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Hi everyone, and welcome back to Blame It on Marketing with Emma and Ruta.
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And today we are gonna talk about going after a new segment and whether it's actually possible or not.
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And we are joined by the awesome Anastasia who yeah, introduce yourself to everyone.
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Hi, yeah, thank you for having me on the show.
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I'm Anastasia, I'm the founder of B2B Practitioners.
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We are a boutique go to market advisory for tech companies, B2B focused tech companies, mainly working with series A and B.
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before that I was on the venture capital side for quite some time working for Project A Ventures as head of marketing.
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I led the growth marketing team at X Central in ERP system that is funded by Sequoia Capital.
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and yeah, before that a lot of different stations in startups and scale-ups that had also a bunch of exits.
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to major corporates and yeah happy to be here.
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lovely to have you.
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Someone very much more reflective than us once told us that because we work with like seeds series A, Series B, they're like, you're just masochistic, and we were like, we never thought about it that way.
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So welcome to the club, Anastasia.
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Um, welcome to the masochism club.
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as normal, we would love to hear your marketing confessions or what's something that you fucked up royally that you want to get off your chest and share with us.
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Do we have to do this?
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well I once changed the lead scoring in HubSpot and I accidentally pushed it on yeah older contacts as well so it fucked up the whole kind of MQL SQL stages quite a bit.
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So yeah that was My confession that was n not good, but yeah, at least you could revert it back, but it was a bit confusing for everyone.
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In the moment it's the panic, isn't it, of like no yes.
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of the love HubSpot.
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You can revert stuff, but also like it's not like you're just like, click the previous version.
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Like you have to do a whole thing, which which I understand why some people are scared of it and want Salesforce, because Salesforce is a whole other, you know, management system for reverting to things.
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But anyway, I like that one.
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I don't think we've had a lead score confession before.
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I think this is a first.
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Very good.
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Very good.
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but also I think it is a good one because I think it's su it's such a common thing that we're all working on.
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So I think, you know, also they have changed the lead scoring in HubSpot, how you set it up.
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It's very different these wonder I wonder if we could still do that.
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Maybe I'll try, who knows?
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not with my own data as well, with someone else's.
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The reason we wanted to talk about this subject, obviously, Anastasia, you're a go-to-market genius.
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and this is a conversation that happens a lot, especially in startup land.
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and especially when someone gets a new funding round, I think the initial thought is let's go after a new segment, whether that's let's go for after if you're in the UK, let's go after the US, or let's go after another industry vertical.
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There's a lot to do that.
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and so we wanted to talk through the kind of practicalities of that.
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So, talk to us about when a company decides.
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it wants to go after a new segment.
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What are some of the like first questions they should really be asking themselves about why they want to do it and what are some of the like tactical things they should be thinking through when they do decide to do it.
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Yeah, I think the why question is the most important one.
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I think most of the companies that want to go for a new segment haven't actually exhausted their segment that they're already targeting, right?
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So I would say especially if you're early stage, you shouldn't do it.
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Period.
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I mean unless Great advice.
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Don't.
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would you define as early stage?
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obviously if you're very, very early stage, right?
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Seed pre-seed, you first need to define a segment, right?
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A segment.
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so not a new segment, but something that you want to focus on.
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and then once your series Later stage series B, for example, C, then it might make sense to move into a new segment once you've exhausted your existing ones or once you cross the chasm to speak in Moores' language in your current segment.
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I mean, but the questions that you need to ask obviously, and this is Whether you're going for a segment or a new segment, is how likely can you win the segment within the next 18 months?
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how strong is the pain in the segment, right?
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what is the need of the segment?
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So, what will the product need to be?
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how do you need to adapt the product differently for the segment?
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Also, what is the willingness to pay, right?
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So For example, we had a a company that in the HR Tech space, Series B, they were quite good in acquiring mid market and enterprise customers.
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So they they were good in their segment, right?
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And and suddenly they wanted to go for the smaller smaller companies and do PLG, product led growth.
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So essentially completely new motion.
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Completely new go to market, right?
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so then obviously, you need to think about okay, what's the willingness to pay in this segment?
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Do I need to adjust something there?
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and then also does this market continue to grow in the future?
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Is growing, right?
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That's also I think an interesting one.
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For example, everyone is proclaiming SaaS is gonna die.
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Are you focusing on SaaS?
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Are you focusing now on AI native companies?
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That could be a question.
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and then also do do you have a lighthouse customer in this segment already?
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Do you see some traction, right?
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and and then lastly, how do you know that it will work?
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So defining some success metrics upfront.
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So I would say these are the the questions.
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And I I think it's true for whether you're kind of defining a new ICP on an early customer profile or you want to go for a new segment.
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Very wise words.
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I'm so glad you mentioned Crossing the Chasm, by the way.
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I have met very few CEOs and business leaders that actually reference it.
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I think I think a lot of them kind of reference it a little bit naturally, but I think it's very much underutilized and it's such a great framework.
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If if you haven't read it, if you're listening, please go read it.
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It's like a three hour read, it's really fast.
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but I was wondering if you have any examples of where you're having these conversations with your potential clients and there's just really bad whys like what is a complete red flag to you immediately that like this is just not gonna work out Mm, I mean once you start going into the data, right?
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you see that for example the new segment that they want to go after is churning Or you look at closed lost reasons and the smaller segment is actually deciding that it's too expensive or the price is the decisive factor.
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Although it could also be that they're not bringing the value across properly, but So I think once you start digging into the data, obviously if you're early stage you won't have that much data, but in our case, talking about this series B company, they already had quite some some data.
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I have also another example w in the compliance space where Regulation was coming up to make websites more accessible, and they were like, okay, now we have to go for three different segments or even four, because this disregulation affects everyone.
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and then yeah, I was also looking at closed lost reasons and saw, okay.
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But I mean this the smaller segment they they most often say okay price is an issue etc and also the regulation has also a threshold, right?
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You if you're a 10 person company, you don't need to do this.
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So there's still an ICP, an ideal customer profile, and there there's there is a non-ICP that you want to disqualify.
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And typically what we say it's a bit like an onion right so 100% of iCP that is the segment we're building our product for eighty percent icp fit we still want to get the handraisers and we obviously yeah 100% ICP we we target those companies and then if if it's only sixty percent iCP fit you should rather disqualify it because you will spend way too much time on those companies.
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the sales cycle will be way too long.
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and then it's yeah, you have to focus your team, right?
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so they cannot do everything.
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Um you're gonna break someone's mind with a fifty percent disqualify 'cause sixty percent excuse me disqualify hates that, but don't we know between the three of us that that's the truth?
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I was actually gonna say as well, one of the things that I was thinking about as you were saying that, Anastasia, is also like cost of acquisition.
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That's a massive problem.
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So like let's what we have seen more typically, I think, is where you've been in the UK and then you're like, we're gonna go break America.
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Because we can just do that because someone sold you on a dream that that's possible.
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And what people haven't realized is marketing in America is like 5x more expensive, you know, it's five times, 10 times more competitive, it's you haven't got people on the ground.
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So there are like there are like like you say, there's almost like a structure of like questions that you need to ask yourself.
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One of those is have you actually modelled how much it's gonna cost to acquire those businesses?
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Also I would always say, like, what relationships do you have with people in the segment as well?
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Like, I think that's a really important question.
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Cause you were talking about the lighthouse customers, but also even amongst the team, like, are there partners, are there like other collaborators that you have that are like actually involved in that segment?
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Like, I'm working with a client at the moment who one of their partners has got great relationships with huge enterprises because he's worked in them and they've now built a partnership.
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So of course they can go into that enterprise segment because he's selling it in.
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So he's doing the job for them.
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But that is purely based on the relationship, right?
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Otherwise there would be no there would be no way that you would be able to enter that enterprise segment.
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And I don't think people think that's with going from like mid market to enterprise.
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Most peop like most companies are in mid market, they're like, Let's just get bigger customers.
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They'll pay more money.
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That must be easy.
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But the cost of acquiring an enterprise is like Yeah.
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the cost goes up, the everything, the type of people you need on the team goes up, like everything, the infrastructure you need to service those clients changes.
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There's a whole There's a whole like operational part, which actually we're gonna talk about later, so I'm not gonna skip too far.
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But let's talk about ideal customer profiles a little bit, because we've already touched on those and they're really important.
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So if you are gonna go after a new segment and it's not a proven segment, but you've ticked some of those initial questions off where you can say, like, okay, we actually think going after this segment's a good idea, how do you actually validate an ICP for a new segment if you haven't really got any customers in that space already?
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Mm-hmm.
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Yeah, if you haven't got any customers in that space, otherwise you can pull obviously your your customer data, then we always go out and talk to the segment, right?
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So really try to get at least, I don't know, 10, 15 interviews to understand okay, what are what are their problems.
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What are they using now?
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How do they solve those problems now?
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Is there maybe already a a competitor or even like a workaround, right?
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It doesn't always need to be a direct competitor.
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It's always just like, I'm using, you know, some kind of workaround with Excel and Claude or whatever whatever.
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and then yeah, so essentially try to to to understand their pains, how they work now, what solutions they might already evaluate or might not, maybe they they they're not solution aware, they're not problem aware.
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we don't know that, right?
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And then that's kind of the qualitative part, of course, if depending on your company stage again You would also do a bit of a quantitative analysis, but if you're early stage, I think the interviews would already be telling you a lot.
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And then you you look for similarities, right?
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So how can you group them?
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what do they have in common?
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Like any firmographics, any buying triggers I mean there's the obvious things like revenue, employee size, but there's also triggers like okay they're a hiring or they just raised the series A and they want yeah to expand their team or have a a certain problem right they have go to market they have product market fit but not no go to market fit and so on and so forth.
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So yeah th those would be kind of the the company level signals and I would also look for negative flags, right?
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So we definitely look at things that if we hear those then we want to disqualify as quickly as possible.
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Very sensible advice.
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I'm really enjoying this conversation.
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I'm like, it's so nice to talk to somebody who actually wants to validate this stuff before doing it.
