The final step in building a customer-centric company: top-notch maintenance and operations

February 9, 2012

by John Basil Georges

We’re finally wrapping up our seven-part series on how to build a customer-centric organization by adding the final piece of the pie: maintenance and operations. At each stage of this process, we’ve been discussing why it’s essential for members of your startup team (or departments) to have on-going dialogue with their counterparts at your customer’s business. This is especially important if you’re working with one big customer to get your product or service honed before you start selling it to others.

Step 7 in the customer-centric model for startups: maintenance & operations

When it comes to maintenance and operations, your team and your customer’s team should be joined at the hip. Operations personnel are likely to get unfiltered information about how your product or service works in the field—from the people actually using it, not the executives who bought it. This type of information will make your products better and your team smarter, even when it’s painful to hear.

Getting set up for operations success requires a fair amount of planning and forecasting. Many entrepreneurs are so focused on building their product or service, they don’t think too far beyond the launch date. That’s understandable, but unwise. You need to plan for customer service after the sale, and this will affect every stage of product development. For example, you wouldn’t want to build hardware that couldn’t be fixed later, would you? Likewise, it wouldn’t be smart to set your sales price so low that you’d go out of business trying to maintain it. And you definitely don’t want to be in a position where you might not get paid because you can’t follow through on customer requests.

Aside from avoiding potential pitfalls, you could also look at maintenance as a competitive advantage. It may not sound all that sexy, but it just might be the product feature that tips the scales in your favor.

Use maintenance as a differentiator

As I’ve mentioned before, startups are always at a disadvantage when there are more mature businesses with similar offerings in the marketplace. As an entrepreneur, you may not have a string of successes you can point to, so you need to provide a compelling reason for a customer to take a chance on your company: better technology, cheaper price, more nimble production, greater customization opportunities, etc.

Now you can add better maintenance agreements to that list. It doesn’t have to be free, it just has to be better than other offerings in the marketplace. This could be the one thing that lands your company on the short list or nudges a prospect over the edge to become a customer.

Forge an aura of quality

Offering a great maintenance agreement can also help position your product or service as a reliable (even favorable) alternative to other options. This approach works well for automobiles. We assume any car with a great warranty will be mostly trouble-free because it wouldn’t be profitable for car manufacturers to pay for a lot of repairs. In fact, you may even know people who purchase cars specifically because of their warranties.

Everybody wants worry-free ownership—not just consumers. And nobody wants to recommend a “lemon” to their company, regardless of the product or service. That’s just not good for job security. So, use this to your advantage by offering a great maintenance program! Just keep in mind you must be able to support your promises and people will be skeptical if you offer something that seems too good to be true. Smart business people will recognize an implausibly good deal and wonder if you know what you’re doing.

Turn operations and maintenance into a profit center

Many businesses look at maintenance as a necessary evil, but you could treat it as a revenue opportunity if you set it up correctly. There are many models for this. For example, if you buy an Apple computer, you can opt to purchase AppleCare protection to extend your warranty. Depending upon what your product or service is and what is common in your business category, you could even offer varying levels of maintenance at different price points.

Obviously, you wouldn’t want a customer to believe that a certain level of maintenance would be included when you sold the product and then aim to charge for that later. This is one of many reasons you have to think about the costs and logistics of maintenance and operations before your first sale. Startups can easily stumble by not planning for the light at the end of the tunnel.

Structure your business to provide support

You’ll probably have to budget between five and 15 percent of the cost of goods sold to maintain your product or service, but plan for a lot of scenarios before you make any promises. Work with engineering, production, your CFO—everyone on your team who can offer insight about the costs of future operations—to arrive at the right number. Don’t forget to include head count and back office systems in planning as well. Always budget for more than you think you’ll need. Things can change dramatically once your product is in the field.

I know how hard it is when you have limited capital to set some of it aside for operations and maintenance. You’ll be tempted to use that money to make the product or service better and count on revenue to fund maintenance down the road. Take it from me: you don’t want to do that. I found myself in that position once and was at the mercy of a customer. The operations and maintenance my company was required to provide ended up being far greater than we originally thought it would be to make the customer happy.

Customers will constantly ask “Hey, will you guys support this?” Provide confidence and clarity about what you will support and spell it all out in your contract.

Of course, you can’t plan for every situation. If you’ve followed the fundamentals of every spoke in our wheel in building a customer-centric organization, some customers may be willing to give you some leeway if an unforeseen issue arises (and they always do with startups). A relationship built on trust that spans numerous touch points and people in your respective businesses will help you get through the rough spots. And this is exactly why you should build your company from the ground up to be customer focused. Customers that really want your product or service also want you to succeed, so follow the Golden Rule – treat them the way you want to be treated!

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Phase 6 in building a customer-centric business: collections

September 6, 2011

by John Basil Georges

For the sixth installment of my series about building a customer-centric business, I’ll be talking about getting paid. To recap, we’ve been talking about how to build your business from the ground up to have a laser-like focus on your customers’ needs. For the most part, we’ve been discussing how to build your business and sell your product or service to a big customer before it’s even been built.

As with my last post about invoicing, the collections process can be fraught with far more pitfalls than most entrepreneurs realize. In fact, many first-time startup execs and business owners might consider collections to be the easy part – that is, if they’ve never tried to get paid by a big company before.

There are so many things that can go wrong during the payment phase, both inadvertent and intentional, that it definitely warrants its own category. In many ways, this is the hardest time to remain focused on a customer’s needs since some customers won’t treat you well and you’ll have to get tough. This is the last thing you’ll want to do in the interest of building a positive relationship, so I’ll try to help you avoid that situation, or at least finesse it if it occurs.

Step 6 in the customer-centric model for startups: collect

Go into it with your eyes open

When you’re starting a company, it can be flattering if anybody wants to buy your product or service. It’s a validation that you’re doing something right. The bigger the customer, the better the validation. Just be aware that big companies also believe they can easily push startups around. And they’re mostly right. Also, big companies can fail – or might just fail you. The past few years of economic turmoil have demonstrated that. Regardless of the reason, if you don’t get paid (or if you receive less than what’s due) this can devastate your business. It’s smart to walk through all the possible scenarios ahead of time. Then you can prepare for the worst, even while expecting the best.

