01:20: And yeah, I'm looking forward to that because it's a quite important topic.

00:01:25: Why this is important?

00:01:26: We're going to touch base on that in this recording.

00:01:29: So I would say welcome.

00:01:32: Thank you very much, Nicholas.

00:01:33: It's a pleasure to be here.

00:01:35: Yeah.

00:01:36: I have so many questions and we should dive right into the topic.

00:01:40: Absolutely.

00:01:41: But a little bit about you.

00:01:44: Where are you at the moment?

00:01:46: I'm actually based in London.

00:01:47: So I split my time between London and Budapest, but at this stage I'm in London.

00:01:52: And yeah, I'm trying to... I spend so much time across all of Europe in my various pursuits, professional pursuits, that it's nice to be in a single city for a longer time, occasionally.

00:02:02: Yeah, sounds good, sounds good.

00:02:04: Yeah, and I also saw that you've been with Poseidon, right, in the past.

00:02:08: Yeah, in fact, that was one of my larger commercial roles or corporate roles, I should say.

00:02:14: I was... First sales director for Prozibon's central European operations.

00:02:18: They had at the time TV channels across Hungary and Romania and I eventually became CEO and then regional CEO as well.

00:02:25: So I was in the senior management sort of through the end of two thousand nine, two thousand ten.

00:02:30: So I was traveling to Munich a lot for for budget meetings.

00:02:32: Awesome.

00:02:33: Awesome.

00:02:33: Yeah, I've been there a couple of times as well.

00:02:36: I had some some good contacts there.

00:02:38: So yeah, that's

00:02:40: to interfering, I think.

00:02:41: Yeah, right.

00:02:42: That's a Munich.

00:02:43: Right.

00:02:44: Cool.

00:02:45: Cool.

00:02:45: So we're going to talk about a lot today.

00:02:48: You're also an author, and that's what we talk about today about your book, the launch code.

00:02:54: All the links that we covered today are, of course, in the show notes.

00:02:59: But before we dive right into the topic, as usual, two questions for you.

00:03:05: What are you passionate about, and what was the most craziest thing that you've ever done?

00:03:10: Well, I suppose there are multiple ways to answer these questions, but I'll stick to the professional side of things.

00:03:15: In terms of my professional passion, it has to do with what I do every day, which is helping transform the mindset of founders and teaching them to move from kind of a moment of fear into an idea of confidence and success.

00:03:27: You know, giving the tools and the approach they can, so they can ultimately build the business that they're most successful upon.

00:03:33: So that really gives me a charge and it's something that I've really enjoyed doing in the last almost six years.

00:03:39: As for what the craziest thing I've ever done, probably I'd say that back in the late nineties, I was working in London for Cartoon Network.

00:03:46: I was responsible for building their business out in Central and Eastern Europe.

00:03:49: And I basically almost on a whim decided that I had enough of living in Europe and so I wanted to move back to the United States where I'm originally from.

00:03:55: And so I quit my job and I moved to Los Angeles and basically without a job or without anything other than a dream of working in the entertainment industry there.

00:04:04: And basically I spent about three months pounding the pavement as they say looking for a job and and found myself at some stage, you know, towards the end of the summer without any outlook of what I was going to do.

00:04:15: And I remember my wife and I were sort of in the car driving one day and we looked at a help wanted sign in a video store in Los Angeles.

00:04:23: And I thought, well, if I don't get a job soon, I'm going to be working in this video store.

00:04:27: And lo and behold, the day after I got a call from a former colleague who had just moved into a new role at CBS, big broadcasting group in central Europe.

00:04:35: And so within the space of about ten days, I went from almost working in a video store to becoming vice president of corporate sales and marketing for CBS at age twenty eight and closing multimillion dollar deals for the years to follow.

00:04:47: So it was quite a contrast, but one where I think I took a big shot and big chance and worked out pretty well.

00:04:55: Awesome.

00:04:55: Awesome.

00:04:55: Yeah, I love these stories.

00:04:57: That's why I love to start with those questions.

00:05:01: Yeah, I'm happy about today's topic and what you're going to share with us because of the fact that that's where we're going to start.

00:05:09: You start, I think it was also on the website, but also as part of the book, building a great product isn't enough.

00:05:16: And that's something, I mean, I'm quite active in the startup ecosystem here in Karlsruhe, but also across Germany.

00:05:24: And what we often hear is that we build great tech, But we are pretty bad at selling it.

00:05:32: So what was that kind of moment in the past where you realized, okay, it's not enough to just build a cool product?

00:05:40: Well, by the way, the sort of approach that you just described is very typical, right?

00:05:44: Especially in Central and Eastern Europe and in Northern Europe, less so once you get into sort of the Anglo-Saxon parts of the world.

00:05:51: But I would say that largely speaking, engineers, technicians, scientists, people who are really much in love with their process of creating something, probably tend to have a bias towards the product rather than the commercial applications of it.

00:06:06: And I think that is a typical situation that I face in the founders that I work with.

00:06:11: Having come from a commercial background very early on in my career, I say, I've always had a bias towards that, right?

00:06:16: So this is not something that is new for me.

00:06:19: What I did realize, though, when I left my corporate world and experience behind and started working with startups early, early stage startups, kind of mentoring them and working with them, it became very clear to me that this was a challenge.

00:06:30: And I can think of a very specific instance where this came to light.

00:06:34: And it's actually the opening story of my book called The Launch Code.

00:06:37: I actually found myself standing in Buckingham Palace Gardens next to Prince Andrew.

00:06:44: the queen's son.

00:06:45: And we were looking at this amazing drone show, drone light show that a startup that I had been mentoring had put together for the, for the, the royal family as part of their Christmas celebrations.