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So not the norm.
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I don't think I've ever had such a sensible conversation about going after a segment without feeling like I'm losing my mind.
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So it's quite nice.
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There's a there's a lot of divisions with going off to new segments, I main problem.
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Absolutely.
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So one of the things that is obviously impacting most tech companies is AI so whether you now have to put AI powered on on every sentence in your website or you are actually doing something cool with AI, how does that change things?
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are we going after companies that work with AI now?
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Are we s positioning ourselves as an AI company?
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Have what kind of like I guess examples or or experiences have you had with that in the last couple of years since ChatGPT blew up?
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yeah, that's a that's a good one.
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I I feel like everyone is just putting AI enabled onto it.
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but I think it it's not always good to be honest.
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But maybe I'll talk a little bit about how we are approaching positioning.
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So typically what we do is analyze the competition and then write for basically every competitive alternative and that can be obviously direct competitors but also your yeah do nothing right that's the most most important actually competitive alternative and I feel like in today's market it's very very much the case that people just don't decide because they're a bit of Okay, can I build this with Claude maybe?
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And so yeah so you need to be aware of of of how people are solving it right now.
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And then for each competitive alternative, we look for okay, what's the unique attributes of my software, right?
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based on on that alternative.
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then we we look for value and proof.
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So typically this needs to be justifiable numbers right so you your saving time, your saving costs, so something that we can quantify, we can prove and which is objective and not subjective.
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and then typically also look for relevant trends so wh to create urgency.
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So why now?
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Why should you decide for the solution now?
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And and then we come up with this value proposition that is typically two pillars.
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One the first pillar is typically you define your category for people that might now solve the the the issue through pen and paper or do nothing or Excel or any other kind of a scrappy way.
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And then the second pillar is actually where you differentiate yourself against your direct competitors, and where you put in the value improve and you you show how you're different from similar solutions.
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and yeah and coming back to that question, I I think If you're in certain industries, this could rather be a negative lag because you people are like, Okay, GDPR, my god, the data is going to the LLMs or what whatever.
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so you need to really again be be careful and and also I mean I th I think by now it's a standard feature in the in each product, to have AI capabilities, right?
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So I don't think it's it's a huge differentiator by now, to be honest.
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so Yeah, you you need more than than that, right?
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yeah.
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I also it's that thing of saying if if the if the if you know what the challenges are that your audience have and your customers have and AI is part of that solution, I think my you know, my view is always if that is part of the solution that's fine if you can articulate why it's part of the solution to the problem that they have.
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If it isn't, it doesn't need to go in there.
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You know.
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we always say like don't s cite your features, right?
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So um of course like you need to you need to make sure that they get the value.
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So what's the outcome that you're selling, right?
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You're selling an outcome.
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I don't care if it's AI or not AI, I want a certain thing to be to certain job to be done.
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So yeah.
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Yeah, always.
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Always lead with the problem.
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I think that's why it's interesting, isn't it?
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Because when it comes to like other types of marketing, like even just B to C it's so obvious that that's the way that people buy and I think in B2B in particular, we kind of forget that.
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It's like there's still humans with problems buying your thing.
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And that's why they bought the thing, because they want to make their life easier.
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it's usually the f the the sort of basic basic um like reasons for buying new product product or service, right?
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Um so when it comes to kind of product market fit, because again this is another problem we always talk about on this podcast, Anastasia, that you can't outmarket a bad product.
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It's quite hard to do that.
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so when you are entering a new segment, like what are some of the ways that you could potentially figure out if it's the product or if it's the marketing?
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I mean the the really quick one is if you see there's great retention, but yeah, customers love it once they have it, but you can't get enough of the rights once.
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There could be rather marketing problem.
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if you can get people in but they don't stick, that's typically a product market fit problem.
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Or they don't use it enough or yeah, they churn.
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So I think a a great test is the Sean Ellis test.
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you probably know that one.
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so if you ask your this sp specific segment, how disappointed would you be if this product wouldn't exist any longer?
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And if 40% need to say that they would be very disappointed, then you kind of have product market fit.
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if not, yeah, and and then yeah, you have to obviously do it on your segment.
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So other red flags I would say are the sales cycles are extending.
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even if you have good enablement, every deal requires some kind of customization or you need to discount every time to close the deal.
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And we know that this is a a common one.
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Like almost everyone is discounting.
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you have high churn in the first, I don't know, 90 days or so.
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Yeah, so so I would say these are the the the ones where you say, okay, this is probably a product market fit problem.
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Absolutely.
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I haven't thought about that question too much.
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So it's nice to have some like pointers because you t you tend to like feel it a little bit, you know what I mean?
00:20:44.193 --> 00:20:51.091
Where you're like, oof, there's there's something up here, like I don't know if it's the marketing, but it's good to have like some specific numbers to to fall back on.
00:20:51.091 --> 00:20:55.215
Um, because yeah, marketing fit products is so hard.
00:20:55.561 --> 00:21:04.488
in an ideal world, you know, if you've got that kind of like if product and marketing are close, which I would like to see more of in organizations, I don't see a lot of that to be honest.
00:21:04.488 --> 00:21:09.210
Even when there's a product marketer, I'm like, we're not cl as close as we could be.
00:21:09.210 --> 00:21:21.995
And I think, you know, like marketing has the ability to help with product market fit because we can obviously feed into, we can feed back a lot of the information, a lot of the data that tells you whether the product market fit is right.
00:21:21.995 --> 00:21:28.357
Some of the things you're talking about, Anastasia, like, I don't know, like even if you keep trying to run like G2 review campaigns and you never get any.
00:21:28.357 --> 00:21:33.280
reviews out of anybody, it's highly unlikely that it's just the marketing that's the problem.
00:21:33.280 --> 00:21:40.306
You know, like I think you can take there are things that we are doing where you can take indication like from what we're doing.
00:21:40.306 --> 00:21:50.537
Even if your website's got terrible conversion rates, but you're really clear on your website about what you do and you get lots of traffic and you get lots of people clicking around Mm-hmm.
00:21:50.537 --> 00:22:02.331
No, I think there's there are there are signs I think that you could be using and I I I'll be honest, like I definitely don't use those enough in conversations with people about product because No, don't get asked.
00:22:02.331 --> 00:22:03.333
Yeah.
00:22:03.635 --> 00:22:07.678
But we could be having we could initiate some of those conversations, couldn't we as marketers?
00:22:07.678 --> 00:22:15.293
We could be the ones who are like, okay, I've got a set of metrics from marketing that to tell us whether there's a product issue or not.
00:22:15.293 --> 00:22:20.205
Um and then obviously you go out and validate it with some of the the numbers that Anastasia's talking about.
00:22:20.205 --> 00:22:27.759
But you can you can like you say, if you want to, I guess, put your finger on the feeling that you're talking about router, that's the way to do it, isn't it?
00:22:27.759 --> 00:22:29.576
Yeah, yeah, yeah, agreed.
00:22:29.580 --> 00:22:30.173
Absolutely.
00:22:30.173 --> 00:22:41.722
So another example maybe as well, with a customer of ours where I went out to talk to their customers, like different segments as well, smaller ones, bigger ones.
00:22:41.722 --> 00:22:53.370
and the customers basically all told me, Yeah, we're actually not really using the software we're using because they had a bit of a software plus service approach.
00:22:53.370 --> 00:22:58.942
So mm and and most of the smaller companies were only using this the service approach.
00:22:58.942 --> 00:23:03.664
So data protection officer and not the data protection software.
00:23:03.664 --> 00:23:07.528
And I was like, okay, but you want to be a software co company.
00:23:07.528 --> 00:23:15.003
so we need to figure out who actually uses the software more, who are the power users who actually get value out of it.
00:23:15.003 --> 00:23:20.970
And so So then we discovered that it only makes sense to automate these data privacy things.
00:23:20.970 --> 00:23:29.303
once you're a bigger company, you're rather mid-market where you have already legal person that struggles with these problems.
00:23:29.303 --> 00:23:36.410
And w and if you're small you're like, I don't care, like I have the d data protection officer, you'll figure it out.
00:23:36.410 --> 00:23:39.682
I don't wanna to do anything with it, right?
00:23:39.682 --> 00:23:46.951
So and that was clearly okay, we apparently don't have product market fit in this particular segment.
00:23:46.951 --> 00:23:52.855
I want to ask you a question about that, Anastasia, because obviously Root and I do work predominantly with SaaS as well.
00:23:52.855 --> 00:23:56.649
and there is usually a plus service bit in there.
00:23:56.649 --> 00:24:07.365
And I have seen the exact example that you're talking about play out where people want the service first and they want the software second, and sort of the software is a bit of a like extra added extra.
00:24:07.365 --> 00:24:23.394
But then what happens is there's pressure from the VCs in the board, um, with the CEO or the founder because they're they're like, no, we only want to invest where you've got ARR and yeah, and and service doesn't fall into the ARR category.
00:24:23.394 --> 00:24:26.917
So how do you tackle that kind of conundrum?
00:24:26.917 --> 00:24:28.961
Because that is that is quite common.
00:24:28.961 --> 00:24:29.893
yes, yes.
00:24:29.893 --> 00:25:11.256
I mean again I I would try to identify the segment that will most likely benefit from your software right and and I think you can basically like the criteria that I said okay is it a a particular vertical right do they have a particular problem is it certain size of people certain revenue or maybe also the team size from from when they need something like that right for example we also have with this HR software for example they only needed a talent acquisition suite once they actually had a VP of talent acquisition, right?
00:25:11.256 --> 00:25:14.338
and then they they they were ready for it.
00:25:14.338 --> 00:25:40.402
So but yeah it's it's quite interesting actually now with all the AI stuff that you you you almost get like the service component first so peop Some companies even do this forward deployed engineering bit where they go in, they say, Okay, we offer you as a service, we will co develop something and then we'll see what kind of use case and build build it for you customizable.
00:25:40.402 --> 00:25:47.831
I think that changed a little bit a little bit, but if you're a SaaS and you do mostly service, that's a bit of a tricky one, I would say.