Possible problems with collections:

  • A customer may try to pay you less than what’s owed. I once had a big customer that wanted to pay us 90 percent of what they owed us – just because they thought they could get away with it. Unfortunately, as a startup, that 10 percent might represent all your profit, so you can’t take less than the agreed-upon amount.
  • A customer may try to reframe your deal after you completed the work or delivered the product. They may even try to renegotiate the deal at this late date. This can happen for a variety of reasons, but quite often the client will try to blame it on you. You’d be surprised at the excuses people can come up with for justifying bad behavior when money is at stake.
  • A customer may try to delay payment. For example your primary customer contact may have moved on, so now you have to deal with someone new. She wants to evaluate all existing vendor relationships, but this can be very time-consuming and you just can’t afford to wait.
  • A customer may be involved in a merger or acquisition (friendly or not) that could throw everything into a state of chaos. Your contacts could all be jettisoned, payments may be delayed, or the customer may decide it doesn’t need your product anymore because it’s redundant or doesn’t fit the direction of the new company. In that case, you may be offered some payoff money just to dissolve the contract, but that won’t help you get your product or service finished – and it won’t look good to new or existing investors.
  • A customer may not have the money to pay you or will cite financial hardship to get a better deal. If the market tanks, especially if your customer was in a precarious financial position to begin with, your startup could be in big trouble. A big delay might mean your company can’t continue to function.
  • A customer might file for bankruptcy. Once this happens, you could be forced to wait one to three years for payment. Even then, as a startup you’ll be at the bottom of the list because your company won’t have the legal muscle that larger companies and creditors have. This could be the death knell for a startup.

Know your customer well! That includes finance people.

Developing close personal relationships with your customer counterparts is every bit as important for collections as it is for every other step of your company’s growth. As I’ve mentioned before, the executives and staff members of your startup should spend as much time with customer contacts as reasonable. Yes, your CEO, CFO and/or CXO (where X equals any letter), perhaps even staff from accounts receivables (depending upon how big your company is) may need to meet the customer. Customer relations isn’t just for salespeople and product managers!

Whenever feasible, they should connect in person. If you’re not in the same city, that can be a challenge. Budget for some face time anyway. It might just save your business down the road. Your finance folks may think this silly and probably won’t want to do it. If you want to build a customer-centric business, however, it’s not optional. I always say: the battle is out there, not in the office!

Start with a smart contract

As you might expect, nailing down an air-tight contract at the conclusion of the sales process can help ensure (though won’t guarantee) that your startup will get paid. I could devote pages to discussion of contracts and will definitely write some posts in the future on that topic. That said, there is always a very fine line between creating an air-tight contract and making it so complicated and onerous that customers will be discouraged from working with you. Customers know this as well and might exploit it later.

If you’re in the same room with your customer during this negotiation, you’ll have a much better idea of how serious they are about your deal. Is it part of your customer’s initiative to invest in a lot of startup technologies, assuming some will fail, but hoping they’ll be the first to use (or purchase) those that are successful? Or is this a rare occurrence for your customer? Do they have something riding on the success of your product or service?

The key to any contract, of course, is the price. This is followed closely by payment conditions and other terms such as length of contract, indemnification, and roles/responsibilities of each party. Arriving at the right price can make up for a lot of hassle and disagreements that can creep in over time. If you’re new to this process, make sure you have someone on your side who has been through these hurdles before (legal counsel, investor, CFO, etc.).

Get paid incrementally

I explained in the post about invoicing that you should aim for an incremental payment schedule because this ensures everyone is invested in project completion. With this method, you’ll always get paid for some of your work because you won’t have to wait until you’ve delivered a finished product to get compensated.

It gets tricky, however, when a customer stalls on making an incremental payment. If it’s your first big customer and you’re doing the first build-out of your product or service, you won’t want to stop for anything. After all, you wanted to create this product or service even before you found your first customer. Your aim at this stage is to impress. Even so, you might have to stop or delay production or delivery if the customer wants to stall payment or renegotiate your contract in the middle of the delivery phase.

Keep scrupulous records

As I mentioned earlier, if a client wants to renegotiate your contract, pay you less, or not pay you at all, they will likely find a way to blame it on you. It doesn’t have to be true. It could simply be a way for them to create leverage or to obscure the real issue, which may be that they’re short on cash or changing direction. If that’s the case, they won’t want that kind of scuttlebutt out in the marketplace, so it will be more advantageous to find fault with your product, service, people or schedule.

Forewarned is forearmed. Since you’re producing a product or service largely to meet the specs of your first customer, your staff should have many meetings, create progress reports, and solicit client feedback during the building and delivery phases. Get it all in writing. Use a good project management or tracking tool. Build a detailed database of records. Make sure the customer knows this. It may deter a customer from attempting to find fault with your company. It will definitely help if a customer tries to renegotiate. At the very least, these tools/processes will help you build a solid customer relationship even if nothing goes awry.

Do your due diligence – and know when to walk away

I learned the hard way that it pays to research the credit histories and balance sheets of potential customers. That includes companies in the Fortune 1000. If you have a customer that isn’t as credit worthy as you’d like, you still might be able to work with them, but take more money up front in the milestone-based payment program. Or use this knowledge in the margin analysis of your product when you’re deciding how to price it.

Finally, you should always be prepared to walk away. Obviously, it’s better to do this before you have a deal. This can be very hard to do when it’s your first big customer and you’re building your dream company. I’ve been there. Just know it’s even harder to do after you’ve done most or all of the work. Some customers will say “Here’s what we’re offering, take it or sue us.” You know you’ll lose that customer if you sue them and you might be unable to finish your product right away – if at all. Pursue every possible angle before you enter into a lawsuit. But any customer that will be a persistent problem is not a customer you can keep anyway.

Now that you’re aware of the potential downsides with collections, you may be relieved to know this is not the norm. Most of the time it won’t be a problem as long as you’ve set the proper expectations, the customer relationship is built on trust and transparency, you have a mutual need for success, and you have a good contract!

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Phase 5 in creating a customer-centric business: invoicing

July 21, 2011

by John Basil Georges

If you’ve read my previous posts about creating a customer-centric business, you know I’ve covered product/service development, sales (and pre-sales), building the product/service, and delivering it to your first large customer. We started this discussion by emphasizing that all stages must be satisfactorily completed for the customer to maintain a positive view of you and your company. Now we’re ready to send that customer an invoice!