00:06:54: And this was a, it was a real coup, right?

00:06:57: So it was something that had incredible potential, huge PR potential, a huge marketing potential.

00:07:02: And we went through this really laborious process to get there and we delivered the product or in this case, the show.

00:07:08: And I found myself struggling with the founders to help them understand the importance of of using this as a way to promote their services around the world.

00:07:16: At a stage where their technology actually was cutting out, so in that space, they were really market leaders.

00:07:25: And what ended up happening is they really didn't understand the importance of selling.

00:07:30: They didn't understand the importance of commercial thinking.

00:07:32: And so they ended up kind of standing still while their competitors overtook their position.

00:07:36: And so it really made me realize that embracing the concept of selling As difficult and maybe as unnatural as it may seem for people who are more product focused, it is essential if you want to build a business and not just a hobby.

00:07:52: And I think that's a really important distinction there that I found.

00:07:55: I've had to remind the founders I've worked with over and over again.

00:07:58: Yeah, it's so good.

00:08:00: And also for myself, I mean, I stated it in the couple of minutes that we talked before the recording that I'm currently also going through like a phase where we heavily think about how to approach sales in the future, not only in the future, but also right now, together with my business partner.

00:08:19: So, I mean, I can fully relate to that.

00:08:22: In many cases of sales calls, it's like, I have a tech background as well as a business background, but in many cases, I'm like, yeah, the problem is clear.

00:08:31: So, let's start.

00:08:33: But it's maybe not that clear for the people that sits on the other side of the team's call or at the table.

00:08:39: So, you really have to work on it.

00:08:42: That brings me to the second question.

00:08:44: You closed two billion in BtoB sales over the past thirty years, which is a lot.

00:08:52: A lot of doors knocked on, a lot of negotiations, and a lot of highs and lows in there in the process.

00:08:58: But yeah, it's a big number, for sure.

00:09:00: Yeah, a lot of documents, I guess.

00:09:02: A lot of being on the phone.

00:09:04: a lot of traveling.

00:09:06: Yeah, I can imagine.

00:09:08: So what was there?

00:09:11: one moment where you realized especially the founder led sales has to work different?

00:09:17: And yeah, I'm eager to learn.

00:09:21: Well, look, I think my realization of this gap between sort of a product-led approach versus a commercially-led approach really came to light when I started working with founders.

00:09:31: as an advisor, as a mentor.

00:09:33: And you know, this started, I started this about seven or eight years ago.

00:09:35: So before that, I had done, twenty years in the media industry, you referenced earlier, I worked for Prozivo and Sadiens.

00:09:40: My largest corporate role, I was a global head of sales for NBCUniversal's international TV networks, which is, you know, fifty-five networks across thirty countries, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue.

00:09:51: So I was in a lot of big corporate environments.

00:09:54: But when I started working with early stage founders, I realized that they were missing two things.

00:10:00: So one, there's a natural aversion to selling, right?

00:10:03: It's like you're trying to convince somebody to buy something they don't need, right?

00:10:06: There's that misconception, which I'd love to talk about later because I think it's something that's worth picking apart.

00:10:11: But even more importantly, what I noticed is that as much as I was able to capture a lot of the learnings I had gathered over the course of these last thirty years and sharing them with founders, it was one thing to talk about it, another thing to implement it, right?

00:10:24: And so I think if I had to focus on a failure, it was the recurring failure of seeing these steps that I would have thought would be obvious, having a clear value proposition, identifying your idea customer, using outbound sales to gather information and to fine-tune your pitch.

00:10:42: And all these other things that would have come secondation to me, when it came to executing these, a lot of the founders that I worked with simply just didn't follow.

00:10:50: They fell apart during execution.

00:10:51: And it was that realization that made me come to the conclusion that that I really needed to build a blueprint, right?

00:10:58: Like a step-by-step process that they could follow in the same way that you would follow a step-by-step process to produce a product, just applying it to a sales and marketing environment.

00:11:07: And that is effectively what motivated me to create the launch code, which is not just the subject of the book I've launched, I've just created, but also the system that I teach and that I work with founders to adopt.

00:11:18: So to help them sell and market more effectively.

00:11:20: Got it, got it.

00:11:22: And that kind of... That rings the bell a little bit because you said that people are not used to selling or talking to somebody and trying to sell something and to push forward because I think it's not in the nature of the human being to act that way kind of.

00:11:42: For some people it's much easier compared to others.

00:11:46: But there is also some aspect and I was reading about that a lot over the past few weeks.

00:11:54: You tell it the problem solution connection, which I'm aware of, of course, since I have the product background.

00:12:00: But what's your way to go to?

00:12:05: not being too niche, so not trying to address, on the one hand, not going too broad and try to sell everything, but on the other side, not being too niche, so falling into the trap that there is actually no market.

00:12:24: Well, look, I think to begin, you have to acknowledge the fact that the foundational principle of selling is yours.

00:12:31: there to solve a problem, right?

00:12:32: And I think you mentioned this a couple of times in just your introduction here is that if you approach the whole process as I'm here to solve a problem for you, already you're many steps ahead of most people, right?

00:12:42: Because it's critical to having the right approach and the right mindset to get into a sales connection.

00:12:49: As to which problem you solve, Well, look, that's the subtotal of a bunch of different decisions.

00:12:54: What I would say is that I don't actually think there is too niche of a problem for you to solve, especially at the very beginning, because generally what happens is people tend to err to the other side, which is they try to solve everything for everybody, right?

00:13:07: And so that means that you are actually not really able to create a clear value proposition to any specific audience, but you're just like one of a potential set of solutions to us to a different set of problems.

00:13:18: What I think you should first start is what problem you solve is and what is that critical thing that you have discovered that you think that a certain set of customers are willing to pay you to solve, right?