00:25:47.831 --> 00:25:48.898
Yeah, yeah.
00:25:48.898 --> 00:25:53.759
feel like a lot of service companies also get funding to then turn into SaaS companies.
00:25:53.759 --> 00:25:55.870
Um true.
00:25:55.870 --> 00:26:13.088
also a tricky one because again the clients that you were servicing as a service company, there's a lot of service in that, um, are probably not the same clients that are gonna want software because actually like the notion of do it yourself versus someone else doing it for you is already like very different, right?
00:26:13.088 --> 00:26:15.121
Different persona, different different needs.
00:26:15.121 --> 00:26:17.062
So yeah, we we see that a lot as well.
00:26:17.062 --> 00:26:21.756
So let's go back to something that we alluded to earlier, which is operational readiness.
00:26:21.756 --> 00:26:29.888
what are some of the operational, I guess, checks and commitments that you need to think about before you try to break into a new segment.
00:26:29.888 --> 00:26:34.203
So resources, process, people, what what are those?
00:26:34.445 --> 00:26:35.625
Systems.
00:26:36.371 --> 00:26:46.441
Yes, so I think the first thing you need to be aware of once you identified a new segment or you decided to go for a new segment, this changes your whole go to market.
00:26:46.441 --> 00:26:52.638
So which means your product needs to be adapted, maybe.
00:26:52.638 --> 00:26:55.279
your pricing needs to be adapted, right?
00:26:55.279 --> 00:27:00.285
So in as I said in the earlier example of the series B HR tech.
00:27:00.495 --> 00:27:10.422
if you're going if you were a mid-market enterprise and then you're going for a smaller segment now, SMB or something, then okay, what's the pricing then?
00:27:10.422 --> 00:27:16.067
which go-to-market motion are you now doing to acquire those customers?
00:27:16.067 --> 00:27:22.831
So is it still outbound, is it inbound, is it product led, account-based, etc.
00:27:22.948 --> 00:27:26.041
Then yes, how do you on onboard people?
00:27:26.041 --> 00:27:27.332
the whole marketing bit.
00:27:27.332 --> 00:27:31.347
So how do you qualify them against your ICP?
00:27:31.347 --> 00:27:33.971
how you nurture them, how you route them.
00:27:33.971 --> 00:27:35.793
So essentially everything.
00:27:35.793 --> 00:27:44.607
So that's why we we say, okay, first ICP research, then ICP development, and then once you've taken this decision.
00:27:45.280 --> 00:27:49.806
you need to do go to market team enablement, we call it.
00:27:49.806 --> 00:27:52.197
so what does that mean for the team?
00:27:52.197 --> 00:27:56.850
And typically what we do is go into the different into the different teams.
00:27:56.850 --> 00:28:02.511
And by the way, the teams are obviously already in the development research phase, they're already involved.
00:28:02.511 --> 00:28:05.113
So they will give their perspective as well.
00:28:05.113 --> 00:28:06.903
Maybe I I forgot to mention that.
00:28:06.903 --> 00:28:11.795
So so the workshopping bit and how sales is selling to to various segments.
00:28:11.795 --> 00:28:17.335
But then the enablement bit is really what does that mean for your daily work now?
00:28:17.335 --> 00:28:17.625
Right?
00:28:17.625 --> 00:28:37.395
So if you're in customer success, what does that mean when you were always enterprise and you s you tend to tended to spend a lot of time on quarterly business reviews with the customers because they're huge huge clients you need to make sure you you hit the value targets and so on.
00:28:37.395 --> 00:28:39.497
Now you go for a smaller segment.
00:28:39.497 --> 00:28:40.898
What what does that mean?
00:28:40.898 --> 00:28:43.158
You cannot do the same, right?
00:28:43.158 --> 00:28:55.186
You cannot spend as much time because the the average contract value is much lower, so you have to do some kind of health check, maybe automated health check.
00:28:55.732 --> 00:28:58.336
Same for the for for marketing, okay.
00:28:58.336 --> 00:29:06.693
your website probably speaks to the enterprise segment, not to the small customer segment.
00:29:06.693 --> 00:29:08.465
So what do you do?
00:29:08.465 --> 00:29:10.138
Like how do you adapt it?
00:29:10.138 --> 00:29:11.879
what's what's the messaging?
00:29:11.879 --> 00:29:14.612
What what is the persona you are talking to?
00:29:14.612 --> 00:29:20.067
Do they do they do then a free trial or can they self-onboard?
00:29:20.067 --> 00:29:29.392
So There's massive massive massive change once you decide that that you wanna go for a different segment.
00:29:29.465 --> 00:29:43.590
It's it's interesting, Anastasia, 'cause obviously like everything you're describing sounds completely rational and pragmatic to us, but the reality is we we encounter founders and CEOs all the time that basically are like Yeah, that all sounds great.
00:29:43.590 --> 00:29:45.991
We'll kind of just do it if we can.
00:29:45.991 --> 00:29:47.573
What's what's your sense of that?
00:29:47.573 --> 00:29:52.257
So I was having a bit of an existential crisis the other day where I was like, maybe Rutra and I are wrong.
00:29:52.257 --> 00:29:56.671
Maybe we shouldn't do all this pragmatic, logical stuff that's grounded.
00:29:56.671 --> 00:30:05.067
Maybe we should just be a bit more like these founders that are like, nah, let's just give it a go and let's all just get on board and like stop making it difficult.
00:30:05.067 --> 00:30:10.471
Have you is it possible that it can work if you ignore this stuff?
00:30:10.673 --> 00:30:12.134
That's my first question.
00:30:12.222 --> 00:30:20.667
It's unlikely, but like I yeah, the other day I had that conversation actually with a founder of an AI native company.
00:30:20.667 --> 00:30:30.074
Very fast growing, and of course they think okay, we're vertical agnostic, we're gonna just, you know.
00:30:30.276 --> 00:30:42.632
do a lot of performance marketing and bring in, I mean they're also focused on SMBs rather S than as a really small customers and doing a lot of performance marketing.
00:30:43.272 --> 00:30:49.534
And I think yeah for to start with, I mean that can work.
00:30:49.673 --> 00:31:02.082
But what I typically see is after a certain time of acquiring everyone they see also that a certain segment is churning.
00:31:02.082 --> 00:31:11.634
they're spending a certain more time on on maybe non-good fit customers to onboard them because they're not as technical.
00:31:11.634 --> 00:31:17.467
and then then you spend a lot of internal resources and money on on the onboarding bit.
00:31:17.467 --> 00:31:25.113
and Or you spent a lot of money on even acquiring the customers as you said, so high customer acquisition cost.
00:31:25.113 --> 00:31:32.340
so typically I say, Yeah, you you can try that, but then after something they come to us.
00:31:32.340 --> 00:31:34.180
They come back to us.
00:31:34.180 --> 00:31:39.383
They come back and they're like, Yeah, Anastasia, you were right.
00:31:39.383 --> 00:31:45.005
they if they can make it a year with that mentality, they're doing all right.
00:31:45.005 --> 00:31:53.128
But generally I would say after about six months, we get messages where they've come back and they're like, wait, maybe we shouldn't have.
00:31:53.628 --> 00:31:56.049
But I I it's it's very validating to hear that.
00:31:56.049 --> 00:31:57.666
Makes me feel less insane.
00:31:57.666 --> 00:32:09.769
we had a conversation not too long ago with someone about like Going into the market and we were like, Okay, it's a competitive market, there's a lot out there, you're brand new, you don't have like the necessary partnerships, et cetera.
00:32:09.769 --> 00:32:12.853
So how would we actually go to market with you launching?
00:32:12.853 --> 00:32:20.361
And we put together a plan that was like fairly hardcore because like that is probably what they need to get enough customers to keep going.
00:32:20.361 --> 00:32:25.183
And it was like an immediate no because they're at the stage where they're like, no, it's fine.
00:32:25.184 --> 00:32:27.306
Like, this is great.
00:32:27.314 --> 00:32:28.695
This what people are gonna love it.
00:32:28.695 --> 00:32:33.338
We've got a couple useless, they're gonna love it, and we're like we we hope it's true.
00:32:33.338 --> 00:32:34.941
We wish you the best of luck.
00:32:34.941 --> 00:32:36.322
We're here later.
00:32:36.513 --> 00:32:38.541
Yeah, we'll be we'll still be here.
00:32:38.541 --> 00:32:46.776
I thought folks in the UK are are better in actually thinking the go to market bits earlier in the process.
00:32:46.776 --> 00:32:49.001
you know, it's a mix.
00:32:49.001 --> 00:32:55.715
say out of every ten people I speak to, there's one that is very logical and reasonable.
00:32:56.535 --> 00:32:58.266
And the rest are, I don't know.
00:32:58.266 --> 00:33:00.427
There's some there's a there's a gradient, right?
00:33:00.427 --> 00:33:11.280
Like some of them are willing to do it, but then you kind of I feel like with some people you cross over into the like, I wanna do all the things that you're talking about, Anastasia, and then the majority are like, absolutely not.
00:33:11.382 --> 00:33:13.792
And then they and then they have a really hard time.
00:33:13.792 --> 00:33:14.141
Mm.
00:33:14.141 --> 00:33:21.328
And then we either come back or you know or they they they push on, you know, they keep they run out of money.
00:33:21.328 --> 00:33:22.109
Yeah.
00:33:23.264 --> 00:33:23.882
Yeah.
00:33:23.882 --> 00:33:26.033
well, I feel like I say I feel very validated.
00:33:26.033 --> 00:33:30.956
obviously one of the big things in all of this, and you've mentioned it already, is the total addressable market.
00:33:30.956 --> 00:33:35.919
And we've given examples of people who are like, I'm my tech and one of the big ones is HR Tech.
00:33:35.919 --> 00:33:48.355
We work a lot of HR Tech, you know, we're vertical agnostic, we can sell to anybody and everyone, but actually that causes a lot of problems, especially if you're gonna try and go after a new segment, because you actually can't be all things to everybody.
