Morettini on Management

General Management and Marketing Advice for Software and Tech Companies

Pros and Cons of the Freemium Software Business Model

One of the hottest trends in the software business over last several years has been the rise of the “Freemium” business model. For those unfamiliar with the term, a Freemium model is characterized by an entry level version of your software which is totally free to users–forever.

This business model has actually been around in the software industry since the 80’s and was originally referred to as “crippleware” or “lite” entry level versions of software. The term “Freemium” apparently entered the software industry lexicon when used by Jarid Lukin of Alacra in 2006. But enough history. Regardless what you call it, the model on the surface is well suited to the software business due to no (or very low) cost of goods sold.

Whatever term you use, the model is predicated on creating a large “free” user base quickly, usually by using viral marketing methods such as referrals and word of mouth along with other very low cost methods such as SEO. The large free base is then “monetized” by selling advertising to their eyeballs and/or upselling them on premium software features or services. The Freemium model today is widely used in the software biz across a number of form factors including Open Source, SaaS and traditionally licensed software.

What’s most interesting to me about the model is the trendiness of it the last few years since the term Freemium came into use. I see many companies that appear to be adopting it because they feel like so many others are using it — that it must be the right thing to do. But is it the right thing to do in all cases? In my opinion–it is not. Let’s take a closer look.

Freemium Model PROS

Fundamentally viral: he more users you get–the more users you get. Free users will refer other users who could turn out to be paying users.
Allows you to upsell your own (free)customers–upselling a customer that’s already incorporated your tool into his workflow is generally easier than selling a new customer from “scratch”.
Keeps prospects in your target market away from being locked in by the competition.
The barriers to entry to your product line are at the minimum possible (even less friction than free trials and money back guarantees)
Great for startups to say be able to say ”we have XXXXX gazillion users”.
Enables Free Beta testing of new products with a large number of users.
“Free” traffic and user bases can sometimes be converted to advertising revenue.

Freemium Model CONS

Usually has low conversions rates to paid version, average is about 1%–although this obviously varies widely.
If you do offer customer/technical support to free users, it’s potentially a large expense unsupported by little if any revenue.
If you don’t offer support or only offer poor/reduced support to free users (such as forum-only support), what does that do to your conversion rates to paid users–as well as your overall reputation?
If you do offer reduced or no support to free users, lots of time can be wasted trying to figure out who “qualifies” for what level of support .
99% will never pay you a dime–are they REALLY customers?
In addition to customer technical support costs, if you’re SaaS-based the cost of data/bandwidth/hosting for free users can be significant.
Requires EXTREME application ease-of-use to work well.
There is some evidence that having a free version reduces your conversion rates on free trials of your paid product.

The main reasons I don’t like Freemium models, except when circumstances clearly call for it:

Having a free version conditions the market that “free” is the appropriate price.
A free version can reduce the overall value perception of your product
It’s critical to the success of a Freemium model and difficult to get the free/paid feature set split “just right”. If you don’t get this split just right, you either won’t be able to attract enough free users (too little value in Freemium product) or you won’t be able to convert you Freemium users to paid versions (too much value in the Freemium product).
“Free” is a mentality that’s hard to overcome in a user; it’s much harder from convert a free user to a paid user than it is from an entry level (cheap) paid user to a premium paid user. An example of this is the difficulty of online newspapers in converting readers to paid models after years of “training” them that their content should be “free”.
I’d prefer to use available profits on professional marketing programs rather than starving the marketing budget due to excessive support/hosting costs.

Even taking my biases above into consideration, there is definitely a place for a Freemium business model in some situations:

The Best Circumstances to use a Freemium Model

Although the Freemium model has worked in B2B markets, in general I believe it’s better suited to consumer mass markets where viral is possible, price points are already low and free user bases and traffic can be high–making it possible to monetize the traffic via advertising
Entering a market with a very strong, embedded competitor.
When attacking a market with very limited resources or lacking in marketing skills.
With a product has a great “social pull” which lends itself well to viral marketing.
Freemium has already become the standard in your market segment, so you’re almost forced to follow suit.
As an act of desperation when nothing else has worked.

I’m sure there are others circumstances where a Freemium model makes sense–the list above is what comes to mind quickly.

So that’s what I think about Freemium–many will not agree. What’s been your experience with it? Leave a comment below with your own thoughts, lessons or best practices.