00:13:30: So that would be the first step.

00:13:32: Then whose problem do you want to solve?

00:13:33: So that's kind of the next level because, you know, a certain set of individuals will have the same problem, but that doesn't mean that every single target audience who has a problem you want to sell to because they might not have enough money.

00:13:44: They might not experience the problem to the level of pain that they're willing to take action, right?

00:13:47: So there's a different set of circumstances.

00:13:49: And then the third piece is after you decide what problem you solve, who you solve it for is how do you solve it differently or more unique in a unique way compared to others, right?

00:13:57: And that's the real question, right?

00:14:00: What is it that you're doing differently?

00:14:02: that's going to make you a better choice than other solutions out there?

00:14:06: And it's somehow the combination of those three elements that ultimately is going to create that problem solution connection that you refer to when I devote a whole chapter in the book to.

00:14:15: And what I found, interestingly, is that oftentimes the most successful entrepreneurs are actually solving a problem that they personally have experienced.

00:14:24: And I'll give you an example.

00:14:25: There's a company I worked with called CampMap.

00:14:27: It's actually a creation-based company, very simple business.

00:14:31: At the basic level, it's a SaaS tool that creates maps for campground owners that enables them to give their visitors a clear idea of where that campground is laid out and so on.

00:14:42: And the founder who I worked with, guy named Simon Neal, actually had this problem themselves.

00:14:46: He's an avid camper.

00:14:47: He would go to locations and he would be frustrated by the fact that he couldn't find where the loo was.

00:14:52: He didn't know where he could get tickets for the evening show.

00:14:55: I mean, there's a lot of things that he just couldn't find.

00:14:57: And so he said, there's got to be a better solution for this.

00:15:00: And he built a business on the back of it and he's grown it to a pretty meaningful scale just from the moment that we started working together.

00:15:06: And so if you just look at it from that perspective, like what problem do you think is going to be significant enough for a certain audience to recognize and then to pay you to solve it?

00:15:17: you're already in a long way there because the opposite which is basically you create a solution and then search for a problem is kind of the worst outcome right and i've worked with a lot of companies that started out that way.

00:15:27: Awesome.

00:15:28: Thanks for the example.

00:15:30: There was especially something for a later question, but it's good to cover it here.

00:15:35: Since it brings the kind of the theory into life.

00:15:39: Yeah, I was just because talking about me personally, I also many times tend to fall into the trap to think too complex.

00:15:48: Yeah, I need this and that and we need to add this and then it will be kind of complete and nice and shiny.

00:15:55: But in many, many times, it's the simple things because it's easier to understand.

00:16:02: And I just wrote about that.

00:16:04: That was of my most viral posts, if I'm allowed to phrase it that way.

00:16:12: Is it a safety pin?

00:16:15: If you have an issue, I don't know, with your button down shirt or with a pants or whatsoever, like the safety pins.

00:16:21: It's a product that was invented in

00:16:24: eighteen

00:16:25: forty nine.

00:16:25: Right.

00:16:25: And it solves the problem.

00:16:26: And it's quite simple.

00:16:28: And we now have,

00:16:29: we have,

00:16:30: we have twenty twenty five and it's still there.

00:16:32: Yeah.

00:16:33: But you know, actually it's interesting, you know, you talk about the safety pin as a product and it's miraculously simple.

00:16:39: But I think the mindset you can apply that exact same mindset to very complex technical problems as well.

00:16:44: You know, one of the great examples that I talk about in the book is Steve Jobs and his approach to building Apple, right?

00:16:49: So When he built Apple, he was very much focused on creating a very, very simple interface where one person could engage with one computer and solve a day-to-day task through that.

00:17:02: I actually remember seeing a speech that he gave back in the early eighties.

00:17:06: I think he was in his mid-twenties and Apple was about four years old.

00:17:10: He actually talked about this in this video about how how.

00:17:13: that was kind of the fundamental challenge that computer companies at that time were trying to solve, which is that, you know, how do you kind of create that relationship between one person and one computer?

00:17:22: And lo and behold, here we are, you know, forty years later, and, you know, everybody's got a computer in their pocket and a computer and, you know, in the form of an iPad.

00:17:30: And, you know, I mean, everything's computerized and that type of personal relationship.

00:17:34: And the way he got there was.

00:17:35: he preached the importance of focus, right?

00:17:38: Focus and simplicity.

00:17:40: and how getting down to the essence of what it is that you do and focusing your limited resources on doing that one thing.

00:17:47: well, that is what enabled ultimately Apple to scale so incredibly and then ultimately grow to the behemoth that is today.

00:17:55: On point, and I can underline this where, yeah, bring in some numbers.

00:18:02: The Standish Groups Chaos Report states that sixty-four percent of all features are never or rarely

00:18:09: used.

00:18:10: And the Norman group, they analyzed and they found out that too many features could reduce the conversion rate by twenty to forty percent.

00:18:21: Absolutely.

00:18:21: And you know, the the mindset of that, you know, one of the things I preach is that is creating a very simple product offering, right?

00:18:28: So, you know, there's kind of these these two extremes, right?

00:18:31: Down if, you know, there's kind of the legendary quote from Henry Forte said, you know, my consumers can buy whatever color car they want as long as they want black, right?

00:18:39: And so it was like, here's a black car, you know, it's a Ford Model T and take her to leave it.

00:18:43: This is what I'm selling.

00:18:44: And on the other hand, I don't know if you've had this experience, but you go into the department store, drugstore, a DM or a Rossman or something, and you want to buy toothpaste, right?