00:33:48.355 --> 00:33:54.869
So what are some of the conversations that you have around that and how do you try and like convince people not to just try and market to everybody?
00:33:54.869 --> 00:33:59.994
Yeah, I mean the the biggest one I think is the the messaging bit, right?
00:33:59.994 --> 00:34:09.285
So if if you say you're vertically agnostic, that means you have to have because I mean verticals are still different, right?
00:34:09.285 --> 00:34:24.393
So y one if you for example do decide to do outbound, and you you say, Okay The verticals are pretty pretty similar in a way that they always they all have a CFO, for example, just making stuff up.
00:34:24.393 --> 00:34:31.257
then the question is still once you do outbound bit, what message are you sending them?
00:34:31.317 --> 00:34:34.320
So is it the same for each vertical?
00:34:34.320 --> 00:34:49.458
Probably not, because they have the CFO in in finance vertical versus the CFO in the manufacturing vertical is probably different, ha has a different problem.
00:34:49.458 --> 00:34:56.032
And I mean with the whole AI craze you're now able to personalize it, right?
00:34:56.032 --> 00:35:05.059
So you still need to kind of even if you say okay I want to go for various verticals, you still need to adapt the messaging.
00:35:05.132 --> 00:35:08.076
So that's that's one one point.
00:35:08.076 --> 00:35:25.530
and I think the the most interesting one is that or the what I see is why founders are struggling to to do a clear or to define a clear ICP is that they think they will they will leave money on the table.
00:35:25.811 --> 00:35:42.867
But actually the opposite is true because you you will get more revenue from a good fit customer than if you're doing spray and pray and and and vertical agnostic and and whatnot.
00:35:42.867 --> 00:35:49.117
so I think y you will see it in the numbers very quickly.
00:35:49.309 --> 00:35:52.661
and especially if you're early stage you need to just focus.
00:35:52.661 --> 00:36:07.204
You you cannot put your you don't have a huge team to do multiple go to market motions, multiple segments, 'cause you need to mm customize everything for each each segment, right?
00:36:07.481 --> 00:36:08.291
Yeah.
00:36:08.331 --> 00:36:08.912
Yeah.
00:36:08.912 --> 00:36:16.257
It's interesting as well with the vertical agnostic thing, 'cause I think quite a lot of the founders I speak to anyway would say, yeah, but we're doing okay.
00:36:16.257 --> 00:36:20.099
But actually if you if you doubled down you'd be doing more than okay, wouldn't you?
00:36:20.099 --> 00:36:34.726
Because I think at the moment they probably don't look at things like the actual wastage and the inefficiency in their marketing spend, in their the time their CSMs spend trying to retain, like you say, bad fit customers in the sales cycle length with bad fit customers.
00:36:34.726 --> 00:36:40.081
You know, there's probably like a bit of work that they could do there to kind of maybe surface some of that stuff.
00:36:40.081 --> 00:37:00.384
I've actually been with a client who's done a repositioning and what they've discovered is actually Their products are great for businesses that have like deskless workers because they're the customers that we retain the longest, that have the highest adoption of the product, and they used to market like that, and they stopped because they wanted to go after everybody, and they've taken a hit.
00:37:00.384 --> 00:37:01.365
There's churn.
00:37:01.365 --> 00:37:04.050
So I'm like Mm.
00:37:04.050 --> 00:37:08.974
repositioned ourselves back against like what the product's actually used for and the type of customers that use it.
00:37:08.974 --> 00:37:15.702
So I think yeah, there's a lot there's a lot to to be learned for like actually being like, no, no, no, it's okay to be that those people.
00:37:15.702 --> 00:37:16.762
Like it's good.
00:37:16.762 --> 00:37:20.470
It's a good thing that those people like your product and use it and you retain them.
00:37:20.470 --> 00:37:27.177
Because lifetime value is as important as the instant AR instant hit of like getting a contract signed, isn't it?
00:37:27.177 --> 00:37:27.753
So yeah.
00:37:27.753 --> 00:37:28.693
Yeah.
00:37:28.693 --> 00:37:29.913
Yeah, absolutely.
00:37:29.913 --> 00:37:38.822
I mean, especially in times where now everyone is questioning how many tools and and software you actually have within the company.
00:37:38.822 --> 00:37:49.960
but yeah, I feel like pulling the data, showing the founder, okay, see, based on the data, we have a bunch of customers that are really not a good fit.
00:37:49.960 --> 00:37:51.173
We should let them go.
00:37:51.173 --> 00:37:53.499
I think that helps a lot.
00:37:54.327 --> 00:38:01.101
also mega scary and nobody wants to do it because like what do you mean we have to let go of customers?
00:38:01.845 --> 00:38:02.807
Wild.
00:38:02.807 --> 00:38:03.331
Yeah.
00:38:03.331 --> 00:38:03.887
Yeah.
00:38:03.887 --> 00:38:13.496
the word churn 'cause I feel like it's the thing that scares everyone, but actually there is there should be a category of acceptable churn, which is basically bad fit customers.
00:38:13.496 --> 00:38:16.996
If they're a bad fit from the get go, it's not good for anybody.
00:38:16.996 --> 00:38:17.708
It's not good for them.
00:38:17.708 --> 00:38:24.550
Also, it creates like it can create other pro problems like reputational issues, which I think people then don't think through.
00:38:24.550 --> 00:38:32.048
It's like actually if you've got a bad fit client and they're complaining all the time, what are they actually saying to their network about your business?
00:38:32.048 --> 00:38:41.567
So I I I do think that that like thinking about it like that as well helps 'cause it's it is ultimately it's like if you have good relationships with people, you can retain your clients.
00:38:41.567 --> 00:38:47.070
If you have good product, if you have good service, you know, and you retain people, then people are gonna say good things about you.
00:38:47.070 --> 00:38:50.432
If you don't do that, they're gonna say bad things about you.
00:38:50.432 --> 00:38:54.483
Um which then makes it all even harder.
00:38:54.483 --> 00:38:58.421
Um I right?
00:38:58.590 --> 00:39:02.733
I I wish the flywheel had really taken off, guys.
00:39:02.733 --> 00:39:07.514
And said we're still stuck with this funnel mentality, aren't we?
00:39:07.869 --> 00:39:09.392
it's been an awesome conversation, yeah.
00:39:09.392 --> 00:39:10.653
Super practical.
00:39:10.653 --> 00:39:17.010
so if you're listening to this, I hope you've got loads of takeaways and lots of things to look at now that you've got some practical tips to go off.
00:39:17.010 --> 00:39:21.452
But just to wrap up the episode, we'd love to hear if you've got any marketing gossip for us.
00:39:21.452 --> 00:39:25.699
So something that you love or you hate or something that you just can't stop thinking about in the marketing world.
00:39:25.699 --> 00:39:31.902
Yeah, so what I hate is actually that everyone is doing the AI enabled outbound.
00:39:32.416 --> 00:39:35.161
feel like everyone is, we don't need marketing.
00:39:35.161 --> 00:39:45.257
We can just do, you know, a bunch of emails on certain target account lists and then we'll we'll, you know, get our customers.
00:39:45.358 --> 00:39:52.943
and to be honest, I get like flooded with emails every week and I think and bad ones.
00:39:53.081 --> 00:39:53.682
Yeah.
00:39:53.682 --> 00:40:03.778
very bad ones that are not even personalized and and so I I'm not even sure this this channel or this motion will prevail.
00:40:04.195 --> 00:40:07.836
what I love is it's obviously the best time to be in tech.
00:40:08.677 --> 00:40:25.414
with everything you you you can automate like you can automate the boring stuff you can be more creative now we're playing around currently with A AI agent services, so building agents for nurturing, for for lead routing and so on.
00:40:25.414 --> 00:40:27.166
So I think that's a lot of fun.
00:40:27.166 --> 00:40:33.474
if you yeah are courageous to test it and if you know how to to set this up.
00:40:33.474 --> 00:40:35.206
I think it's a lot of fun.
00:40:35.206 --> 00:40:38.639
Brings back the fun into our profession.
00:40:38.791 --> 00:40:44.635
It's it's almost a bit like use you get to play with all this really cool tech, but please use it in the right way.
00:40:44.635 --> 00:40:45.606
Yeah.
00:40:45.729 --> 00:40:49.423
Yes, I mean you still need to to know your strategy, right?
00:40:49.423 --> 00:41:09.005
You still need to know your ICP, you still need to understand the buyer decision process, you need to understand d you draft your positioning 'cause that is essentially the context that you have to give the LLMs and all the tools out there, because just using the the tools won't won't help you.
00:41:09.005 --> 00:41:09.775
Yeah.
00:41:10.115 --> 00:41:11.567
Thank you so much, Anastasia.
00:41:11.567 --> 00:41:13.418
This has been a wonderful conversation.
00:41:13.418 --> 00:41:22.105
we didn't even get to, you know, creating a new category, which is I feel like the the ultimate version of a new segment, but that's the whole of the conversation.
00:41:22.105 --> 00:41:23.164
don't do it.
00:41:26.108 --> 00:41:27.909
unless you have a lot of money.
00:41:27.969 --> 00:41:31.112
We tried just unless you have a lot of money and time, don't do it.
00:41:31.112 --> 00:41:31.840
Yeah.
00:41:31.840 --> 00:41:36.715
thank you so much for this, and yeah, all of Anastasia's details will be down in the show notes.
00:41:36.715 --> 00:41:39.621
thank you so much for joining us, and we will see you in the next episode.
00:00:00.955 --> 00:00:04.876
Hi everyone, and welcome back to Blame It on Marketing with Emma and Ruta.
00:00:04.876 --> 00:00:11.419
And today we are gonna talk about going after a new segment and whether it's actually possible or not.
00:00:11.484 --> 00:00:16.010
And we are joined by the awesome Anastasia who yeah, introduce yourself to everyone.
00:00:16.960 --> 00:00:20.224
Hi, yeah, thank you for having me on the show.