You might think it odd that I’d place invoicing on par with other major steps in the evolution of a successful startup. Invoicing seems easy compared to developing a product, right? It certainly can’t compare to the sweat and blood it takes to do sales and development. How could it possibly warrant its own special category?

Well, I always say nothing is for certain except death, taxes and billing issues for startups. Sending a “bad” invoice can be the fastest way to wreck a good relationship. That little document can send a customer into fits if it includes mistakes or worse: you assumed the client would pay for something that was never agreed upon.

This is exactly why the people in your company need to develop personal relationships with everyone who will inspect, approve and pay your bills – well in advance of your first invoice. I know it doesn’t come natural for most finance people to get out of their offices to meet customers, but they can look at it as something new and exciting to do!

Following are the top ways for startups to complete the circle of a good customer experience with the invoicing process.

Nail down the details during the sales phase

In phase two of our customer-centric circle I talked about how to sell your product or service to a big customer before the product or service was even built. This step generally involves a lot of haggling over price and delivery dates, so this is a good time to discuss payment terms and a payment schedule as well.

When you’re building a product or service for a large B2B client the first time around, you will typically set up milestone-based billing. This ensures that both the startup and the client will have some skin in the game. The client doesn’t have to pay everything up front and the startup doesn’t have to fund all the development until the final delivery date. These built-in motivations help keep the schedule on track and keep incremental payments coming.

In fact, I wouldn’t advise a startup to take the entire payment up front even if a client offered it. There are too many things that can change during the product development and delivery phases. As I’ve mentioned before, what you end up building is almost never exactly what you set out to build, so you need some flexibility. You definitely don’t want to blow through your client’s cash before you can finish the project, and that could easily happen if you’re not watching your cash flow carefully.

No surprises!

If you’re running a startup, surprises come with the territory. But they should never end up on an invoice. To prevent that, you’ll need to avoid internal surprises by building a culture of transparency.

If there’s one thing I’ve had difficulty with as an executive, it was convincing employees to give me raw, unfiltered information. People don’t want to share news with executives about cost over-runs, product delays, unforeseen challenges or anything else that’s not ideal. I always tell them to just lay it out for me. Don’t rosy it up. I’m not going to kill the messenger (most of the time).

Besides, I’ll eventually find out that we need $400k instead of $300k to make a requested change or improvement. But I’ll need to lay the groundwork with that client quickly to make that happen. It’s not something I’d want to sit on. By the way, this also isn’t something I’d handle via email – or god forbid – just add to an invoice. I’d try to meet the client face to face. I’d make a phone call if travel prevented that from happening quickly.

I recall one major network build where we hesitated to make the call to the customer on cost over-runs. This ended up being a strain on our relationship for over a year. Even now, the trust is not quite the same. It can take a long time to rebuild a relationship that you’ve damaged and it may never be the same. Lesson learned. Don’t let your fears take over your business instincts – no matter how painful the call may be.

Another good reason to stay in close contact with your customer is that in some cases, they may decide they don’t need an additional feature after all, or you can negotiate a happy medium. All of this requires discussion, finessing and personal reassurances, which is exactly why you need to have personal relationships between your finance people and the finance and operations teams on the client side.

Don’t even think about dropping unforeseen costs into an invoice under the delusion that a client is so big or bureaucratic nobody will notice. Invoices are always scrutinized. There are lots of questions on obvious items, phone calls back and forth, etc.

As I mentioned in my discussion of the delivery phase, you also can’t tack on a change order every time you have to make a change in your product or service to accommodate a client. You have to budget in advance for unforeseen circumstances and absorb many of these costs. If you try to do a change order every time the customer asks for something specific, they may believe you sold them something for an artificially low price with the expectation that you could make up the difference later. Companies that do this repeatedly don’t survive. They may get away with it a couple of times, but eventually they get found out. This erodes trust, which is the key component to any relationship, personal or business.

Finally, make sure everyone on your team (not just the finance department) knows that the CEO will be looking over the invoices and he/she doesn’t want to be surprised either.

The devil is in the details – get them right

The most important details on the invoice are obviously the numbers. Make sure they’re in accordance with your client contract and make sure they’re right. A tiny typo can cause a lot of angst. Your CEO and your finance people should go over the first few invoices manually (maybe even the first dozen) with a fine-toothed comb. You know the client will be doing this.

Long term, you’ll want to build internal business systems and processes for this. However, I don’t think startups should spend a lot of time and money on these processes early on. I discussed this in my post (before this series) about the importance of focusing on the sale. Make money first, then concentrate on your internal systems.

In addition to making sure the numbers are right, spend a little time on the look and feel of the invoice. It should have your logo, your brand colors and an easy-to-read layout. I know that may seem like a lot of effort for something you consider to be a forgone conclusion, but your invoice won’t be going straight to accounts payable for a rubber stamp. The people you (or your executives) deal with personally will be holding it in their hands or looking at it on their computers. It should be polished. You want the people who’ll be paying it to have a positive impression of your brand every step of the way.

What if you screw up?

Even when you try to do everything right, mistakes will happen. It could be something as simple as a spelling or numerical error. Or perhaps you have a difficult customer that resists paying for work completed. In either case, this is exactly why you’ll want to develop personal relationships well before issues arise. That way you can pick up the phone or make the trip for a face-to-face meeting right away. This could even provide an opportunity to further solidify the relationship because the client will know you care about what they think. You definitely don’t want to be in the position of trying to smooth something over with someone you’ve never met or spoken with before.

Of course, even if you’ve done everything perfectly, you may end up with a difficult customer, which is an even better reason to develop a personal relationship. You learn the most from your most difficult customers, so be ready to suck it up!

Remember: good news dies quickly and bad news lasts a long time. Don’t ever let down your guard where money is concerned and don’t ever take a client for granted.

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Phase 4 in creating a customer-centric business: delivering your product or service

May 9, 2011

by John Basil Georges

We’ve been talking about how you, as an entrepreneur, can build your business so every person in your organization operates with a customer-centric viewpoint. Everyone in your business has to answer to someone on the customer side – even those in finance – and instilling that philosophy will make your business better whether you’re running a startup or a large enterprise.

After designing, selling and building your product or service (yes, you sold it to a big customer before it was built), we’re now talking about the process of delivering it. The ultimate goal is to get through the pre-launch updates to final launch while keeping your customer happy at the same time.