00:18:53: I mean, you literally have two aisles with four different shelves around there with seventy five different types of toothpaste, whether for its whitening your teeth or brushing, you know, brushing your breath or Solving cavities or you know, and then there's got a bunch of different brands and it's just overwhelming right?

00:19:09: just the the process of choosing is so overwhelming and so I think what I always talk to founders about is simplify your offering.

00:19:18: Ideally the three different scenarios an entry level a standard level and a premium level.

00:19:23: Make that this structure in which you make it easy for your customers to say what yes to whatever you're selling.

00:19:29: that in itself will already speed up the sales process already get you to a yes much more quickly.

00:19:35: And just that simplicity of thinking is so important to be successful in sales.

00:19:39: Absolutely.

00:19:40: Absolutely.

00:19:42: So good.

00:19:45: If I would have a therapy session.

00:19:50: I have a specialty on these this week.

00:19:52: The next thirty-five minutes is free.

00:19:55: Awesome.

00:19:55: Perfect.

00:19:57: Let's briefly talk about sales approaches.

00:20:01: especially for people that are maybe not that familiar with sales because they have been working on their product for some time in some basement or wherever.

00:20:11: So there are three main acquisition strategies.

00:20:13: So of course, outbound sales, partnerships and inbound marketing.

00:20:18: based on your experience, what typically gets overlooked and is there a need to make use of all of them?

00:20:26: or where would you start?

00:20:29: Yeah.

00:20:30: So I do talk about all three of those forms of acquisition.

00:20:32: That's kind of the second pillar of the launch code is called structure, your client acquisition.

00:20:37: So you close more deals with less effort.

00:20:39: And I talk there about how the first form of acquisition that every founder needs to start with is outbound.

00:20:45: The reason that is, is because it's the process by which you identify your ideal customer, you find your way into that customer, you have a conversation and you engage with them.

00:20:54: That's the process by which you're going to get the feedback.

00:20:57: that is going to enable you to fine tune and iterate your product.

00:21:00: So ultimately it creates that product market fit that we're all after.

00:21:04: So I don't think you can actually avoid that and that's where you should start.

00:21:08: Once you have done that enough, once you start clarifying your offer, clarifying your message, understanding who's willing to pay for whatever you're selling, then you can move on to the next two channels.

00:21:18: Inbound marketing is of course when you're creating sort of this this net in which you're trying to get people to step in and find you.

00:21:25: You do that through digital communication and marketing.

00:21:27: You do that through events.

00:21:28: You do that through PR.

00:21:29: You're creating this kind of ecosystem of information that puts you at the center and gets people pulled in.

00:21:34: But the third is partnerships.

00:21:36: And I often think that partnerships is the most underestimated form of client acquisition.

00:21:42: It's a fantastic way to boost your credibility and boost your reach.

00:21:45: Because let's be honest, one of the biggest challenges for early stage businesses, they don't have the credibility that comes with years of presence in the market, and they don't necessarily have the network that enables them to sell quickly.

00:21:54: And so if you collaborate with, you know, I talk about three types of partners, so distributors, agents and connectors, if you can collaborate with one of those three types of partners, what you'll actually do is you tap into their reach, you tap into their credibility.

00:22:08: and you're able to scale quickly.

00:22:09: And one of the companies I've worked with for many years, I'm actually an early investor now, I'm actually chairman of the company, is a company called Entavo.

00:22:15: They're a marketing technology SaaS.

00:22:18: They basically power the loyalty programs from a technical standpoint for global brands like Tommy Hilfiger, like Calvin Klein, like Scams, a lot of retail and fashion companies.

00:22:28: And Entavo's scaling dramatically boosted once they started to collaborate with consultants who were generating ideas for loyalty programs and marketing organization companies that were actually already solving a technical solution for these type of companies.

00:22:45: And once they were able to collaborate with these companies, they were able to get in front of large enterprises.

00:22:51: They were able to close much more quickly.

00:22:52: And since then, about fifty percent of the revenue that the company generates is through partnerships.

00:22:58: OK, I would encourage all founders to start without bound and then to test partnerships and inbound.

00:23:04: And over time, you're going to see which one works That's where you should double down and maybe which one doesn't convert and don't waste your resources on that channel.

00:23:11: Got it.

00:23:11: Got it.

00:23:12: I mean, I personally, I'm used to working with partners throughout my personal career.

00:23:18: They were always partners involved.

00:23:20: So I personally understand the value behind it, but I'm absolutely aware of the fact that many aren't.

00:23:26: And especially what I hear also from startups, it's hard for them.

00:23:31: on the getting a foot into the door of enterprises.

00:23:35: But with partners, it's much easier.

00:23:37: Yeah,

00:23:37: absolutely.

00:23:38: And I think one of the important lessons I've learned over the years is that Obviously the initiation of that relationship is very important.

00:23:44: You get to a point where you've kind of shaken hands, but actually the real work starts when you have to activate that partnership, right?

00:23:49: So how do you create that relationship where it's give and take, where there's clarity of responsibilities, clarity of actions.

00:23:55: There's a clear financial upside for both parties because that's what drives business.

00:23:59: So you have to make sure everybody's happy with what's going on.

00:24:01: So there's a lot of work that has to go into managing a partnership to become effective, but certainly they just recognizing as an important channel, I think is a good first step.

00:24:10: Awesome.

00:24:10: Awesome.

00:24:11: Let's jump right into execution.

00:24:14: Since you also cover two mechanisms or approaches in your book, the destination plan and blast of blueprint.

00:24:23: So I love that there is no canvas or something similar to that stated, especially the blast of blueprint.

00:24:32: I think that sounds quite interesting.

00:24:35: And those are... you came up with them to align vision with actions, which is quite important to align here.

00:24:44: So could you walk us through a real-world example how to make use of these frameworks or these two mechanisms?