00:00:20.224 --> 00:00:23.646
I'm Anastasia, I'm the founder of B2B Practitioners.
00:00:23.646 --> 00:00:33.915
We are a boutique go to market advisory for tech companies, B2B focused tech companies, mainly working with series A and B.
00:00:34.539 --> 00:00:42.959
before that I was on the venture capital side for quite some time working for Project A Ventures as head of marketing.
00:00:42.959 --> 00:00:50.505
I led the growth marketing team at X Central in ERP system that is funded by Sequoia Capital.
00:00:50.505 --> 00:00:58.777
and yeah, before that a lot of different stations in startups and scale-ups that had also a bunch of exits.
00:00:58.777 --> 00:01:02.655
to major corporates and yeah happy to be here.
00:01:03.191 --> 00:01:03.820
lovely to have you.
00:01:03.820 --> 00:01:14.087
Someone very much more reflective than us once told us that because we work with like seeds series A, Series B, they're like, you're just masochistic, and we were like, we never thought about it that way.
00:01:14.087 --> 00:01:15.918
So welcome to the club, Anastasia.
00:01:15.918 --> 00:01:18.790
Um, welcome to the masochism club.
00:01:18.790 --> 00:01:26.375
as normal, we would love to hear your marketing confessions or what's something that you fucked up royally that you want to get off your chest and share with us.
00:01:26.831 --> 00:01:28.572
Do we have to do this?
00:01:30.274 --> 00:01:48.138
well I once changed the lead scoring in HubSpot and I accidentally pushed it on yeah older contacts as well so it fucked up the whole kind of MQL SQL stages quite a bit.
00:01:48.138 --> 00:01:57.373
So yeah that was My confession that was n not good, but yeah, at least you could revert it back, but it was a bit confusing for everyone.
00:01:57.373 --> 00:02:03.185
In the moment it's the panic, isn't it, of like no yes.
00:02:03.185 --> 00:02:05.195
of the love HubSpot.
00:02:05.396 --> 00:02:11.193
You can revert stuff, but also like it's not like you're just like, click the previous version.
00:02:11.193 --> 00:02:20.062
Like you have to do a whole thing, which which I understand why some people are scared of it and want Salesforce, because Salesforce is a whole other, you know, management system for reverting to things.
00:02:20.062 --> 00:02:21.455
But anyway, I like that one.
00:02:21.455 --> 00:02:23.370
I don't think we've had a lead score confession before.
00:02:23.370 --> 00:02:24.987
I think this is a first.
00:02:25.147 --> 00:02:26.269
Very good.
00:02:26.468 --> 00:02:27.550
Very good.
00:02:29.213 --> 00:02:34.205
but also I think it is a good one because I think it's su it's such a common thing that we're all working on.
00:02:34.205 --> 00:02:37.717
So I think, you know, also they have changed the lead scoring in HubSpot, how you set it up.
00:02:37.717 --> 00:02:40.801
It's very different these wonder I wonder if we could still do that.
00:02:40.801 --> 00:02:42.682
Maybe I'll try, who knows?
00:02:43.323 --> 00:02:45.522
not with my own data as well, with someone else's.
00:02:45.610 --> 00:02:51.213
The reason we wanted to talk about this subject, obviously, Anastasia, you're a go-to-market genius.
00:02:51.213 --> 00:02:55.075
and this is a conversation that happens a lot, especially in startup land.
00:02:55.075 --> 00:03:04.800
and especially when someone gets a new funding round, I think the initial thought is let's go after a new segment, whether that's let's go for after if you're in the UK, let's go after the US, or let's go after another industry vertical.
00:03:04.800 --> 00:03:07.412
There's a lot to do that.
00:03:07.412 --> 00:03:10.612
and so we wanted to talk through the kind of practicalities of that.
00:03:10.612 --> 00:03:12.634
So, talk to us about when a company decides.
00:03:12.634 --> 00:03:14.576
it wants to go after a new segment.
00:03:14.576 --> 00:03:26.752
What are some of the like first questions they should really be asking themselves about why they want to do it and what are some of the like tactical things they should be thinking through when they do decide to do it.
00:03:27.110 --> 00:03:30.375
Yeah, I think the why question is the most important one.
00:03:30.375 --> 00:03:40.002
I think most of the companies that want to go for a new segment haven't actually exhausted their segment that they're already targeting, right?
00:03:40.002 --> 00:03:44.236
So I would say especially if you're early stage, you shouldn't do it.
00:03:44.537 --> 00:03:45.087
Period.
00:03:45.087 --> 00:03:46.450
I mean unless Great advice.
00:03:46.450 --> 00:03:46.932
Don't.
00:03:46.932 --> 00:03:48.831
would you define as early stage?
00:03:49.015 --> 00:03:51.960
obviously if you're very, very early stage, right?
00:03:51.960 --> 00:03:57.164
Seed pre-seed, you first need to define a segment, right?
00:03:57.164 --> 00:03:57.955
A segment.
00:03:57.955 --> 00:04:01.520
so not a new segment, but something that you want to focus on.
00:04:01.520 --> 00:04:20.110
and then once your series Later stage series B, for example, C, then it might make sense to move into a new segment once you've exhausted your existing ones or once you cross the chasm to speak in Moores' language in your current segment.
00:04:20.151 --> 00:04:32.339
I mean, but the questions that you need to ask obviously, and this is Whether you're going for a segment or a new segment, is how likely can you win the segment within the next 18 months?
00:04:32.339 --> 00:04:35.603
how strong is the pain in the segment, right?
00:04:35.603 --> 00:04:37.516
what is the need of the segment?
00:04:37.516 --> 00:04:40.235
So, what will the product need to be?
00:04:40.235 --> 00:04:44.117
how do you need to adapt the product differently for the segment?
00:04:44.565 --> 00:04:46.798
Also, what is the willingness to pay, right?
00:04:46.798 --> 00:05:01.309
So For example, we had a a company that in the HR Tech space, Series B, they were quite good in acquiring mid market and enterprise customers.
00:05:01.309 --> 00:05:03.819
So they they were good in their segment, right?
00:05:03.819 --> 00:05:11.476
And and suddenly they wanted to go for the smaller smaller companies and do PLG, product led growth.
00:05:11.476 --> 00:05:14.437
So essentially completely new motion.
00:05:14.437 --> 00:05:16.401
Completely new go to market, right?
00:05:16.401 --> 00:05:22.228
so then obviously, you need to think about okay, what's the willingness to pay in this segment?
00:05:22.228 --> 00:05:24.411
Do I need to adjust something there?
00:05:24.411 --> 00:05:28.797
and then also does this market continue to grow in the future?
00:05:28.797 --> 00:05:29.987
Is growing, right?
00:05:29.987 --> 00:05:32.413
That's also I think an interesting one.
00:05:32.413 --> 00:05:35.536
For example, everyone is proclaiming SaaS is gonna die.
00:05:35.536 --> 00:05:36.956
Are you focusing on SaaS?
00:05:36.956 --> 00:05:39.560
Are you focusing now on AI native companies?
00:05:39.560 --> 00:05:40.992
That could be a question.
00:05:40.992 --> 00:05:46.137
and then also do do you have a lighthouse customer in this segment already?
00:05:46.137 --> 00:05:48.779
Do you see some traction, right?
00:05:48.779 --> 00:05:52.865
and and then lastly, how do you know that it will work?
00:05:52.865 --> 00:05:56.458
So defining some success metrics upfront.
00:05:56.458 --> 00:05:58.750
So I would say these are the the questions.
00:05:58.750 --> 00:06:09.180
And I I think it's true for whether you're kind of defining a new ICP on an early customer profile or you want to go for a new segment.
00:06:09.819 --> 00:06:11.216
Very wise words.
00:06:11.197 --> 00:06:14.245
I'm so glad you mentioned Crossing the Chasm, by the way.
00:06:14.245 --> 00:06:20.588
I have met very few CEOs and business leaders that actually reference it.
00:06:20.730 --> 00:06:29.454
I think I think a lot of them kind of reference it a little bit naturally, but I think it's very much underutilized and it's such a great framework.
00:06:29.454 --> 00:06:32.317
If if you haven't read it, if you're listening, please go read it.
00:06:32.317 --> 00:06:35.004
It's like a three hour read, it's really fast.
00:06:35.004 --> 00:06:51.569
but I was wondering if you have any examples of where you're having these conversations with your potential clients and there's just really bad whys like what is a complete red flag to you immediately that like this is just not gonna work out Mm, I mean once you start going into the data, right?
00:06:51.569 --> 00:07:10.435
you see that for example the new segment that they want to go after is churning Or you look at closed lost reasons and the smaller segment is actually deciding that it's too expensive or the price is the decisive factor.
00:07:10.435 --> 00:07:28.252
Although it could also be that they're not bringing the value across properly, but So I think once you start digging into the data, obviously if you're early stage you won't have that much data, but in our case, talking about this series B company, they already had quite some some data.
00:07:28.252 --> 00:07:47.516
I have also another example w in the compliance space where Regulation was coming up to make websites more accessible, and they were like, okay, now we have to go for three different segments or even four, because this disregulation affects everyone.
00:07:47.516 --> 00:07:52.959
and then yeah, I was also looking at closed lost reasons and saw, okay.
00:07:53.351 --> 00:08:03.540
But I mean this the smaller segment they they most often say okay price is an issue etc and also the regulation has also a threshold, right?
00:08:03.540 --> 00:08:07.483
You if you're a 10 person company, you don't need to do this.
00:08:07.483 --> 00:08:17.074
So there's still an ICP, an ideal customer profile, and there there's there is a non-ICP that you want to disqualify.
00:08:17.074 --> 00:08:47.726
And typically what we say it's a bit like an onion right so 100% of iCP that is the segment we're building our product for eighty percent icp fit we still want to get the handraisers and we obviously yeah 100% ICP we we target those companies and then if if it's only sixty percent iCP fit you should rather disqualify it because you will spend way too much time on those companies.
00:08:47.726 --> 00:08:50.413
the sales cycle will be way too long.