Follow Phil Morettini and Morettini on Management via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, RSS, or the PJM Consulting Quarterly Newsletter. Contact Phil directly at info@pjmconsult.com

2 Comments by admin on May 11, 2013

filed in B2C, Business Models, Corporate Strategy, Online Marketing, Product Marketing/Management, Promotion

What Does It Takes to Build a Great Software Company?

Software-based businesses come in many different sizes and shapes: SaaS or cloud-based, mobile, open-sourced, consumer, SMB and Enterprise, etc, etc. Even many successful “hardware” companies could really be viewed as software companies, as they are in fact driven primarily on novel software or firmware under the hood. With the diversity of form factors, it’s very hard to generalize what makes a great software company.

But I believe that there are some common factors among the great ones. It’s much easier of course, to take a look at successful companies and work backwards in a postmortem fashion. The problem with this approach is that you tend to see a lot of “revisionist history” utilized when folks tell the story of what made a company successful.

Institutional technology investors have there own pretty well documented list; in general it goes something like this:

Strong Management Team with relevant experience in the space
Distinct competitive advantage, usually via breakthrough, defensible technology
Product/Service that addresses a serious pain point felt by the target customer
Large market opportunity

You’ll see various flavors of the above list and ordered in a variety of ways, but I think this is a pretty good representation of what VCs and other investors say they look for before they’ll write a big check. When discussing what makes great companies, there’s no doubt in my mind that the list above is valid and important. But I think it’s also incomplete. Here’s a few criteria of my own that I would add:

Management team chemistry

I’ve seen a whole bunch of management teams that looked like a great group on paper from a skills/experience viewpoint. But in practice they couldn’t work together for a variety of reasons: excessive competitiveness, selfishness, incompatible personalities and different communication styles are a few common reasons. As an example, I often see hard-driving CEOs with Type-A personalities who hire exclusively in his/her own image. The resulting management team often resembles a pack of hungry dogs fighting over a single piece of meat, with everyone fighting to be in the lead. Putting together a management team with good chemistry and mutual respect is more art than science and requires a leader with refined sensibilities in the “softer” aspects of management practice.

Lack of management arrogance and openness to learning

Management arrogance big problem that you find in people that perceive themselves as very successful. Sometimes they start to believe their own headlines and think they have all the answers. The problem is that when leading a software company the certain answers of yesterday can be the disastrous strategies of tomorrow, as software markets change so rapidly. I find that most leaders who are able to take their companies to greatness are not so full of themselves that they won’t listen to other internal and external voices. This is an attribute that enables management to navigate the treacherous road up the software industry food chain and raises the odds of taking a software business all the way to the top. Of course there are some famous leaders of large software companies that don’t fit this description–but I believe they are exceptions to the rule.

Realistic self-evaluation at every stage of development

To maximize the potential of a company to reach greatness, it’s important that once you’ve had some success you don’t get become over-enamored with it or underestimate what more is possible. At every stage of a company’s development the financial resources, personnel resources and realities of your market dictate what’s “possible” going forward. It’s sometime very hard to self evaluate where you’re really at as a company; some people are natural optimists and others pessimists. I’ve always felt that a little bit of marketplace paranoia is healthy in a management team. But the closer you can get to “reality” in your evaluation of what’s really possible, the more likely you will be to optimize that next step and keep moving forward on that long path to greatness.

Positive overall company culture

I believe that this may be the most important factor of all when it comes to a path to true greatness. There’s an old sports saying that “it’s not about the X’s and O’s, it’s about the Jimmy’s and Joes”. For those of you who aren’t sports fans, it’s just a funny way of saying that coaching (management) can only do so much; it’s the players (company staff) you recruit that really make it happen. In my opinion, this is very, very true and means that getting the best people possible really makes the difference in how successful a company will ultimately be. What is the biggest factor that allows you to recruit great people? In the long run, it’s a positive company culture that the current employees really feel good about which allows you to recruit great new people.

Those are my thoughts on what it takes to have a GREAT–not just good–software company. What would you remove or add to the list? Leave a comment below with your own criteria for software industry greatness.