00:24:52: Sure.

00:24:53: Let me talk a little bit about the role of each of these plays in the broader spectrum, and then I can talk you through a specific example.

00:24:59: So what my experience working with founders was there were two kind of, you know, once you got past the question of like, how do you do this?

00:25:07: How do you do that?

00:25:07: How do you sell?

00:25:08: You know, like once you had the basics down, there were two missing pieces that I thought would be really useful to fill in with something, right?

00:25:15: And the first piece was, you know, when you're building a business, I'm sure you can relate to this.

00:25:19: Like you got your head down, you're working on this day to day, you're dealing, you're putting out fires, you're dealing with stuff.

00:25:24: And you just have very little time to take a step back and just look at the bigger picture, right?

00:25:29: Somehow to pull yourself out of the day-to-day grind and kind of decide, okay, why am I working this hard?

00:25:33: Like what's the destination I want to get to?

00:25:36: That's what the destination plan is, right?

00:25:38: It's a very simple mechanism that identifies, you know, what you believe your business should look like in eighteen months.

00:25:45: Define that in very simple terms.

00:25:47: Have that as kind of a destination as if you were going on a trip and then making sure that as you take those day to day actions, they're leading you one step closer to your destination.

00:25:55: So that's the function of the destination plan.

00:25:57: The blast off blueprint is on the other side of that spectrum.

00:26:00: Right.

00:26:00: So it's not about, you know, what's the big, big vision, but it's actually like, what do I have to do today?

00:26:05: Right.

00:26:05: Because again, if you've got fifty things to do, you can't do fifty things at once.

00:26:08: Right.

00:26:09: So you've got to select what it is that you do and what is you don't do.

00:26:11: And the blast off obviously play on the concept of the launch code.

00:26:14: But essentially what it is is it is a a list of kind of almost like a funnel.

00:26:19: Like here are the nine most important things that I want to do based on the launch code.

00:26:23: Here are the three things that I'm going to do in the next month.

00:26:25: And here's the one thing I'm going to do today, right?

00:26:27: So it kind of creates this bias towards action.

00:26:30: And I think what I found is the most successful entrepreneurs are the ones that now have on the one hand a clear idea of where their business is going, but also have a bias towards execution.

00:26:39: And so it's really capturing those two characteristics in one approach.

00:26:42: And I think the best example I can bring is a company called Action Audit out of Poland.

00:26:46: I started working with a founder called Alexander Nemchik, one man founder who typically, as most founders technically focused, he basically had a software development firm.

00:26:58: And he had identified through the course of his kind of bespoke software development that there are a lot of companies, factories specifically, who lacked a tool that would enable them to audit the efficiency of their internal manufacturing processes.

00:27:12: So he actually created a software as a service tool called Action Audit.

00:27:18: And when I started working with him, you know, one of the things we did is we kind of said, okay, so what should this business look like in, you know, eighteen months?

00:27:24: That kind of is twelve to eighteen months for me is like the sweet spot.

00:27:28: And, you know, we started went out there.

00:27:29: Well, I want to be, you know, he was a Polish company, so I want to be in five different markets.

00:27:32: I want to have at least you know, five customers that are in the automobile industry.

00:27:36: That's where he saw the biggest opportunity.

00:27:39: I want to build a sales organization underneath me.

00:27:41: So I'm not personally involved with everything.

00:27:43: Right.

00:27:43: So we kind of created that, that snapshot of what his business would look like in eighteen months.

00:27:48: And then we started working towards that together.

00:27:50: And during that process, we narrowed down the execution points.

00:27:54: So one was like, you had to have a very clear value proposition, a clear sales message, right?

00:27:58: He was was talking about too many different types of problems to do many different types of customers.

00:28:02: We narrowed that down.

00:28:04: Then we, you know, we'd identify what's the channel that's going to be most effective for him.

00:28:08: For him, it was outbound for sure.

00:28:10: He personally was prepared to go through that process.

00:28:12: It was just fantastic.

00:28:13: And then, you know, we also set up some, you know, it's a guideline, some goals, how are we going to track performance?

00:28:18: I mean, what does good look like?

00:28:20: Where are the KPIs that we're going to track?

00:28:21: So all these tiny, tiny little bits, and I think the outcome is pretty amazing.

00:28:26: So In the two years that we worked together, he went from six clients to fifty-two clients.

00:28:30: He went from one market to seven markets and his revenue grew four hundred percent simply by using this type of approach and obviously executing very well.

00:28:40: And I think that kind of creates this bookend of what a successful founder journey looks like when you're committed to selling and building a long-term successful business.

00:28:50: Yeah, so good to hear because like I stated beforehand, we currently also heavily work on our sales approaches.

00:28:59: So I will definitely also go back to the team and talk to them and look into those mechanisms more deeply.

00:29:07: I mean, it's good to hear on the one side because I think we follow to a certain extent kind of that approach because if you don't define the vision or the goal, you will never figure out which is the right path to go because...

00:29:25: It's very difficult to decide whether you're on the right track or wrong track if you don't know where you're gonna go, right?

00:29:29: I mean, you know, you could be going to, you know, to ski in the Alps or you could be spending a beach vacation in Egypt like I'm sure you did, right?

00:29:37: So, you know, those are two different destinations.

00:29:39: The same roads do not lead in that same direction.

00:29:42: So you have to identify.

00:29:43: The other thing I was gonna say, you said go back to your team.

00:29:45: This is a really interesting insight.

00:29:47: One of the things I've realized is When I went through this destination planning exercise with founders, with co-founders, sometimes two, sometimes three founders, what actually came out is that the different founders had a different idea of what the company's destination was.

00:30:01: And so that already is a red flag to say, hey, it's like sitting in a boat and then everybody's rowing in the opposite direction.