00:08:50.413 --> 00:08:53.326
and then it's yeah, you have to focus your team, right?
00:08:53.326 --> 00:08:55.057
so they cannot do everything.
00:08:55.057 --> 00:09:18.889
Um you're gonna break someone's mind with a fifty percent disqualify 'cause sixty percent excuse me disqualify hates that, but don't we know between the three of us that that's the truth?
00:09:18.889 --> 00:09:24.362
I was actually gonna say as well, one of the things that I was thinking about as you were saying that, Anastasia, is also like cost of acquisition.
00:09:24.362 --> 00:09:26.414
That's a massive problem.
00:09:26.414 --> 00:09:32.198
So like let's what we have seen more typically, I think, is where you've been in the UK and then you're like, we're gonna go break America.
00:09:32.198 --> 00:09:37.731
Because we can just do that because someone sold you on a dream that that's possible.
00:09:37.731 --> 00:09:49.776
And what people haven't realized is marketing in America is like 5x more expensive, you know, it's five times, 10 times more competitive, it's you haven't got people on the ground.
00:09:49.776 --> 00:09:55.660
So there are like there are like like you say, there's almost like a structure of like questions that you need to ask yourself.
00:09:55.660 --> 00:09:59.981
One of those is have you actually modelled how much it's gonna cost to acquire those businesses?
00:10:00.062 --> 00:10:06.900
Also I would always say, like, what relationships do you have with people in the segment as well?
00:10:06.900 --> 00:10:08.681
Like, I think that's a really important question.
00:10:08.681 --> 00:10:20.628
Cause you were talking about the lighthouse customers, but also even amongst the team, like, are there partners, are there like other collaborators that you have that are like actually involved in that segment?
00:10:20.628 --> 00:10:30.803
Like, I'm working with a client at the moment who one of their partners has got great relationships with huge enterprises because he's worked in them and they've now built a partnership.
00:10:30.803 --> 00:10:35.286
So of course they can go into that enterprise segment because he's selling it in.
00:10:35.286 --> 00:10:37.711
So he's doing the job for them.
00:10:37.711 --> 00:10:40.918
But that is purely based on the relationship, right?
00:10:40.918 --> 00:10:46.440
Otherwise there would be no there would be no way that you would be able to enter that enterprise segment.
00:10:46.440 --> 00:10:50.204
And I don't think people think that's with going from like mid market to enterprise.
00:10:50.204 --> 00:10:54.406
Most peop like most companies are in mid market, they're like, Let's just get bigger customers.
00:10:54.406 --> 00:10:55.317
They'll pay more money.
00:10:55.317 --> 00:10:56.387
That must be easy.
00:10:56.387 --> 00:11:01.548
But the cost of acquiring an enterprise is like Yeah.
00:11:01.548 --> 00:11:11.014
the cost goes up, the everything, the type of people you need on the team goes up, like everything, the infrastructure you need to service those clients changes.
00:11:11.014 --> 00:11:16.909
There's a whole There's a whole like operational part, which actually we're gonna talk about later, so I'm not gonna skip too far.
00:11:16.909 --> 00:11:22.333
But let's talk about ideal customer profiles a little bit, because we've already touched on those and they're really important.
00:11:22.333 --> 00:11:39.564
So if you are gonna go after a new segment and it's not a proven segment, but you've ticked some of those initial questions off where you can say, like, okay, we actually think going after this segment's a good idea, how do you actually validate an ICP for a new segment if you haven't really got any customers in that space already?
00:11:39.747 --> 00:11:40.048
Mm-hmm.
00:11:40.048 --> 00:11:50.854
Yeah, if you haven't got any customers in that space, otherwise you can pull obviously your your customer data, then we always go out and talk to the segment, right?
00:11:50.854 --> 00:12:01.918
So really try to get at least, I don't know, 10, 15 interviews to understand okay, what are what are their problems.
00:12:02.058 --> 00:12:04.200
What are they using now?
00:12:04.200 --> 00:12:06.621
How do they solve those problems now?
00:12:06.621 --> 00:12:12.900
Is there maybe already a a competitor or even like a workaround, right?
00:12:12.900 --> 00:12:16.362
It doesn't always need to be a direct competitor.
00:12:16.362 --> 00:12:23.587
It's always just like, I'm using, you know, some kind of workaround with Excel and Claude or whatever whatever.
00:12:24.049 --> 00:12:39.217
and then yeah, so essentially try to to to understand their pains, how they work now, what solutions they might already evaluate or might not, maybe they they they're not solution aware, they're not problem aware.
00:12:39.217 --> 00:12:40.539
we don't know that, right?
00:12:40.539 --> 00:12:55.857
And then that's kind of the qualitative part, of course, if depending on your company stage again You would also do a bit of a quantitative analysis, but if you're early stage, I think the interviews would already be telling you a lot.
00:12:55.857 --> 00:12:58.955
And then you you look for similarities, right?
00:12:58.955 --> 00:13:01.159
So how can you group them?
00:13:01.159 --> 00:13:02.500
what do they have in common?
00:13:02.500 --> 00:13:29.783
Like any firmographics, any buying triggers I mean there's the obvious things like revenue, employee size, but there's also triggers like okay they're a hiring or they just raised the series A and they want yeah to expand their team or have a a certain problem right they have go to market they have product market fit but not no go to market fit and so on and so forth.
00:13:29.783 --> 00:13:39.087
So yeah th those would be kind of the the company level signals and I would also look for negative flags, right?
00:13:39.087 --> 00:13:47.408
So we definitely look at things that if we hear those then we want to disqualify as quickly as possible.
00:13:47.408 --> 00:13:48.569
Very sensible advice.
00:13:48.569 --> 00:13:50.029
I'm really enjoying this conversation.
00:13:50.029 --> 00:13:54.173
I'm like, it's so nice to talk to somebody who actually wants to validate this stuff before doing it.
00:13:54.173 --> 00:13:55.856
So not the norm.
00:13:55.856 --> 00:14:01.089
I don't think I've ever had such a sensible conversation about going after a segment without feeling like I'm losing my mind.
00:14:01.089 --> 00:14:03.139
So it's quite nice.
00:14:03.450 --> 00:14:07.675
There's a there's a lot of divisions with going off to new segments, I main problem.
00:14:08.117 --> 00:14:08.848
Absolutely.
00:14:08.848 --> 00:14:22.630
So one of the things that is obviously impacting most tech companies is AI so whether you now have to put AI powered on on every sentence in your website or you are actually doing something cool with AI, how does that change things?
00:14:22.630 --> 00:14:24.761
are we going after companies that work with AI now?
00:14:24.761 --> 00:14:27.552
Are we s positioning ourselves as an AI company?
00:14:27.552 --> 00:14:34.387
Have what kind of like I guess examples or or experiences have you had with that in the last couple of years since ChatGPT blew up?
00:14:34.387 --> 00:14:36.588
yeah, that's a that's a good one.
00:14:36.588 --> 00:14:40.896
I I feel like everyone is just putting AI enabled onto it.
00:14:40.896 --> 00:14:44.081
but I think it it's not always good to be honest.
00:14:44.081 --> 00:14:48.576
But maybe I'll talk a little bit about how we are approaching positioning.
00:14:48.576 --> 00:15:19.515
So typically what we do is analyze the competition and then write for basically every competitive alternative and that can be obviously direct competitors but also your yeah do nothing right that's the most most important actually competitive alternative and I feel like in today's market it's very very much the case that people just don't decide because they're a bit of Okay, can I build this with Claude maybe?
00:15:19.515 --> 00:15:25.346
And so yeah so you need to be aware of of of how people are solving it right now.
00:15:25.346 --> 00:15:33.910
And then for each competitive alternative, we look for okay, what's the unique attributes of my software, right?
00:15:33.910 --> 00:15:36.313
based on on that alternative.
00:15:36.313 --> 00:15:38.634
then we we look for value and proof.
00:15:38.634 --> 00:15:54.326
So typically this needs to be justifiable numbers right so you your saving time, your saving costs, so something that we can quantify, we can prove and which is objective and not subjective.
00:15:54.326 --> 00:15:59.372
and then typically also look for relevant trends so wh to create urgency.
00:15:59.372 --> 00:16:00.183
So why now?
00:16:00.183 --> 00:16:02.745
Why should you decide for the solution now?
00:16:02.745 --> 00:16:07.959
And and then we come up with this value proposition that is typically two pillars.
00:16:07.959 --> 00:16:23.964
One the first pillar is typically you define your category for people that might now solve the the the issue through pen and paper or do nothing or Excel or any other kind of a scrappy way.
00:16:23.964 --> 00:16:36.944
And then the second pillar is actually where you differentiate yourself against your direct competitors, and where you put in the value improve and you you show how you're different from similar solutions.
00:16:36.944 --> 00:16:53.831
and yeah and coming back to that question, I I think If you're in certain industries, this could rather be a negative lag because you people are like, Okay, GDPR, my god, the data is going to the LLMs or what whatever.
00:16:53.831 --> 00:17:08.708
so you need to really again be be careful and and also I mean I th I think by now it's a standard feature in the in each product, to have AI capabilities, right?
00:17:08.708 --> 00:17:13.914
So I don't think it's it's a huge differentiator by now, to be honest.
00:17:13.914 --> 00:17:17.896
so Yeah, you you need more than than that, right?
00:17:17.896 --> 00:17:18.286
yeah.
00:17:18.286 --> 00:17:35.430
I also it's that thing of saying if if the if the if you know what the challenges are that your audience have and your customers have and AI is part of that solution, I think my you know, my view is always if that is part of the solution that's fine if you can articulate why it's part of the solution to the problem that they have.
00:17:35.430 --> 00:17:38.133
If it isn't, it doesn't need to go in there.
00:17:38.974 --> 00:17:39.614
You know.
00:17:39.614 --> 00:17:44.167
we always say like don't s cite your features, right?
00:17:44.167 --> 00:17:50.632
So um of course like you need to you need to make sure that they get the value.