Follow Phil Morettini and Morettini on Management via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, RSS, or the PJM Consulting Quarterly Newsletter. Contact Phil directly at info@pjmconsult.com

1 Comment by admin on April 27, 2013

filed in Business Models, Corporate Strategy, General Management, SaaS, Startup/Early Stage

tagged business model, cloud, company culture, consultant, consulting, Corporate Culture, culture, early stage, management, Management arrogance, Phil Morettini, PJM Consulting, SaaS, software, tech, technology, VC, Venture Capital

BYOD, Enterprise Mobile ISVs and Cross-Platform Support

One of the hottest trends in the technology industry these days is the phenomenon know as “Bring your own Device” or BYOD. For IT departments, this is the latest control-related nightmare they loath so much. The original technological shift from Mainframes to Minis and PCs was probably the start of many control-related sleep disturbances and BYOD continues the trend. Mobile computing in itself was bad enough from the perspective of the internal IT folk;. Mobile BYOD may be enough to push them all to drink.

But enough about anguish for the IT guys: what are the implications of BYOD for independent software vendors?

Cross-platform support

One of the major challenges–or opportunities–that I believe software vendors face in a BYOD world is the potentially wide variety of mobile platforms to support. Many readers are likely thinking “its only the iPhone/iOS and Android, so not a problem. Nothing else is relevant.”

Maybe-But bear with me for a bit.

Things aren’t always what they seem on the surface. For one thing, Android is hardly a single, tightly unified platform like iOS. It’s basically an open source operating system in which every OEM can (and often does) modify the OS to provide differentiation on their hardware platform. In a way this can be a good thing by spurring innovation; but if you’re a third party software vendor dependent on the parts of the OS that is often modified–it can also be viewed as problematic. But should it be?

Google has recently sought to rein in the fragmentation issue as the numerous hardware-focused variants were causing a lot of consternation in the third party software community. At a minimum this fragmentation causes a great deal of testing complexity, and at worst the necessity to maintain different code for each hardware OEM’s platform.

Back in the old days

This reminds me of back in the 80s in the early days of MS DOS. IBM had its PC DOS version and all of the other PC hardware OEMs had their own version of MS DOS as well–almost compatible with each other, but with just enough variation to cause problems. Needless to say, this caused problems in the ISV community which had to choose between supporting myriad platforms–or picking winners. Neither appeared to be a great choice.

Even if you don’t consider the Android fragmentation issue serious, I contend there are other similar platform support issues. In a world tightly controlled by the IT department, the platform choices might indeed be limited to Android and iOS. But what about Blackberry, Microsoft and any new platforms that might come along in this large and competitive market? Again I can almost see the smirking by some reading this: “those platforms are market also-rans with very small market shares. I don’t need to support them!”

Or do you?

Back in the old days–one more time

One more time I’ll take you way back for another analogous situation. In the 90s I was running a systems/network management software business targeted at the enterprise IT market. This was an “add-on” product business; our product ran on top of the Network Operating Systems (NOS) of the day. Back then, Novell Netware dominated the market with an estimated 60-80% share of the business. The other major NOS platforms (widely considered also-rans) were Banyan Vines (about 5-8% market share) and numerous OEM variants of Microsoft LAN Manager (10-15% share total). LAN Manager was slightly different depending upon the OEM hardware platform, much like Windows itself in the earlier example and Android today. The fragmentation of LAN Manager made it even less desirable for an add-on ISV market segment like our category.

All of our competitors looked at the market and designed their products to run strictly on Netware. On the surface this made total sense. There was just one problem—in the enterprise IT market (the primary target for our segment) the customers are huge companies with a lot of buying power; they like to get vendors to do what they want. Of course, many enterprises did standardize on Novell Netware at that time.

We took a contrarian approach at the time and chose to extend our product, supporting both VINES and LAN Manager in addition to Netware. We found that the larger the company, the more heterogeneous their networking environments tended to be. Even if 90% of the systems within an enterprise were based upon Netware, there was a strong desire in enterprises for support of ALL of their networks companywide. So although Banyan and Microsoft LAN Manager each had a modest number of accounts using only their NOS (we won those by default), we were in a much stronger position than our competitors in the largest enterprises with heterogeneous network environments. We won far more than are share, and the additional revenue more than made up of the modest additional development cost and support complexity.

So how do software vendors capitalize?

I bore you with the old case study above because I believe BYOD in the Enterprise will only accentuate the benefits of supporting as many platforms as possible. Although many companies with highly influential IT departments will limit choice, this is really against the spirit of BYOD. While it may look unlikely to some right now, I see BYOD generally moving the enterprise mobile software market toward heterogeneous, multi-platform environments. Forward thinking ISVs would be wise to consider this in their product plans.