00:30:07: And they're wondering why now they're not making progress.

00:30:10: So this is a great tool also to get people around the table.

00:30:15: your stakeholders and some of those stakeholders could be all these founders, some could be employees, some could be investors, right?

00:30:19: So there's a whole bunch of people that could take part in this process.

00:30:22: But actually going through the process of like, this is what our product is going to look like.

00:30:27: This is what we believe will be happening in sales and marketing.

00:30:29: This is what our organization is going to look like.

00:30:31: And aligning your expectations already is a massive step forward in the right direction because you all be rowing in the same direction.

00:30:38: And that's something that a lot of companies fail to do.

00:30:41: Yeah, that's so good to hear because this is, for example, that's something my business partner and myself, we do, including also the team.

00:30:49: But first of all, we have to be aligned.

00:30:52: And in so many cases, it's even using the same words for him means something different than what for myself.

00:30:59: So we talk a lot.

00:31:01: We have the OKRs.

00:31:03: We have the quarterly planning.

00:31:05: But still we talk a lot because it's then like those nuances where you have to be aligned because even the small things where you maybe have a different understanding could lead to different behavior or different approaches or different actions at the end.

00:31:23: So that's so good to hear, to cover also the alignment aspect internally.

00:31:29: And looking into the plan, I mean, you already touched based on the KPIs, What's the right approach to keep the balance between quantitative metrics and qualitative feedback from both the internal people or the organization as well as from the market?

00:31:50: Yeah.

00:31:51: Well, I think you go through an evolution of in this perspective as you build a business, right?

00:31:55: So at the beginning, when you don't really have a lot of customers, you have a lot of empirical data, an overwhelming majority of your performance tracking or frankly, your your judging of your progress is qualitative.

00:32:07: It's gut feeling, it's based on conversations, it's based on individual interactions.

00:32:13: As you grow and as your business matures, you increasingly have more data from which to work.

00:32:20: And I think one of the tipping points for a lot of businesses is when you reach a stage where individual conversations, individual actions, simply is not enough for you to be able to build a scalable business, right?

00:32:34: You have to move from this gut feeling-based management to more empirical, data-based decision-making.

00:32:41: That's a big jump.

00:32:42: And that's actually what the third pillar of the launch group is all about.

00:32:44: It's how do you scale your operations so you as a founder can focus on strategy and you build a team that enables you to deliver the results that you expect.

00:32:52: And so to do that, you have to basically go through the pain of sales yourself, right?

00:32:56: So you, as a founder, have to understand that process.

00:32:59: Once you've achieved certain level of success, Then you've got to start creating the guidelines, the guideposts that will help you or build an organization where quantitative performance tracking becomes more relevant.

00:33:09: So you have clear set of goals and you call them OKRs.

00:33:12: You've got KPIs in place.

00:33:14: You're tracking those on a weekly or monthly basis.

00:33:16: You've got an objective measure of how you're doing.

00:33:19: You're identifying what's working, what's not.

00:33:20: You're changing your strategy according to what the results are.

00:33:24: That is, it becomes an increasingly important part, but it never completely eliminates the need for qualitative.

00:33:30: thinking, right?

00:33:32: There's a lot of different aspects of business that you can't quantify.

00:33:36: So you as a founder at some stage just have to lean on your intuition, but you have to make sure that you're not ignoring the facts that are delivered by quantitative data.

00:33:47: Got it.

00:33:47: I mean, I think it's quite important to track the data, which we started a couple of months ago, especially on the sales side of things.

00:33:57: Yes, everybody has like that sales funnel and you, I don't know, you track the volume and the close deals and the cold deals and the lost deals and whatsoever.

00:34:08: But there's definitely way more to that.

00:34:10: For example, warm outreach, cold outreach, how successful you are, what works best?

00:34:16: Is it more like picking up a phone and talking to people?

00:34:19: Is it mailing?

00:34:20: Is it linked in whatsoever?

00:34:22: I think that that's quite important and I hope you're with me that we encourage especially the founders to not be blind and stick to a certain approach, but trying to figure out what really works in the market, in the company, in the culture.

00:34:40: Absolutely.

00:34:41: Absolutely.

00:34:42: And I had a percent agree.

00:34:43: And I think one of the mistakes that a lot of people in my position might make is they feel like there's only one way to do something, right?

00:34:51: So there's this question, if you walk through life with a hammer, then everything looks like a nail, right?

00:34:58: So I always encourage the founders to say, look, I've got a certain process that I found to be successful in a lot of cases.

00:35:06: And I would say that the earlier you are in the process, the more likely is you're facing the same exact issues, irrespective of your geography or your industry, because you're simply at the very foundational issues of sales.

00:35:17: As you mature, as your company becomes more unique, your problems also become more unique.

00:35:22: And so I think that there's a fine balance between saying this is the only way you do it versus, you know, this is sort of the way that we think will work best.

00:35:31: I'm curious, what have you learned from your own experience?

00:35:34: You said a few months ago, you started tracking your data.

00:35:36: Have you already come up with certain conclusions about what's working and what's not?

00:35:41: I mean, the first thing that I realized is if you have the data and it's visible and people can access it.

00:35:50: And by the way, I developed a small agent for keeping me informed based on the data that we have in the tooling.

00:35:58: So going away from a pull to a push principle, so I get that mail pushed every morning into my inbox.

00:36:05: First of all, if you have the numbers, it's very easy to understand quite fast whether you are good at it, especially for example, the warm outreach approach that we currently follow.

00:36:21: Was there a call today?

00:36:23: Was there a call yesterday?

00:36:24: Did we send out emails?

00:36:25: So even starting with the simple things forces us to work on that stuff.