00:17:50.632 --> 00:17:53.003
So what's the outcome that you're selling, right?
00:17:53.003 --> 00:17:54.504
You're selling an outcome.
00:17:54.504 --> 00:18:01.028
I don't care if it's AI or not AI, I want a certain thing to be to certain job to be done.
00:18:01.028 --> 00:18:02.346
So yeah.
00:18:02.346 --> 00:18:03.337
Yeah, always.
00:18:03.337 --> 00:18:04.509
Always lead with the problem.
00:18:04.509 --> 00:18:06.454
I think that's why it's interesting, isn't it?
00:18:06.454 --> 00:18:16.980
Because when it comes to like other types of marketing, like even just B to C it's so obvious that that's the way that people buy and I think in B2B in particular, we kind of forget that.
00:18:16.980 --> 00:18:19.993
It's like there's still humans with problems buying your thing.
00:18:19.993 --> 00:18:24.025
And that's why they bought the thing, because they want to make their life easier.
00:18:25.105 --> 00:18:33.080
it's usually the f the the sort of basic basic um like reasons for buying new product product or service, right?
00:18:33.080 --> 00:18:41.449
Um so when it comes to kind of product market fit, because again this is another problem we always talk about on this podcast, Anastasia, that you can't outmarket a bad product.
00:18:41.449 --> 00:18:42.592
It's quite hard to do that.
00:18:42.592 --> 00:18:51.146
so when you are entering a new segment, like what are some of the ways that you could potentially figure out if it's the product or if it's the marketing?
00:18:51.634 --> 00:19:02.015
I mean the the really quick one is if you see there's great retention, but yeah, customers love it once they have it, but you can't get enough of the rights once.
00:19:02.015 --> 00:19:04.238
There could be rather marketing problem.
00:19:04.238 --> 00:19:10.964
if you can get people in but they don't stick, that's typically a product market fit problem.
00:19:11.373 --> 00:19:15.576
Or they don't use it enough or yeah, they churn.
00:19:15.576 --> 00:19:19.670
So I think a a great test is the Sean Ellis test.
00:19:19.670 --> 00:19:21.321
you probably know that one.
00:19:21.321 --> 00:19:29.664
so if you ask your this sp specific segment, how disappointed would you be if this product wouldn't exist any longer?
00:19:29.664 --> 00:19:37.412
And if 40% need to say that they would be very disappointed, then you kind of have product market fit.
00:19:37.412 --> 00:19:42.134
if not, yeah, and and then yeah, you have to obviously do it on your segment.
00:19:42.134 --> 00:19:47.399
So other red flags I would say are the sales cycles are extending.
00:19:47.399 --> 00:19:59.288
even if you have good enablement, every deal requires some kind of customization or you need to discount every time to close the deal.
00:19:59.288 --> 00:20:02.850
And we know that this is a a common one.
00:20:02.850 --> 00:20:05.273
Like almost everyone is discounting.
00:20:05.273 --> 00:20:10.024
you have high churn in the first, I don't know, 90 days or so.
00:20:24.794 --> 00:20:35.067
Yeah, so so I would say these are the the the ones where you say, okay, this is probably a product market fit problem.
00:20:35.661 --> 00:20:36.313
Absolutely.
00:20:36.313 --> 00:20:37.987
I haven't thought about that question too much.
00:20:37.987 --> 00:20:44.193
So it's nice to have some like pointers because you t you tend to like feel it a little bit, you know what I mean?
00:20:44.193 --> 00:20:51.091
Where you're like, oof, there's there's something up here, like I don't know if it's the marketing, but it's good to have like some specific numbers to to fall back on.
00:20:51.091 --> 00:20:55.215
Um, because yeah, marketing fit products is so hard.
00:20:55.561 --> 00:21:04.488
in an ideal world, you know, if you've got that kind of like if product and marketing are close, which I would like to see more of in organizations, I don't see a lot of that to be honest.
00:21:04.488 --> 00:21:09.210
Even when there's a product marketer, I'm like, we're not cl as close as we could be.
00:21:09.210 --> 00:21:21.995
And I think, you know, like marketing has the ability to help with product market fit because we can obviously feed into, we can feed back a lot of the information, a lot of the data that tells you whether the product market fit is right.
00:21:21.995 --> 00:21:28.357
Some of the things you're talking about, Anastasia, like, I don't know, like even if you keep trying to run like G2 review campaigns and you never get any.
00:21:28.357 --> 00:21:33.280
reviews out of anybody, it's highly unlikely that it's just the marketing that's the problem.
00:21:33.280 --> 00:21:40.306
You know, like I think you can take there are things that we are doing where you can take indication like from what we're doing.
00:21:40.306 --> 00:21:50.537
Even if your website's got terrible conversion rates, but you're really clear on your website about what you do and you get lots of traffic and you get lots of people clicking around Mm-hmm.
00:21:50.537 --> 00:22:02.331
No, I think there's there are there are signs I think that you could be using and I I I'll be honest, like I definitely don't use those enough in conversations with people about product because No, don't get asked.
00:22:02.331 --> 00:22:03.333
Yeah.
00:22:03.635 --> 00:22:07.678
But we could be having we could initiate some of those conversations, couldn't we as marketers?
00:22:07.678 --> 00:22:15.293
We could be the ones who are like, okay, I've got a set of metrics from marketing that to tell us whether there's a product issue or not.
00:22:15.293 --> 00:22:20.205
Um and then obviously you go out and validate it with some of the the numbers that Anastasia's talking about.
00:22:20.205 --> 00:22:27.759
But you can you can like you say, if you want to, I guess, put your finger on the feeling that you're talking about router, that's the way to do it, isn't it?
00:22:27.759 --> 00:22:29.576
Yeah, yeah, yeah, agreed.
00:22:29.580 --> 00:22:30.173
Absolutely.
00:22:30.173 --> 00:22:41.722
So another example maybe as well, with a customer of ours where I went out to talk to their customers, like different segments as well, smaller ones, bigger ones.
00:22:41.722 --> 00:22:53.370
and the customers basically all told me, Yeah, we're actually not really using the software we're using because they had a bit of a software plus service approach.
00:22:53.370 --> 00:22:58.942
So mm and and most of the smaller companies were only using this the service approach.
00:22:58.942 --> 00:23:03.664
So data protection officer and not the data protection software.
00:23:03.664 --> 00:23:07.528
And I was like, okay, but you want to be a software co company.
00:23:07.528 --> 00:23:15.003
so we need to figure out who actually uses the software more, who are the power users who actually get value out of it.
00:23:15.003 --> 00:23:20.970
And so So then we discovered that it only makes sense to automate these data privacy things.
00:23:20.970 --> 00:23:29.303
once you're a bigger company, you're rather mid-market where you have already legal person that struggles with these problems.
00:23:29.303 --> 00:23:36.410
And w and if you're small you're like, I don't care, like I have the d data protection officer, you'll figure it out.
00:23:36.410 --> 00:23:39.682
I don't wanna to do anything with it, right?
00:23:39.682 --> 00:23:46.951
So and that was clearly okay, we apparently don't have product market fit in this particular segment.
00:23:46.951 --> 00:23:52.855
I want to ask you a question about that, Anastasia, because obviously Root and I do work predominantly with SaaS as well.
00:23:52.855 --> 00:23:56.649
and there is usually a plus service bit in there.
00:23:56.649 --> 00:24:07.365
And I have seen the exact example that you're talking about play out where people want the service first and they want the software second, and sort of the software is a bit of a like extra added extra.
00:24:07.365 --> 00:24:23.394
But then what happens is there's pressure from the VCs in the board, um, with the CEO or the founder because they're they're like, no, we only want to invest where you've got ARR and yeah, and and service doesn't fall into the ARR category.
00:24:23.394 --> 00:24:26.917
So how do you tackle that kind of conundrum?
00:24:26.917 --> 00:24:28.961
Because that is that is quite common.
00:24:28.961 --> 00:24:29.893
yes, yes.
00:24:29.893 --> 00:25:11.256
I mean again I I would try to identify the segment that will most likely benefit from your software right and and I think you can basically like the criteria that I said okay is it a a particular vertical right do they have a particular problem is it certain size of people certain revenue or maybe also the team size from from when they need something like that right for example we also have with this HR software for example they only needed a talent acquisition suite once they actually had a VP of talent acquisition, right?
00:25:11.256 --> 00:25:14.338
and then they they they were ready for it.
00:25:14.338 --> 00:25:40.402
So but yeah it's it's quite interesting actually now with all the AI stuff that you you you almost get like the service component first so peop Some companies even do this forward deployed engineering bit where they go in, they say, Okay, we offer you as a service, we will co develop something and then we'll see what kind of use case and build build it for you customizable.
00:25:40.402 --> 00:25:47.831
I think that changed a little bit a little bit, but if you're a SaaS and you do mostly service, that's a bit of a tricky one, I would say.
00:25:47.831 --> 00:25:48.898
Yeah, yeah.
00:25:48.898 --> 00:25:53.759
feel like a lot of service companies also get funding to then turn into SaaS companies.
00:25:53.759 --> 00:25:55.870
Um true.
00:25:55.870 --> 00:26:13.088
also a tricky one because again the clients that you were servicing as a service company, there's a lot of service in that, um, are probably not the same clients that are gonna want software because actually like the notion of do it yourself versus someone else doing it for you is already like very different, right?
00:26:13.088 --> 00:26:15.121
Different persona, different different needs.
00:26:15.121 --> 00:26:17.062
So yeah, we we see that a lot as well.
00:26:17.062 --> 00:26:21.756
So let's go back to something that we alluded to earlier, which is operational readiness.
00:26:21.756 --> 00:26:29.888
what are some of the operational, I guess, checks and commitments that you need to think about before you try to break into a new segment.
00:26:29.888 --> 00:26:34.203
So resources, process, people, what what are those?
00:26:34.445 --> 00:26:35.625
Systems.
00:26:36.371 --> 00:26:46.441
Yes, so I think the first thing you need to be aware of once you identified a new segment or you decided to go for a new segment, this changes your whole go to market.