There are many new challenges that are already rising as the BYOD movement takes hold. BYOD in the enterprise is a rich area for discussion. In addition to the cross-platform support issue discussed here, there are major security, legal, support and economic/cost considerations to consider. Some of these issues don’t yet have great answers–maybe we’ll explore them in a later column. BYOD is a major paradigm shift for all segments of the IT business. I believe that there will be many more yet unforeseen factors that will greatly impact the landscape for enterprises, end users and software/hardware vendors as the situation matures.

What are your thoughts on the cross platform support issue we’ve raised in this article? Give us your take. And what are some other issues brought on by BYOD that aren’t widely being discussed yet? Post a comment so we can all benefit from your experiences.

Follow Phil Morettini and Morettini on Management via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, RSS, or the PJM Consulting Quarterly Newsletter. Contact Phil directly at info@pjmconsult.com

No Comments by admin on March 16, 2013

filed in Business Models, Corporate Strategy, General Management, Product Marketing/Management, Software/Product Development, enterprise software

Software Product Marketing: Horizontal vs. Vertical

An important discussion for most software companies–both in the product planning stage and in the downstream active marketing phase–is the manner in which it will be marketed. The decisions to be made in each phase are separate but closely related. This set of discussions need to happen regardless of whether you are marketing a traditionally licensed application, an open source application or a SaaS application.

One of the more important aspects to this is whether the product will be aimed tightly at one or several vertical segments, or marketed more broadly to the widest possible audience. This is the crux of the vertical vs. horizontal decision. Let’s examine a few topics which can be useful in framing this discussion.

How specific is the “language” of your application to a vertical audience?

This is very important because in some product categories the unique business processes of a vertical can be very important, while in other categories there is great commonality in process and language across industries. If you’ve written your application specifically to solve one market segment’s unique problem, it’s probably VERY specific. When this is the case it’s pretty obvious that you’ll start (and possibly end) with a highly vertical marketing effort. Sometimes as thing go along you may find that you’ve solved a problem for market A, but it’s also useful in market segment B and C–although there often needs to be at least some modification. If you’ve solved a more generic problem that applies to many markets, the decision to market the solution horizontally or vertically can be much less clear.

How big is your overall market?

A key consideration when you’re entering a new market with a new product. The larger the market the more likely it is you will need to take a vertical approach get initial traction. In many cases this means verticalizing the product in the product development phase. But even if there isn’t a strong set of vertical needs with respect to product features and “language”, in large markets a vertical promotional approach may be required to build market traction. It is often far easier to build a brand name and market traction in a tight vertical before you move on to the next segment, than by taking a more scatter-shot approach with no vertical focus.

What is the level of competition in the overall market?

This question is related to first question above as strong competition often goes hand in hand with large markets. They are separate issues, however, and should be evaluated individually. If the level of competition is high, regardless of market size, a new entrant is likely to have a better chance of success with a more vertical approach. It there isn’t significant competition in the segment, you may be able to have success with a horizontal approach, which can be a more efficient way to use both product development resources and marketing dollars.

Market maturity: has the overall market verticalized already?

Regardless of the level of competition and the market size if the larger market has already evolved into a number of vertical sub-markets, it may be too late to take a horizontal approach. It is usually very difficult to defeat entrenched verticalized competitors when entering a market with a horizontal application. The exception to this would be a new competitor with a product that provides a quantum leap forward in functionality (usually as a result of a technological paradigm shift).

What level of marketing resources are available to you?

The level of marketing dollars available to you are quite important in formulating your approach to the vertical vs. horizontal question. As one example, let’s say you are entering a market that is large, quite competitive and you won’t have a lot of marketing budget available. In this case, it would be very important to develop the product upfront with the strongest vertical focus possible and market it accordingly. On the other extreme, you might be entering a market of modest overall size that hasn’t verticalized to a great degree to date and you are well funded, enabling a substantial marketing budget relative to the competition. It this case it might be an easy decision to take the ROI-efficient horizontal approach both from a product development and promotional perspective. There are many potential scenarios between these two extremes which unfortunately will lead to less obvious decision-making.

Is your software a “point” or “platform” application?

Most software applications are “point applications”, meaning they have little or no integration with the rest of the software infrastructure. In addition, any possible customization is generally intended to be done by the application vendor themselves or maybe their channel partners.

I define a software application as a “platform” when it utilizes an open API which enables BOTH channel partners and third party software vendors to write add-on applications which extends the platform software’s functionality in two key area:

1) by adding “vertical” functionality not present in the platform software thereby enabling a complete solution for a specific vertical market.