00:36:31: And to not sit there thinking about, okay, when was the last phone call or when was the last LinkedIn message that I sent regarding that?

00:36:41: Oh no, there was actually nothing happening yesterday.

00:36:45: And it's easy to understand.

00:36:48: That's like for us, we started quite simple like with the simple things and also like response rates.

00:36:55: Quite important what worked well, what didn't.

00:36:59: Some people are more active on LinkedIn, some others are more active on Teams, on mail, on phone whatsoever.

00:37:07: And even there, it's not like a single approach that works for all of them.

00:37:12: So you have to figure out also based on the role and also the culture.

00:37:18: That's also a good learning, whether they are used to picking up the phone, whether they are happy getting a call from you or whether they are too busy and you should rely more on an email.

00:37:28: That's something that I learned that my business partner learns, which is great.

00:37:34: Yeah.

00:37:34: Well, look, I mean, I think you're doing a lot of the right things.

00:37:37: And if anything, it proves that just the process of starting to track already unleashes and unlocks some opportunities, right?

00:37:44: So It's not like because look, I think the other other reality is it's not like data tells you everything, right?

00:37:49: Because there could be a lot of different unique circumstances that are impacting some of the results.

00:37:54: But over time in the grand scheme of things, it shows direction of travel.

00:37:57: And I think that that's an important insight.

00:38:00: And it's, you know, a lot of people will kind of talk about, you know, these big breakthroughs and all this stuff that you can achieve.

00:38:05: Look, the reality is the most successful things and results come from just doing the small, boring things over and over again every day consistently.

00:38:13: And that, you know, small, tiny steps ultimately learn, you know, result in long journeys.

00:38:19: And I think that's a very important insight.

00:38:21: And the second thing I talk about with my founders that I work with is like, you know, don't expect overnight success, which by the way, one of my kind of, you know, things that really annoys me is when I see these, you know, Instagram heroes talking about how, you know, you can make a hundred thousand pounds a month, you know, sitting on your bed and your orange Lamborghini, you know.

00:38:41: Just just by waking up in the morning.

00:38:42: That is about as true about building business as it is true that you can become rich by by you know Winning the lottery, right?

00:38:48: I mean, yeah, there are people in the world in history who have become rich by hitting the lottery But you that's not a strategy, right?

00:38:54: So so I think that's that's something that I spend actually a lot of time talking about is like I don't believe in that sort of hustle culture type of thing or that hustlers culture.

00:39:04: You know building a business is hard work.

00:39:06: It takes time.

00:39:07: You have to overcome obstacles.

00:39:09: You never thought we're there or could be possible, but the people that win are the only ones that ultimately get through the muck and that deep, dark swamp of despair that you will eventually come across and ultimately build a successful business.

00:39:21: That's the reality.

00:39:22: It's not sexy.

00:39:23: It might not be easy to sell, but that's reality.

00:39:27: Awesome.

00:39:28: What do you think of that?

00:39:29: I mean, I'm fully with you.

00:39:35: I'm sick of those, like you stated.

00:39:37: those, hey, you get the Lamborghini within forty-eight hours and stuff like that.

00:39:42: Come on, that's BS.

00:39:44: Let's be honest.

00:39:45: But there are also some great voices out there that just tell the opposite.

00:39:50: There is, for example, that bearded guy from the States working in the fitness industry.

00:39:58: Alex Ramosy.

00:40:00: He's so down to earth and on point.

00:40:03: I think he slept in one of his rooms for five years because He didn't have the money and all of his approaches, and that's what I also hear from you.

00:40:12: It's not like the rocket science and the complex things.

00:40:17: It's working constantly on the small things on your approach, adjusting here a bit, adjusting there a bit, but also walking for some time that pass in order to figure out is it the right path or is it the wrong path, because you won't figure out within forty-eight hours.

00:40:35: Yeah, actually.

00:40:37: But I also want to say, because I feel like we're going to like, you know, a bunch of people are going to quit their businesses once they hear this.

00:40:42: They're going to think, oh, I don't want to work this hard.

00:40:44: I also want to do the flip side of it, right?

00:40:46: And I can speak from experience, right?

00:40:48: So at some point in my career, I was responsible for literally a thousand employees.

00:40:52: You know, I was responsible for doing tens of millions of hundreds of millions of dollars of deals, like big numbers in big environments with big customers.

00:41:00: But I tell you with one hundred percent certainty that the first five thousand euro deal I closed on the back of my own personal work and brand when I started the launch code felt a lot more important to me than the last five million dollar idea deal I did with the big corporate brand behind me.

00:41:20: So yeah, it is hard work, but it's also extremely satisfying, right?

00:41:24: Because you also feel like you're making progress because of the efforts that you're putting in personally and not necessarily because you're sitting in the right chair at the right time.

00:41:32: Got it.

00:41:33: Got it.

00:41:33: Love it.

00:41:34: I mean, with regards to time, I know that you have an appointment right after the recording, so I want to respect that.

00:41:42: One last question before we have to close this session, but it made so much fun already, and I have to digest a lot of things.

00:41:51: So one last question, because I know that many, many founders that I'm in touch with, they have challenges with enterprise selling.

00:42:02: Sometimes it's fear.

00:42:03: Sometimes it's they want to polish each and everything and want to have pixel-perfect slide decks and this and that.

00:42:12: What's your recommendation to be successful in enterprise selling?

00:42:17: Well, I think that's a multi-pronged approach, right?

00:42:20: So first things first, not all enterprises are created equal.

00:42:24: And what I mean by that is just because it's a big corporation doesn't mean that they're the corporation that you should be talking to.

00:42:30: My experience in general is especially for early stage founders is focus on the tier two enterprises.