During this step in the process, your team (the orange wheel in the customer-centric circle) will be comprised of your product and project managers and field operations. As always, your startup CEO and/or CTO should be involved every step of the way. On the customer side (yellow wheel), those involved will most likely be the field operations team, engineers (if you’ve built a technology product), marketing team and probably executives.

Step 4 in the customer-centric model for startups: deliver

The soft launch – get your teams working together

If you’ve just created something brand new, the first release (whether it’s hardware, software, a service, or something else) should be considered a “soft launch.” Some people might call it an alpha launch or a beta launch. Whatever you name it, you’ll want to get a working product (maybe even a prototype) into your customer’s hands so they can give you feedback that will lead to improvements – especially since things may be different in the field than they were in the lab.

During this phase, it’s helpful to set expectations relatively low without curbing enthusiasm. You want the customer to be excited about receiving your product, but they need to know there will be an ongoing process of working out the kinks.

In fact, depending upon all the moving parts (and by that, I mean people as well as product features), the roll-out could require several phases spaced out over a few months. Aim for two, but not more than three, soft launches before the final launch. Any more than that and your customer will be thinking “Gosh, I’m just the R&D team!” That’s not your customer’s role.

Your soft launch is the time to get all team members on both sides working together closely. The customer’s marketing and engineering team should be working with your product managers and project managers to ensure that everyone knows exactly what their respective roles are to guarantee a successful final launch. Clarifying roles and responsibilities, defining who “owns” what and tracking these interactions is key. The worst thing is putting two people in charge of the same thing or not defining roles and responsibilities clearly.

I’ve noticed a trend towards consensus management lately that is often sold as “teamwork.” This is a bad move that can lead to an ineffective organization with employees who underperform. It also tends to suppress the potential stars on your team while making ineffective people look better than they really are. This is the worst of both worlds.

Set customer expectations to keep costs down

When you negotiate price and delivery with your customer during the sales phase, the delivery date in the contract is generally considered the drop-dead date. If your product will be launched in phases (which is advisable), those have to be scheduled well in advance of the target release date.

Once a customer starts using your product, they may have a lot of feedback about things they’d like to be different or new features they’d like to see. Make sure you have a process in place to handle these requests. In fact, it’s a smart idea to nail those down during the sale.

If you try to meet all of your customer’s demands, your project manager will be reporting “here’s what that will do to the schedule” and your product manager will be telling you “here’s what will happen to our costs.” Of course, they will be working directly with their counterparts on the customer side, so they’ll be conveying that information to them as well.

However, if you’re in charge, it’s ultimately your job to balance your company’s needs while making the customer happy. This can be a very tricky balancing act. Hey, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it!

The fact is, your startup may have to absorb most of the changes and just include them in the cost of doing business (again, think about this when you’re negotiating the price). If I told a customer that I anticipated one to 10 changes before the final launch and all of those would result in change orders, they’d never purchase from me again because it would be too burdensome and the price would be too variable.

On the other hand, you probably can’t absorb all of a customer’s requests without having a big impact on your costs. You’ll probably have to push back in a professional manner at times, and possibly negotiate to include big requests in future revisions (after the official delivery date). Remember you can’t make everyone happy all of the time, so you have to be clever about including most of what is feasible at the right time and communicate the price impact when you can’t.

Approaching hard launch – it’s all about the checklist

No matter what type of product or service you’re building, you need to have a checklist of criteria to ensure it will perform in the field the way you planned. This isn’t just for your internal team, you’ll probably need to go over all those things with the customer’s team as well.

If you have a hardware product or service, in particular, it might not be possible to simulate all scenarios in the lab but you’ll need to prove it can operate in the environment for which it was intended. This could be a physical environment that puts a big stress load on the product, or maybe it needs to function under hazardous conditions. If you’re making a mobile device, for example, you’ll want to know it won’t melt if someone in Phoenix leaves it in his car all day. If you’re building software or offering a service, it should work when just a few people are using it or thousands are using it.

This is where coordination between the field operations teams – yours and the customer’s – needs to happen. You don’t want your relationship with the customer to go awry because on-site technicians are bickering about how the product is supposed to be installed or operated. This is why every tier of your organization needs to know they “own” a customer relationship.

By the time you reach the official launch date, your project manager should be able to hand it off to the customer and say “we delivered everything per our agreement” and you should have incorporated the customer’s reasonable requests and feedback. Major requests should be on your list of items to include in a future revision.

As I mentioned before, many customers will want more than you can give them, so you can’t always make them 100 percent happy. That is an unrealistic expectation and goal, which is why communicating and setting expectations along the way is key. But if your name is on the door (literally or figuratively), you really must do everything in your power to deliver what was promised. There is no substitute for that.

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Phase 3 in creating a customer-centric business: building your product

April 7, 2011

by John Basil Georges

If you haven’t already checked out the first two installments of building a customer-centric business, we’ve been talking about how you, as an entrepreneur, can build your organization from the ground up to revolve around relationships with your customers. To recap, lots of entrepreneurs invent products, create services and build businesses because they want to do something better than anybody else. Quite often, their ideas are superior. But that’s not enough to guarantee success.

To create a B2B-focused company that will last, your startup needs to have a single-minded focus on customers. The best way to do that is to match every department of your startup with a counterpart on the customer side. Everyone in your business has to be directly accountable to a customer. Nobody is exempt.

We’ve already covered how your CTO and engineering team will work with your (future) customer’s product management and/or product marketing team to ensure that you’re creating a product that is exactly what your customer needs. Then we went through the process of selling a product or service that hasn’t been built yet.

Next up: my top five tips on how your engineering and project management teams (along with your CEO) can work with your customer’s project management and operations teams to get the product built (see diagram below).

The customer-centric model for building a B2B business

1. Get your product or service “done” fast

Getting a working product or service into the hands of your first customer should be one of your top two priorities. Obviously, anytime you can get something to a customer quickly, they’ll be happy. Plus, if a client has agreed to work with you on a somewhat speculative basis, you will only enhance their trust and confidence in your company by delivering in a timely manner.

That said, there are more important reasons to be fast. If you’re building your B2B product or service largely around the needs of your first customer, the earlier in the process they can start using it, the better your product development will be. Also, you obviously want to beat potential competitors to market. Just because you don’t know of any products or services similar to yours, doesn’t mean someone isn’t out there working on something in stealth mode.