2) using the API to integrate the application with other parts of the software infrastructure

In this way a platform software application allows a software vendor to “have it’s cake and eat it too” with respect to the Horizontal vs. Vertical discussion. The platform software itself provides basic functionality which can be sold broadly across many markets, while the open APIs enable the product to be tightly customized for specific verticals as required, by both your channel partners and independent ISVs. The platform application can be a product manager’s dream and is the Holy Grail of software when it comes to efficiently serving as many market segments as possible by leveraging partner investments. But it’s not something that can be forced; there needs to be a natural reason for the platform to exist, or there will be no third parties willing to write the add-on applications so critical to the platform’s success. Without these add-on application a platform will more often than not die a quiet death in the marketplace.

In some cases, such as when you write an application which aimed at a problem specific to a single vertical market, the answer to this “vertical vs. horizontal” question is easy. In many other cases you’ve created a product which is useful across several market segments–but do you have the resources to attack multiple market segments simultaneously? How do you approach this common problem? Leave a comment below with your take or shoot us an email with your questions.

Follow Phil Morettini and Morettini on Management via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, RSS, or the PJM Consulting Quarterly Newsletter. Contact Phil directly at info@pjmconsult.com

3 Comments by admin on February 16, 2013

filed in Business Models, Corporate Strategy, Distribution Channels, Product Marketing/Management, Promotion, SaaS, Software/Product Development, Startup/Early Stage, VARs, enterprise software

tagged business model, channel sales, consultant, consulting, early stage, marketing, open source, Phil Morettini, PJM Consulting, Product Development, product management, product planning, Promotion, SaaS, Software as a Service, strategy, traditionally licensed, VAR, vertical market

Software Company Diversification

One of the difficult strategic decisions that software industry management teams have to make is finding the delicate balance between “focusing on the core business” and “not putting all of your eggs in one basket”.

One obvious way of differentiating how much diversification is appropriate for a specific company is by company size and maturity. A brand new startup better be very focused on doing one thing well or they may not last very long. A large, established company generally needs to have at least several new irons waiting in the fire as initial products and market segments mature, or they risk shrinking in size rather than continuing to grow. The two ends of the spectrum are pretty obvious, but there is a wide continuum of situations in between where the proper strategy isn’t as obvious. Let’s look at some factors to consider when formulating your own diversification strategy:

How much growth is left in your primary business/market/technology

This may be the first thing you should consider when contemplating the diversification question. If you’ve hit on a huge market opportunity with a lot of room to run and have gained good traction, it’s often unwise to develop “eyes bigger than your stomach”. In this environment your best growth opportunity is usually keeping your eyes on that single ball. Everything else being equal, a focused strategy is always easier to execute than a diversified one. So if you have explosive growth prospects ahead as far as the eye can see, it’s better to defer the diversification decision for sometime down the road.

Competition level in your primary business

Strong competition in your primary market is often a factor that can cause a management team to either look toward diversification or decide it needs to focus on it’s core market-depending on the details. The key is how competitive you are: if you are very competitive and yet caught in a heated battle with that strong competition the choice is often to stay focused. However, if that competition is so strong that your company is an also-ran, a decision to diversify is often taken. On the other end of the spectrum if the competition is weak, that may also allow you to more easily take on some diversification without the risk of losing hold of your profitable core business.

Level of available resources

This is a big key; if you only have the resources to do one thing well it’s critical to keep you focus on a single ball. It doesn’t matter if you have five great ideas–pick the one you think is best and sell out to be successful there. I often see early stage managers make this mistake. They aren’t sure which of their ideas is the best and this uncertainty causes them to split their very scarce resources among multiple paths. Unfortunately, this usually dooms them to not gaining critical momentum in a single area. It’s also important to measure all types of key resources when considering this factor, not just financial. Do you have enough skilled engineers, marketers or management bandwidth? If any of these or any number of other resources are in too short supply, diversification at this time is probably a bad idea.

Ease of extending proprietary technology into adjacent markets

This requires an evaluation of your existing IP. Often software companies have cutting edge technologies that can be adapted to other market segments and provide a similar differential advantage as in the initial core market. But what if the technology is very specialized, or you just can’t see another good market opportunity to invade using your existing technology as your entry advantage? In these cases it’s best to be realistic and look at other ways of diversifying, such as acquiring new technology/product categories via M&A that are usable in your current segment.