00:42:37: When I mean tier two, I don't mean, you know, tiny companies.

00:42:40: I'm talking about large companies, but that are not market leaders in their space.

00:42:44: Market leaders, companies that call elephants, don't have a particular motivation to change, right?

00:42:50: They already at the top of the heap.

00:42:52: They're largely publicly traded.

00:42:54: You know, they've got a lot more, they're much more risk averse.

00:42:56: So they're unlikely to do business with with the upstarts.

00:43:00: The deer, which is kind of like the challengers, are the ones who are more likely to be open to innovation.

00:43:06: They've got more at stake.

00:43:07: They've got somebody to overcome.

00:43:08: So the mentality of those type of companies is very different.

00:43:11: So in every single industry, you're going to find those type of companies that are more open to this type of innovation.

00:43:17: A good signal is if they've got a head of innovation in their organization, if they've got a corporate accelerator, maybe a corporate venture capital firm.

00:43:25: So there's some of a certain indications that these companies are open to doing work with early stage startups.

00:43:32: The second thing I would say is that make sure that whatever problem you're solving has an impact either on the bottom line in the sense that it saves costs or generates additional revenues, right?

00:43:45: And I can say this now, having sat in the decision-making chair for many years, a CEO, you know, if it wasn't big enough to matter, it didn't really take my attention, right?

00:43:55: So, you want to make sure that you're dealing with that.

00:43:57: That doesn't mean that you have to sell the whole thing at the beginning, but you should have a clear path to saying, if this works, then we can take it to this level and this level and this level, and the overall outcome will be significant.

00:44:06: The third, I would say, is make sure that through the process of selling, you are trying to identify the internal champion, right?

00:44:15: That individual who may not be the decision maker, in fact, most likely will be somebody that is close to the decision maker, that has an insight into why your solution is relevant for their particular part of the business.

00:44:26: Somebody who can give you an insight into how decisions are made, when budgets are set, that's part of the sales process, right?

00:44:32: So that's not a nice to have, that's a need to have.

00:44:34: Once you've got a champion in the organization, you're going to find your ability to close grows significantly.

00:44:39: And fourth and finally, you have to make sure that you are presenting the image of a credible partner.

00:44:46: And that obviously can be interpreted in many different ways, but it means, yes, you've got good quality materials, you can present clearly and succinctly, you know, you don't show up to a meeting in a shorts and a t-shirt.

00:44:58: Sorry, it matters.

00:45:00: Things that just make the people on the other side of the table feel like, I can do business with this person.

00:45:05: Those are going to be the ones that ultimately, now some combination of those are factors are what's going to enable you to ultimately be successful.

00:45:12: The first one, the second one, even the third one is always hard.

00:45:16: But once you make those, because corporations generally are sheep rather than wolves, they like to follow, you're going to find that once you've got a couple of logos that they've seen and they've heard of, a lot of doors will open and things will happen a lot more quickly.

00:45:29: But you have to fight through those first couple of deals.

00:45:31: Love it.

00:45:32: Love it.

00:45:33: Thanks a lot.

00:45:34: Before we are closing one last task, it would be cool if you could finish those two sentences that I start.

00:45:43: Very short, very focused.

00:45:45: I hope it's okay for you.

00:45:46: It's very spontaneous.

00:45:47: So the first sentence is, as a founder with a tech background, sales should be my

00:45:55: focus and path to building the business that I dream about.

00:46:00: Great.

00:46:01: On point.

00:46:02: Second question, founder let sales doesn't mean

00:46:07: forcing somebody to buy something they don't need.

00:46:09: It's about helping them solve an important problem.

00:46:12: Love it.

00:46:12: That's that's a great statement.

00:46:14: to end the recording.

00:46:17: Sultan Thank you so much for sharing Not only about what's what's in your book, but also about your personal experiences.

00:46:25: There is potential to do another session and recording and I think we should do so.

00:46:31: I'd love to do that before you.

00:46:32: let me go.

00:46:33: I did want to make one offer to your audience if they're open for it.

00:46:36: So first things first.

00:46:37: if they want to reach me the best ways to do is to find me on LinkedIn.

00:46:40: So I'm the only.

00:46:41: I think to this day, I'm still the only Zoltan Vardy on LinkedIn, so they'll be easy to find.

00:46:45: And the other is that if they think that what we've talked about here today could be relevant for them, they wanted a taste of what the lunch code is all about.

00:46:53: If they just go to ZoltanVardy.com forward slash book, so ZoltanVardy.com forward slash book, they can go on that page and they can register and get a free copy of the first chapter of the book.

00:47:03: They can decide whether it's something they're interesting and they can go ahead and buy the book on Amazon if that's something that they think would add value.

00:47:10: Awesome.

00:47:10: Great.

00:47:11: And all the links are also in the show notes.

00:47:13: So thanks for the offer.

00:47:15: And I wish you a pleasant day.

00:47:17: And I would say talk to you soon.

00:47:20: All right.

00:47:20: Thank you very much.

00:47:21: Thank you.

00:47:21: And to our audience, thanks a lot for listening.

00:47:24: And now please go back to your desk and work on your sales success.

00:47:31: If you're hearing this message, it means you have listened to our new episode until the end.

00:47:37: For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

00:47:40: If you have any questions about the topics discussed today or if you want to follow our projects, you can find us on the web at futurebrains.io and of course on LinkedIn.

00:47:51: I hope you enjoyed this talk as much as I did.

00:47:54: Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss a new episode.

00:47:58: I would also appreciate a five-star rating and a review on Apple Podcasts and on Spotify.

00:48:06: Please also share this episode with your network.

00:48:09: Also, let me know what topics I should cover in the future.

00:48:13: See you next time on the Business Buy On podcast.