I’ve been involved in businesses that let engineers make too many decisions. They always wanted to perfect their products, but that can result in missing an opportunity to become entrenched with a potentially large customer. Customers are smart and they know that you will make improvements, so getting “designed in” should be your goal. Getting a customer early in the building phase is also a chance to establish relationships that will keep you close for future business. There is an old saying “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” That’s good advice, but I say keep your customers the closest.

2. Price your product strategically

Depending upon how your product fits into the current market, your pricing strategies will be different. Here are some likely scenarios:

A) You’re creating  a new product in a new market
(this may be bleeding edge if there’s not even a category for it)
B) You’re creating a new product in an existing market
C) You’re creating an existing product in an existing market.
D) You’re taking an existing product into a new market

If you’re creating something that’s significantly new – a disruptive technology people really want – you have a lot of flexibility in setting your price. In fact, if you think your product will be really hot (be realistic!) you may even be able to charge a premium. It’s more likely, however, that your client is already solving the problem your product or service aims to solve, but they’re just not doing it efficiently.

If you’re creating a new product in an existing market, you should be prepared to price your product very competitively. Note: if you can’t save your customer at least 20 percent over current costs of doing business for solving a problem, your product or service will be very tough to sell. Competitors could easily discount their prices by 10 percent, and since they’re already established, they would beat you in the marketplace. A 10 percent savings will probably not be worth it for most customers to take a risk on something unproven. The caveat to that is if customers are already looking for alternatives and the market is quite big. Then you may have opportunities for traction.

If you’re developing an existing product in an existing market, you may have a tough road ahead – unless your product is truly stellar. You will also need more capital to prove your idea in the marketplace. For example, If you’ve designed a spectacular new 3D, 10-blade, ergonomic, modern, green, shiny, chrome-plated, never-cut-your-face razor, then you will probably sell a few. But if you don’t have deep pockets for marketing, you might not do enough volume to compete with what’s already out there.

Of course, you need to take your costs into account as well. As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series (invent, design, develop), if your cost-of-goods is $1, you need to assume total cost will be at least $2 to account for R&D, overhead, marketing, servicing clients, etc.

Regardless of your strategies, pricing will be a very fluid process in the early days. As a startup, you may need to be more open than not about your costs to earn business with your first customer, but try to avoid revealing what your actual costs are.

3. Always aim for quality

While your top two concerns in a startup will likely be speed and cost, if you can create something of a higher quality than anything else available, you’ll hit the trifecta. Your quality should be at least equal to other options in the marketplace – and you may need to do quite a lot to prove this. The stigma of sub-standard quality is often applied to startups, so you’ll probably have to do extended usability testing to prove your product’s worth and make customers feel secure.

For example, if you’re building a hardware product, you may need to test it for functionality temperature, weather, ruggedness, endurance and pertinent electrical specs. You’ll probably need to provide all that data to your first customer to prove your product is up to snuff. If you’re selling a service you’ll need to demonstrate that it solves a customer’s problem at least as well as what is out there now.

Better yet, come up with new tests that others in your marketplace aren’t doing. Go over the top to prove your product is worthy! Because you have no historical data to rely on and customers typically don’t like buying big from startups, the bar will be very high.

4. Personal attention is paramount

As a startup that is relying on the positive feedback and cooperation of your first big (B2B) customer to make your entire business viable, you must lavish tons of personal attention on that customer. And I don’t mean cheesy selling tactics. Close, personal, genuine connections can make or break your company as you execute on your promises. Check in often. Provide easy ways for the client to give you feedback. Respond to questions and requests promptly. In one of my prior startups, we fell short once for a customer located on the east coast. That customer scheduled daily calls at 8:00 am ET (5:00 am for us!) until we fixed the problem.

Project managers may have good people skills, but engineers aren’t typically trained to think about relationship building. Make sure they understand how important it is to work closely with their counterparts on the client side. Your CEO should always be involved in this process, but your engineers and product/project managers will be responsible for fostering good client relations on a daily or weekly basis.

5. Be nimble – this can be your greatest asset!

No matter how fantastic you think your product or business model is, you just never know exactly what you’ll end up creating. Trust me on this one. Startups always have to adapt for unforeseen product snags or achievements, client needs, competitive offerings and ancillary market changes. Sometimes clients don’t even know what they want – or what’s possible – until they get a working model of your product. Then they’ll have all sorts of ideas about how your product or service could be better.

Don’t get too attached to your original idea or execution. Plan (and staff) for adaptability and build in processes to make this possible. Having the flexibility to change focus and features quickly may be the primary reason your customer has agreed to work with you. Make it worth their while!

If you have some questions or comments about how product engineering teams can work better with their client-side counterparts, please let me know. I’ll include them the next time around!

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How to build a customer-centric business (part 2): sales

February 8, 2011

by John Basil Georges

In my last post we covered how your team can approach inventing, designing and developing a product from a customer-centric point-of-view. Now we’re adding the second spoke in the wheel: sales.

Remember, your product is probably not done at this point. You’re still in the early stages of development and building your team. Your CEO may be the entire sales team. If you’re lucky, you may have a senior sales person on board or someone in mind who is willing to take a chance with you. Because you don’t have a finished product, you won’t be selling it to an end-user. You have to sell it to someone in a position to do something speculative – an executive who has the power to take a chance on you and can see how your product will fulfill a need. This could be a VP of Sales, VP of Marketing or a CXO (where X could be E, O or F). It may be all of the above. Sometimes you have to sell to everyone up and down the food chain.

Get analytical about building relationships

Sales requires just as much analysis as developing complex technical products. In fact, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done – much harder than getting a PhD in engineering. Seriously.

You have to track down and talk to all of the right people. You have to strategize about what would make them want your product. You have to learn to read body language (yes, you’ll be doing this face-to-face!). You might have to enlist the support of references and other competing customers to help make your case. This will really test your relationships.

Most importantly, you’ll have to talk about your product from the customer’s point of view. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “Don’t sell the steak – sell the sizzle!” Well, this is where that counts. Don’t get too bogged down in the minutiae of product functions. Focus on the solutions that your product offers potential customers.