Can you create or acquire new technologies which your existing market wants?

There’s a lot that goes into answering this question. A lot of it relates to your technical staff–are they specialists in your existing technologies, or do you have the type of talent that is constantly coming up with outside-the-box ideas and potential new products?

If there isn’t fertile ground internally for innovative new ideas you many need to look at acquisitions which can bring fresh technologies and products to your pipeline. These don’t need to be huge, costly acquisitions; often you can acquire highly innovative startups which are little more than a small engineering team, a core product and a few initial customers.

Also, are your product managers identifying unmet needs from your existing user base? This is usually crucial to bringing SUCCESSFUL new products to existing markets, whether driven by internal development or acquisition of external technologies/products/companies.

Diversifying to Completely New Markets with Completely New Products/Technologies is very dangerous

Above all you want to avoid moving into a completely new market with a completely new product/technology. The odds of pulling this off successfully are very low, roughly equivalent to that of any brand new startup company. If fact, this is often referred to as a “restart”. It generally occurs when a company looks forward and sees certain failure ahead due to a hopelessly out-of-date technology or an evaporating market segment (often due to a technological sea change). I often see this from managements that are very discouraged and desperately seeking “greener grass on the other side of the fence”. But of course the grass isn’t always greener. This approach should be viewed as a last resort only; every attempt should be made to diversify into an area where there is some technological or market experience.

Like most strategic decisions, diversification in the software business isn’t inherently good or bad. The circumstances really dictate how much you should pursue. What do you think about the strategic tradeoff between focus and prudent diversification?–leave a comment below with your experiences and views.

Follow Phil Morettini and Morettini on Management via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, RSS, or the PJM Consulting Quarterly Newsletter. Contact Phil directly at info@pjmconsult.com

No Comments by admin on January 13, 2013

filed in Business Models, Corporate Strategy, General Management, Product Marketing/Management, Software/Product Development, Startup/Early Stage, Uncategorized

5 Factors to Evaluate Whether You Have a Winning Corporate Culture – Video

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No Comments by admin on December 7, 2012

filed in Corporate Strategy, General Management, Operations, SaaS, Startup/Early Stage, Videos

How Important is a Strong Rolodex in the Software and Hardware Business?

I get this comment all the time: “We’re looking for a VP-Sales/VP-Business Development/Sales Manager/Sales Rep with a strong Rolodex in the (pick your market segment) market”. But how important is a rolodex in the IT business? In my opinion, not as important as many people seem to think…..

I realize that this is a contrarian viewpoint among those of us in the technology business. Some may even view it as “stupid”. However, it’s not in any way a spontaneous comment, but an opinion I’ve developed over a long period of time. I’m sure I’ll get a lot of push back on this opinion, since it flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Here’s my argument:

What a rolodex does for you

First of all, of course a strong rolodex in a specific market segment is a good thing. To say otherwise is silly. But what does it really do for you? It may get a phone call returned or a meeting set up faster that it otherwise would. This is of course helpful, but far from critical in my mind, especially compared to other factors I’ll explore below. I should point out there are some market segments that are so closed that they appear almost tribal in nature. In those cases, including one example which is mentioned later in this article, a strong rolodex can move to near the top of the list of critical success factors. But in my experience these situations are rare and far from normal.

Many other things have to line up first

I’ve always maintained that sales reps get too much blame when they fail, and too much credit (and often outsized monetary rewards) when they’re successful. SO many things have to be done well in a company for a rep to have a chance. The executive managers must first capitalize the company adequately, or usually nothing works very well. Product Marketing must properly define a market opportunity that matches well with the company’s intellectual property and technical capabilities. The R&D folks must create a product which makes a contribution to the marketplace, offering a differential advantage over competitive offerings. Maybe all of this seems obvious; but none of it is easy. A lot can go wrong, and I believe every one of these activities is more difficult and important than having a pre-existing rolodex in the market. Even it this wasn’t true, it’s really difficult to attract the right sales reps (with or without an strong rolodex in your segment) without evidence that the above activities are going well.

Most important attributes for a technology sales rep

Smart – This may seem obvious, but all too often people looking for a “quick hit” underrate it’s importance or don’t adequately investigate intellect in their new sales hires.

Technology acumen – There are many good sales reps in the world. But regardless of whether we’re talking about hardware, semiconductors, traditional software or SaaS, there are far fewer that have the education, training and ability to quickly absorb complex and fast-moving technology that is fundamental to our business.