Pay close attention to the questions you are asked in these meetings. Take notes without making the customer feel like it’s an interview. Refine your pitch. Be relaxed and have fun. Sales isn’t about aggressiveness and bloviating. It’s about listening more that you talk. Make your pitch more succinct each time, while hitting the highlights. Analyze the successes or failures of every sales call so you can do it better the next time around. If a customer is close to signing, strategize about how to close the deal. Find win/win solutions by demonstrating your ability to compromise. In the end, it really is all about closing and you won’t close by being inflexible.

Think of this as QA for your future sales processes. You may have to do this dozens of times and each time may be different since customers have different needs. Imagine every hour of the day (while your deal is hot) just how you’re going to close. Work through the obstacles in your mind – just like an engineer solving a tough tech problem! By the way, I recommend “Selling to VITO (The Very Important Top Officer)” if you’ve never done this kind of thing before.

Play to your strengths

Let’s be honest. Almost nobody wants to buy from a startup. So, how do you get past that? Build confidence around the things that are verifiable: your background in the industry, your credentials, thought-leadership, loyal relationships you have built over the years, a track record of delivering, investors who have funded your project, etc.

Even if you have all these things going for you (and many startups do not), you’ll get a lot of push-back from customers. Don’t discount their concerns. Address them head on. Then, focus on your advantages: agility, flexibility on pricing, terms and conditions, and the ability to adapt your product to a customer’s specifications. If you’re aiming to land your first B2B customer, you will basically be designing a product tailored for that company. This should provide them with a strategic advantage over their competitors!

Finally, it never hurts if you’re fun to work with. For a big company to take a chance on a startup, there has to be an emotional, gut-feeling component to the relationship. The customer has to want to work with you. Relationships are key and people aren’t stupid. They know when you’re having fun and really care or if you’re just in it for the money. An attitude of authenticity and humility can go a long way – and you can’t fake that.

Next time around we’ll cover spoke number three in my model for creating a customer-centric organization: building the product.

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How to build a customer-centric business (part 1): invent, design, develop

January 4, 2011

by John Basil Georges

Nearly everyone in business thinks their company is focused on customers. Otherwise, why would the business exist? If you plan to make money, you have to make people want what you’re selling, right? If you’re selling something customers can’t buy repeatedly, you still want them to say nice things about you so other people will buy it, right?

It seems obvious, but you might be surprised how hard it is for entrepreneurs to wrap their minds around this. For many (especially technology wonks) developing products is more about building a better mousetrap. They want to create something that’s never been done before – just because they can. Hey, I’ve been there. I’m an electrical engineer, after all.

Other entrepreneurs think they’ve got such a long ramp-up of product development, they won’t have to concentrate on customers for awhile. They assume they’ll cross that bridge when the product is nearly done and they’re ready to hire a sales team.

I built two successful companies on a different philosophy: you ALWAYS have a customer to serve, even if you aren’t in a traditional customer-facing role (e.g., sales). I think everyone in your start-up should be reaching out to a counterpart on the client side, developing relationships, gathering information and criticism through every major milestone of a startup’s growth. This is the only way to build a truly customer-centric organization from the ground up, which most entrepreneurs desperately need to succeed.

I created a rudimentary customer-centric model (see graphic) to show what I mean. I’ve just included the first phase here and will reveal the subsequent spokes of the circle in upcoming posts. As you’ll see, every phase of a startup’s growth has a customer. And when you build your company with that in mind, customer service will become part of your corporate DNA.

Note: while I’ve delineated the primary people who will be involved at each phase of startup growth, there is overlap at every point. Think of these concentric circles as wheels that rotate back and forth so that those in the second circle of spoke #1 might connect with those in the third circle of spoke #2 at times. Your startup CEO will be involved with all these circles at some point or another. This will become more apparent when more spokes of the wheel are revealed.

1. Invent, Design, Develop

You’ll see from the diagram that the personnel in your company who are most involved with inventing, designing and development are the CTO (chief technology officer) and engineering (all levels, including executives). On the client side, you’ll most likely be working with product marketing or product management teams – and possibly corporate executives.

In this stage, you may or may not have a prototype. You might just have well-honed idea for a product or service. Either way, you should always have a customer in mind. If you’re operating in the B2B space, you should have a customer already lined up – or aggressively pursuing viable prospects.

I know it’s hard to conceive how you could have a customer when you don’t yet have a product, but it’s possible. In fact, it’s actually preferable in some cases for obtaining investment capital. I discussed this in: Entrepreneurs’ chicken or egg dilemma: products or customers?

Know what you need from your first customer – and what you’ll be providing

As you’re pitching your idea/prototype to potential customers, the goal is to connect with an executive or product marketing team that will say “Yeah, we’re really interested, but we need you to do A, B and C” and then get them to sign a letter of intent. If you’re a really great salesperson, they might even give you a P.O. (purchase order) for it. Of course, this process isn’t easy or fast. It might take many weeks or months from the time a client expresses serious interest to the point at which you get a signed contract.

Remember, at this stage your team may just consist of two co-founders and you may be trying to land a single customer. You might have a skeleton engineering team, you might not. You definitely won’t have a sales VP to handle this process for you, which is why you need at least one co-founder who can do sales.

Be realistic about your price

You should have a good idea of what your price will be going into this process, but there will be a lot of haggling involved! Try not to give away so much that you’ll be struggling later to fill the order without enough money to make the incremental improvements your customer will want. Run the numbers every which way. Leave enough room on your gross margin to accommodate unforeseen obstacles. My rule-of-thumb is: if you have a cost-of-goods of $1X, allow for $2X. Remember you also have to service your product (or service) once it’s out there.

Additionally, keep in mind this customer order won’t be enough to support product development. You will have to use the order as leverage to obtain funding from other sources. Anytime you can prove that the market already wants your product, it’s much easier to get investors interested.

Aside from helping you obtain funding, connecting with a customer early in the design and development phase will lead to a better product and ensure that a customer-focused approach will be ingrained into your team. You want your engineering team to constantly think about what the customer wants. The customer knows best. That’s the mantra – not clever ideas nobody will buy. Plus, the shared investment of time and resources with your customer(s) just might lead to a relationship that lasts far beyond the initial contract. This process can be a positive bonding experience – if you play your cards right.

Cover your bases and consider all options

A couple other tips: if you’re creating proprietary technologies, don’t show your product idea to a potential customer until you’ve filed a provisional application for a patent. Any business that has deep enough pockets to work with you on a speculative basis could probably develop the product itself if it really wanted to. I will discuss this more in a later post.