Work ethic – While intellect and technical competence are important, selling still isn’t brain surgery. But it’s a really difficult job that takes persistence, hard work and the self-confidence to keep going in the face of a lot of rejection. There is no substitute for a strong work ethic in a consistently high performing sales rep.

Ability to build relationships – this is key- and shouldn’t be confused with having a large rolodex of names and phone numbers. Just because someone knows a lot of people doesn’t mean those prospects necessarily wants to hear from them, or trusts them enough to buy from them. In many cases it’s just the opposite. If you have strong relationship-building skills, you can do it over and over again across any market segment. Give me a strong relationship-builder with no existing contacts in a market segment over a weaker relationship-builder who knows everyone in the segment–any day of the week.

Market segment experience and rolodex – these are beneficial qualities, there is on doubt. But I believe they are down the list in importance relative to those listed above.

An example of where your Rolodex IS CRITICAL

Now just because I don’t think a strong rolodex generally leads the list of important attributes in the software or hardware business, that doesn’t mean I feel that way in every case. The best example of when it’s VERY important is when raising capital from institutional sources, such as venture capitalists. Not only is it important to personally know them (or get an introduction from someone who knows them well) before a fund-raising approach, it’s critical to a bizarre degree. It’s not universal, but if you approach many VCs without leveraging an existing relationship you may in fact have blown any chance with them in the future, no matter how impressive the value proposition of your business. So this is a case where having a strong rolodex in place is paramount–but the details of this is better left for another article.

That’s what I think about the importance of a rolodex in the technology marketplace. I’ve personally moved among many different market segments in my career and don’t consider it all that difficult. The most difficult part is often convincing someone it isn’t all that difficult! While it can be helpful to have a strong rolodex, I believe it is placed way too high in many folks priorities in most cases. If you disagree–post a comment below and tell us why, or just provide us with the wisdom of your own rolodex-related experiences.

Follow Phil Morettini and Morettini on Management via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, RSS, or the PJM Consulting Quarterly Newsletter. Contact Phil directly at info@pjmconsult.com

No Comments by admin on December 2, 2012

filed in B2C, Business Development, Corporate Strategy, General Management, Product Marketing/Management, SaaS, Startup/Early Stage, enterprise software, hardware, sales

A Software Startup Video Case Study

No Comments by admin on November 18, 2012

filed in Business Models, Corporate Strategy, Distribution Channels, General Management, Mergers & Acquisitions, Software/Product Development, Startup/Early Stage, VARs, Videos, enterprise software, sales

Does Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising Still Work?

Modern PPC advertising was pioneered in 1998 by Overture who was later bought by Yahoo. It really hit it’s stride in 2000 when Google introduced the AdWords platform. I’ve been managing PPC campaigns for myself and my clients since 2003. So while I haven’t been involved since the very beginning, I consider myself an early adopter of PPC technology.

The Early Days

In the early days PPC was great–using it to your advantage was like putting a knife through butter. Almost independent of individual product or market, it was very effective when I first started managing PPC campaigns. Things stayed that way for several years, even as Google (as the primary PPC platform) made constant changes to their platform. I remember soon after I started using AdWords Google made one particular change to their platform: for keywords you were bidding on that fell below a certain click-thru threshold, AdWords henceforth prevented you from bidding on that keyword-FOREVER! Needless to say, they fairly quickly decided that wasn’t in their best interest and changed things yet again. But mostly it was all good for quite a while–easy to start, easy to use and with an excellent ROI in most cases. One of the reasons it worked so well was that even many sophisticated Internet users didn’t realize that “Sponsored Links” were really Ads, leading to excellent click-thru rates and a steady stream of inexpensive visitors to your website.

PPC Enters the Mainstream

As Pay-Per-Click grew rapidly due to it’s outstanding value proposition, it entered the mainstream as an important marketing method for companies large and small. This of course drove Google to prominence as one of the top tech companies in the world and created a lot of millionaires and billionaires in the process. For a while AdWords worked so well it was like printing money, not only for Google but it’s customers, the users of AdWords. For some small companies PPC not only became a mainstream marketing method but consumed the MAJORITY of their marketing budgets. But as I’ve stated many other times, once a marketing method goes mainstream it begins to falter in effectiveness. There was a long slow decline over a period of years in terms of ROI, but for many years it was still effective–so the golden goose kept growing in size.