It’s also possible that a business will love your idea so much, it will offer to buy it from you in the early stages. This isn’t common, but if it happens, tell your potential Godfather to make you an offer you can’t refuse.

In the next post, we’ll cover spokes #2 (sales) and #3 (build) in my customer-centric model, including details such as payment milestones and how to make incremental product improvements without losing your shirt – or your mind.

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Entrepreneurs’ chicken or egg dilemma: products or customers?

October 29, 2010

by John Basil Georges

I’ve already gone on record saying you need a customer well before your product is done – at least for business-to-business or infrastructure sales. A real customer will help you hone your product and give you the insight to build an enduring customer-centric business from the ground up. Plus, you might not be able to get financing for your startup in tough times without having a customer already on board.

But this leads to an obvious question: how do you get customers without having a product? The short answer is – you guessed it – you have to know people who are willing and able to work with you and make referrals. And there are many ways you can help that process along.

Competence + humility = street cred

The first referral I ever got to a VC was from a professor I had in grad school. I wasn’t thinking about referrals to investors while I was in school. I was much more interested in technology than business models or funding. Nonetheless, I was establishing street cred for whatever might come down the road. I worked very hard. I was fearless, trustworthy and reliable. Plus, I had humility (a critical attribute). Bottom line: I was the kind of person my professor wanted to refer.

While that referral was to a VC, you need the same kind of street cred to get a customer referral, with extra emphasis on humility! Customers generally know better than you what will work for them. I promise you, they like listeners more than they like talkers. Likewise, the product you set out to create is almost never the product you end up building and selling. If you don’t have the humility to listen, absorb and process criticism, and genuinely try to incorporate customers’ feedback, you won’t get very far.

Even if you’re developing something that requires customers to think beyond anything they’ve ever tried before (I have done this), you can’t go charging in like a know-it-all. You have to earn their trust by taking criticism and adapting in real time as necessary.

Of course, if your background doesn’t engender trust (and referrals), you must work harder to prove yourself. You should also consider getting a co-founder who has the traits a customer would look for.

Go where the action is

If you didn’t work at the right company, go to the right school, or even grow up in the right town, that doesn’t mean it will be impossible for you to make connections and get introductions that will lead to your first customer. You’ll just have to be persistent. You may even have to move.

I grew up in New York City, but as an electrical engineer, my heart was in Silicon Valley even before I ever stepped foot in California. In fact, I couldn’t wait to get here because I knew I would be surrounded by creative people and technologies.

If your customers will be in the financial services industry, perhaps you need to be in New York, Boston or London. If your future customers are in the entertainment business, you may need to be in Hollywood. People will tell you that location is not a factor for getting an investment in your startup or securing your first customer, especially in our increasingly virtual world. I would take that advice with a grain of salt. Never underestimate the importance of location and critical mass. You never know where a friendly conversation can lead if you’re in the right place.

I’ve run into several young, would-be entrepreneurs repeatedly at my favorite cigar shop in San Jose. I’ve been impressed by the vision and drive of a few of them, so I’ve connected them with a few people who might be able to help. I hate to say it, but that probably wouldn’t happen if they were hanging out at a cigar shop off the beaten path.

Wherever you are and whatever you do, you must get out and meet people in the flesh. Check out professional associations in your industry, entrepreneur meet-ups, your local chamber of commerce, the Small Business Administration, etc. You can’t rely on relationships that only exist online. People need to trust you and feel invested in your success before offering a juicy referral. Remember, if a referral goes south, that could reflect poorly on the referrer, so most people won’t take that risk for just anybody.

Investors can (and should) help with customers

One of the parameters for bringing investors on board should be their connections. That’s why many investor groups only consider certain types of companies. Not only do they want to have an excellent grasp of market opportunities, they also want to cultivate relationships that can help the companies they invest in. That could result in potential customers.

If you’re looking for funding, don’t be shy about discussing the degree of involvement investors will have in your startup and what they can bring to the table in addition to money. Customer referrals is a key value-add for me. Perhaps operating ability is a key value-add for you. Examine these things with a critical eye. Sometimes taking investment money isn’t about the valuation, it’s about relationships that can produce tangible results. Make sure that’s part of the package.

None of this happens overnight

In my previous two startups, it took about a year after our initial investment to cultivate the relationships (while we were in product development) that led to our first customers. It can be a grind. Someone once told me “it’s a marathon, not a race.” And usually, that results in one customer per startup in the first year, not multiple customers after a year’s time.

In fact, with limited resources, I don’t recommend that you try to serve more than one or two customers while you’re still in product development mode if your customers are large enterprises or infrastructure businesses. Trust me. This will be all you can handle until your product is ready for a public launch. If you are able to land serious mega-bucks in your first or second round of financing, perhaps this won’t be an issue, but most startups have limited capital (both financial and human) to work with.

If I were to create another startup in the same space as my previous startups, I think I could land our first customer in six to nine months. Even though I’m on a first-name basis with dozens of executives, getting a customer to buy off on something mostly unseen is still extremely difficult.

In my next posts, I’ll talk about how to develop your product in partnership with your first customer and what it means to build a truly customer-centric business. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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The best start-up advice ever: focus on the sale

September 21, 2010

by John Basil Georges

If you’re scared of tough talk, you might want to leave right now. This post will be peppered with my favorite four-letter word: sell. That’s right, as an entrepreneur you have to do more than create something new and build a company around it. You have to sell your product or service to someone – a customer.

You’ve probably heard the saying “nothing happens until something is sold.” This is true in almost any for-profit business. But when you’re mired in product development, corporate infrastructure, and building a team, selling may be the furthest thing from your mind.

If you’re a technologist, it may have never been on your mind. You might think you’re going to build a better mousetrap and then hire some glad-handing high-touch types to find customers.

Think again.

No matter what your background is, if you’re the guy or gal starting the company, you will be the first and most important sales person. For a long time. Maybe forever. Think of Steve Jobs. When is he not selling?

Isn’t sales for people who can’t do anything else?

My favorite quote on this topic is from Seth Goldmann. He says, “There are plenty of marketing courses at business school, but the task of selling is often discounted as dirty work, unfit for the finely-educated MBA mind…but without sales, nothing else is possible.”