It’s more difficult today

As I write this article, however, I believe that we may be at a point of inflection. I’ve found that in many market segments it’s become very hard to extract even a positive ROI, let alone be highly profitable . Unless you’re a large company where PPC expenses are a tiny segment of your marketing budget, or are focused on brand-building (a dubious use of PPC, imo) rather than sales–this will give you serious pause. The quality of visitor traffic has deteriorated, with time spent on site by PPC-generated traffic a fraction of Social Media or other Organically-generated traffic. Cost per click is now very high in for high-traffic keywords. Cost per conversions have risen steadily. I design campaigns using a fairly labor-intensive long-tail approach–but I have a hard time getting a positive ROI in some (but not all) market segments. I’m far from alone in this analysis, as this New York Times article illustrates. While there are people who spend more time managing PPC campaigns than I, as I stated above I have been at it for a while and am far from a newbie, leaving me pretty comfortable with my viewpoint.

Unfortunately, I believe much of this is due to Google greed. AdWords has never been a transparent bidding system, but a “Black Box” that Google can manipulate as they please. In the past they have shown some understanding that their advertisers need to make money for Google’s own AdWords business to remain viable. But I think that the short-term quarterly profit pressures of being a public company, along with the lack of significant new revenue streams past PPC have come to bear. These factors combined with the inevitable maturing and slowdown in the growth of the Search marketplace have led the company to make changes to their platform and the black box which they may regret in the long run. Here are a couple of examples:

I’ve always utilized a best practice of rotating Ads evenly, with the belief that I am the best judge of which the best Ad for my purposes. Google recommends optimizing which Ad to show based upon their automated algorithm, which quickly decides one Ad is best. Google’s interest is in maximizing clicks, which isn’t always in my client’s best interests. But after using this method for years Google eliminated it, forcing advertisers to utilize their automated algorithm and revert to a the highest click thru Ad after 3 months of even rotation. I noticed in checking recently the option to rotate Ads evenly indefinitely has returned–I’m sure it was because of Advertiser complaints.
Another thinly-veiled, short-term money grab is the “fibbing” Google does when it provides “estimates” about what it takes to get your Ad listed on the first page. I’ve found them to be almost uniformly wildly overstated in almost all circumstances, even on very niche keywords where it appears there are no other advertisers bidding!

These are just two examples of many things I’ve seen Google do within the AdWords platform and especially in their bidding “black box” that indicate Google is acting in its own (short-term) self-interest, to the detriment of their advertiser/customers. I believe this will prove to be very short-sighted in the long run.

Combine all this with the increased competition in the PPC marketplace since it has gone mainstream as discussed above and I believe AdWords may have seen it’s best days–an ominous development for Google as a growth company. By squeezing its advertisers, the company is definitely risking killing the golden goose.

I haven’t used the Microsoft PPC platform recently so I can’t say for sure that the experience there is the same, but in the past I’ve found it to be similar.

Where does PPC fit today in the Marketing Mix

I’ve been relatively critical of PPC as a current marketing method in this article–which is a turnaround for me–I’ve always held this method in high esteem. I still believe it fits in some shape or form in most marketing budgets, but I feel the need to temper how big a role it should play. PPC retains some big advantages–there is no better way to very quickly launch a marketing campaign than PPC. You can be promoting new products, testing messaging & value propositions and exploring new market segments almost instantaneously. It’s also very measurable and therefore objective–there’s no need to throw money around with PPC, based on a measure of faith like some other marketing approaches.

But in many market segments, the ROI has degraded severely over time. As a result, it shouldn’t take up a large segment of your marketing budget unless your objective measurements indicate that it justifies such a large investment. I’ve shifted emphasis in online marketing budget recommendations to social media and behavioral/retargeting advertising (standard PPC’s close cousin). Unless you see strong ROI justification in traditional PPC investments, I’d limit my PPC exposure to two areas:

Long term: long tail keywords that may not generate big dollars but show a reasonable ROI

Short term: new products, new market segments and messaging/value/price testing which have a limited term

That’s a quick summary of how I view Pay Per Click today. What’s been your own experience with PPC lately? Is it a big part of your promotional budget? Do you also see it declining in performance in your market segment? Give us a heads up on your experience and post a comment below.

Follow Phil Morettini and Morettini on Management via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, RSS, or the PJM Consulting Quarterly Newsletter. Contact Phil directly at info@pjmconsult.com