So, what if you’re not born to do sales? You learn. Even techno-geeks and business wonks can (and should) learn to sell. I did. And it was the hardest thing I ever did in my previous start-ups. Trust me, when I was working on my PhD in electrical engineering, I never thought I’d be a sales guy. But it turns out, I was really good at it. I even sold our co-founder shares in my previous start-up, NextG Networks®, for a great pay day. How’s that for incentive? I’ve also found that most venture capitalists believe the most potentially successful entrepreneurs are those with a solid engineering background who can sell and think like business people.

If you think there’s no way you’ll ever be fit for that role, get a co-founder who is. This is not optional. Recruiting a formal VP of sales who has all the bells and whistles would just be settling.

It’s not about you. It’s about the customer.
Repeat three times.

From day one, you need to think about how you can build your entire business around the customer – from product development to back-office development. And the way to do that is by creating a laser-like focus on the customer.

This seems obvious, but few entrepreneurs know how to put this in practice. Most feel more comfortable getting the technology together, creating a product roadmap or project management schedule, doing engineering, hiring people, etc. But when you’re truly customer focused, your organizational priorities will always reflect that. Be warned, there will be people in the business early on who will hammer you about getting system processes and controls in place, developing a new widget, complaining about the way things should be done internally, etc. While that’s important, it’s usually not that important to sales and certainly not as important as the initial growth of your business.

With precious, limited capital at stake, you have to put it where it will have the biggest impact. That usually means getting your first orders from real customers. My favorite saying to those reporting to me is “the battle is out there, not in the office.”

For example, if I have $2 million in investment capital, I don’t want to spend $1 million on internal processes, systems, perfecting the new widget, etc., even though that would save me a lot of money in the long run. If I run out of money to build a prototype and sell it, there is no long run. And this is exactly why many start-ups fail.

Revenue can be very forgiving.

If you ignored some internal processes to make that first big sale, you’ll have the leverage to put those systems in place later. Yeah, it might cost you more and the company will be scrambling to ramp up quickly, but c’est la vie! You did what you had to do to make your company viable.

Plus, you may not have a choice. In this tight market, many investors are telling entrepreneurs “go get an order and then I’ll invest.” I actually think that’s a good idea. It demonstrates the viability of your business, gives you sales training which is vital, and allows you to complete the cycle of making, selling, delivering, billing, collecting and following up. There’s no better way to learn that than by obtaining an actual order. There’s only so much research and development you can do without having a customer. The sooner a customer becomes part of your process, the better your business will be.

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Need startup funding? Don’t go it alone.

August 26, 2010

by John Basil Georges

Most new entrepreneurs start with the BIG IDEA (cue angels singing). It’s a product, service, ground-breaking technology, whatever. They think if they can just tell people how fantastic it is (including potential investors) others will catch that infectious enthusiasm and they’ll be on their way. Here’s how most inexperienced entrepreneurs usually line up their priorities:

1. Product
2. Market
3. People

What they don’t know is that products are usually not the most important thing to investors. That’s right. It’s not all about the big idea. I’ve built two successful technology businesses in the wireless sector – businesses that improved the way major wireless carriers did business. I raised millions of dollars in venture capital, hedge fund money, private equity and debt funding. Twice over. And in my experience, what investors care about (in this order) is:

1. People
2. Market
3. Products

Real estate has the saying location, location, location. My saying for startups is people, people, people. In fact, if you have the right people on your team and you incent them properly, sometimes investors will have confidence that ya’ll figure out a way to make it work even if some of the other pieces aren’t yet in place.

Think about it. If you have a great product in a big market and can’t put the right team together to execute, you’re not going anywhere. I’ve made some bad mistakes with executive picks in the past, but made some really smart choices too. Looking back, the good picks made all the difference.

Get a co-founder

You can’t short-change the process of picking a great executive team – and that starts with your co-founder. “But wait, John!” you say. “This is my brilliant idea. I don’t want to share the glory!”

Well, I’m here to tell you that you’ll go a lot further if you have a yin to your yang…a peanut butter to your chocolate…a Fred to your Ginger. Why? Because if you’re really good at dancing backwards you should focus on that and let someone else dance forwards. It’s a rare entrepreneur who can – and should – go it alone. I’m not saying you can’t do it as a sole founder. I have a lot of respect for those who have done it well, but they’re few and far between.

Many of the most successful tech companies in the world have started off with a dynamic duo. Think of Hewlett and Packard, Gates and Allen, Jobs and Wozniack. Having two on board from the beginning helps lower risk and lift some of the burden – as long as there is complete trust and inter-dependency between the founders.

Look for your better half

You’ll spend more time with your co-founder than you do with your spouse. Sad, but true. You’ll definitely become each other’s confidants and psychotherapists. So make sure you know each other well and really like each other. Don’t think you can spend nearly every waking hour with someone you can’t stand. That never works.

In a technology start-up, I would choose to have a technically brilliant individual (focused inward on the company) and someone who can really sell (focused outward). I’ve found this makes a great combination – though you can have many other successful permutations as well.

Look for qualities of trust, loyalty, and dedication. These days loyalty and trust are very hard to come by, even in friendships, let alone in business partnerships. Your co-founder should be able to challenge you in a respectful way – and vice versa. You should both be highly adaptable. You may have to turn on a dime to accommodate a big customer. If you and your partner argue about money or workload more than once, it’s probably not the right fit. I can trust my co-founder with just about anything.

Success has a smell (and it is sweet)

I can walk into a company and immediately pick up the scent of brilliance. So can investors. It’s intoxicating to be in a room with really bright people. That means no matter how smart you think you are, try to work with people who are smarter. There is a saying that “A” people hire “A” or “A+” people and “B” people hire “C” people. Go with those at the head of the class.

I have a PhD in electrical engineering, but I’ve been blessed in my last two companies to partner with a guy who constantly bests me: David M. Cutrer. He’s my best friend too. We met in college and have been working together ever since. If we get hit with a crisis, I know he is there to pick up the ball and run with it.

Finally, if you’re a technologist, you may think selling is beneath you. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing happens in a company until something gets sold (I read that somewhere). VCs and private equity firms really like engineers that have made the transition into business and selling. They seek those people out. Plus, your earliest customers may need a founder to sell them and one of you will have to hold down the fort while the other does a road show for funding, PR, sales, or developing partnerships.

Having a pair of co-founders has worked for me – and it works for investors. Of course, if you think it’s better to go it alone – or to have multiple co-founders – I’d love to hear about it!

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