00:26:46.441 --> 00:26:52.638
So which means your product needs to be adapted, maybe.
00:26:52.638 --> 00:26:55.279
your pricing needs to be adapted, right?
00:26:55.279 --> 00:27:00.285
So in as I said in the earlier example of the series B HR tech.
00:27:00.495 --> 00:27:10.422
if you're going if you were a mid-market enterprise and then you're going for a smaller segment now, SMB or something, then okay, what's the pricing then?
00:27:10.422 --> 00:27:16.067
which go-to-market motion are you now doing to acquire those customers?
00:27:16.067 --> 00:27:22.831
So is it still outbound, is it inbound, is it product led, account-based, etc.
00:27:22.948 --> 00:27:26.041
Then yes, how do you on onboard people?
00:27:26.041 --> 00:27:27.332
the whole marketing bit.
00:27:27.332 --> 00:27:31.347
So how do you qualify them against your ICP?
00:27:31.347 --> 00:27:33.971
how you nurture them, how you route them.
00:27:33.971 --> 00:27:35.793
So essentially everything.
00:27:35.793 --> 00:27:44.607
So that's why we we say, okay, first ICP research, then ICP development, and then once you've taken this decision.
00:27:45.280 --> 00:27:49.806
you need to do go to market team enablement, we call it.
00:27:49.806 --> 00:27:52.197
so what does that mean for the team?
00:27:52.197 --> 00:27:56.850
And typically what we do is go into the different into the different teams.
00:27:56.850 --> 00:28:02.511
And by the way, the teams are obviously already in the development research phase, they're already involved.
00:28:02.511 --> 00:28:05.113
So they will give their perspective as well.
00:28:05.113 --> 00:28:06.903
Maybe I I forgot to mention that.
00:28:06.903 --> 00:28:11.795
So so the workshopping bit and how sales is selling to to various segments.
00:28:11.795 --> 00:28:17.335
But then the enablement bit is really what does that mean for your daily work now?
00:28:17.335 --> 00:28:17.625
Right?
00:28:17.625 --> 00:28:37.395
So if you're in customer success, what does that mean when you were always enterprise and you s you tend to tended to spend a lot of time on quarterly business reviews with the customers because they're huge huge clients you need to make sure you you hit the value targets and so on.
00:28:37.395 --> 00:28:39.497
Now you go for a smaller segment.
00:28:39.497 --> 00:28:40.898
What what does that mean?
00:28:40.898 --> 00:28:43.158
You cannot do the same, right?
00:28:43.158 --> 00:28:55.186
You cannot spend as much time because the the average contract value is much lower, so you have to do some kind of health check, maybe automated health check.
00:28:55.732 --> 00:28:58.336
Same for the for for marketing, okay.
00:28:58.336 --> 00:29:06.693
your website probably speaks to the enterprise segment, not to the small customer segment.
00:29:06.693 --> 00:29:08.465
So what do you do?
00:29:08.465 --> 00:29:10.138
Like how do you adapt it?
00:29:10.138 --> 00:29:11.879
what's what's the messaging?
00:29:11.879 --> 00:29:14.612
What what is the persona you are talking to?
00:29:14.612 --> 00:29:20.067
Do they do they do then a free trial or can they self-onboard?
00:29:20.067 --> 00:29:29.392
So There's massive massive massive change once you decide that that you wanna go for a different segment.
00:29:29.465 --> 00:29:43.590
It's it's interesting, Anastasia, 'cause obviously like everything you're describing sounds completely rational and pragmatic to us, but the reality is we we encounter founders and CEOs all the time that basically are like Yeah, that all sounds great.
00:29:43.590 --> 00:29:45.991
We'll kind of just do it if we can.
00:29:45.991 --> 00:29:47.573
What's what's your sense of that?
00:29:47.573 --> 00:29:52.257
So I was having a bit of an existential crisis the other day where I was like, maybe Rutra and I are wrong.
00:29:52.257 --> 00:29:56.671
Maybe we shouldn't do all this pragmatic, logical stuff that's grounded.
00:29:56.671 --> 00:30:05.067
Maybe we should just be a bit more like these founders that are like, nah, let's just give it a go and let's all just get on board and like stop making it difficult.
00:30:05.067 --> 00:30:10.471
Have you is it possible that it can work if you ignore this stuff?
00:30:10.673 --> 00:30:12.134
That's my first question.
00:30:12.222 --> 00:30:20.667
It's unlikely, but like I yeah, the other day I had that conversation actually with a founder of an AI native company.
00:30:20.667 --> 00:30:30.074
Very fast growing, and of course they think okay, we're vertical agnostic, we're gonna just, you know.
00:30:30.276 --> 00:30:42.632
do a lot of performance marketing and bring in, I mean they're also focused on SMBs rather S than as a really small customers and doing a lot of performance marketing.
00:30:43.272 --> 00:30:49.534
And I think yeah for to start with, I mean that can work.
00:30:49.673 --> 00:31:02.082
But what I typically see is after a certain time of acquiring everyone they see also that a certain segment is churning.
00:31:02.082 --> 00:31:11.634
they're spending a certain more time on on maybe non-good fit customers to onboard them because they're not as technical.
00:31:11.634 --> 00:31:17.467
and then then you spend a lot of internal resources and money on on the onboarding bit.
00:31:17.467 --> 00:31:25.113
and Or you spent a lot of money on even acquiring the customers as you said, so high customer acquisition cost.
00:31:25.113 --> 00:31:32.340
so typically I say, Yeah, you you can try that, but then after something they come to us.
00:31:32.340 --> 00:31:34.180
They come back to us.
00:31:34.180 --> 00:31:39.383
They come back and they're like, Yeah, Anastasia, you were right.
00:31:39.383 --> 00:31:45.005
they if they can make it a year with that mentality, they're doing all right.
00:31:45.005 --> 00:31:53.128
But generally I would say after about six months, we get messages where they've come back and they're like, wait, maybe we shouldn't have.
00:31:53.628 --> 00:31:56.049
But I I it's it's very validating to hear that.
00:31:56.049 --> 00:31:57.666
Makes me feel less insane.
00:31:57.666 --> 00:32:09.769
we had a conversation not too long ago with someone about like Going into the market and we were like, Okay, it's a competitive market, there's a lot out there, you're brand new, you don't have like the necessary partnerships, et cetera.
00:32:09.769 --> 00:32:12.853
So how would we actually go to market with you launching?
00:32:12.853 --> 00:32:20.361
And we put together a plan that was like fairly hardcore because like that is probably what they need to get enough customers to keep going.
00:32:20.361 --> 00:32:25.183
And it was like an immediate no because they're at the stage where they're like, no, it's fine.
00:32:25.184 --> 00:32:27.306
Like, this is great.
00:32:27.314 --> 00:32:28.695
This what people are gonna love it.
00:32:28.695 --> 00:32:33.338
We've got a couple useless, they're gonna love it, and we're like we we hope it's true.
00:32:33.338 --> 00:32:34.941
We wish you the best of luck.
00:32:34.941 --> 00:32:36.322
We're here later.
00:32:36.513 --> 00:32:38.541
Yeah, we'll be we'll still be here.
00:32:38.541 --> 00:32:46.776
I thought folks in the UK are are better in actually thinking the go to market bits earlier in the process.
00:32:46.776 --> 00:32:49.001
you know, it's a mix.
00:32:49.001 --> 00:32:55.715
say out of every ten people I speak to, there's one that is very logical and reasonable.
00:32:56.535 --> 00:32:58.266
And the rest are, I don't know.
00:32:58.266 --> 00:33:00.427
There's some there's a there's a gradient, right?
00:33:00.427 --> 00:33:11.280
Like some of them are willing to do it, but then you kind of I feel like with some people you cross over into the like, I wanna do all the things that you're talking about, Anastasia, and then the majority are like, absolutely not.
00:33:11.382 --> 00:33:13.792
And then they and then they have a really hard time.
00:33:13.792 --> 00:33:14.141
Mm.
00:33:14.141 --> 00:33:21.328
And then we either come back or you know or they they they push on, you know, they keep they run out of money.
00:33:21.328 --> 00:33:22.109
Yeah.
00:33:23.264 --> 00:33:23.882
Yeah.
00:33:23.882 --> 00:33:26.033
well, I feel like I say I feel very validated.
00:33:26.033 --> 00:33:30.956
obviously one of the big things in all of this, and you've mentioned it already, is the total addressable market.
00:33:30.956 --> 00:33:35.919
And we've given examples of people who are like, I'm my tech and one of the big ones is HR Tech.
00:33:35.919 --> 00:33:48.355
We work a lot of HR Tech, you know, we're vertical agnostic, we can sell to anybody and everyone, but actually that causes a lot of problems, especially if you're gonna try and go after a new segment, because you actually can't be all things to everybody.
00:33:48.355 --> 00:33:54.869
So what are some of the conversations that you have around that and how do you try and like convince people not to just try and market to everybody?
00:33:54.869 --> 00:33:59.994
Yeah, I mean the the biggest one I think is the the messaging bit, right?
00:33:59.994 --> 00:34:09.285
So if if you say you're vertically agnostic, that means you have to have because I mean verticals are still different, right?
00:34:09.285 --> 00:34:24.393
So y one if you for example do decide to do outbound, and you you say, Okay The verticals are pretty pretty similar in a way that they always they all have a CFO, for example, just making stuff up.
00:34:24.393 --> 00:34:31.257
then the question is still once you do outbound bit, what message are you sending them?
00:34:31.317 --> 00:34:34.320
So is it the same for each vertical?
00:34:34.320 --> 00:34:49.458
Probably not, because they have the CFO in in finance vertical versus the CFO in the manufacturing vertical is probably different, ha has a different problem.
00:34:49.458 --> 00:34:56.032
And I mean with the whole AI craze you're now able to personalize it, right?
00:34:56.032 --> 00:35:05.059
So you still need to kind of even if you say okay I want to go for various verticals, you still need to adapt the messaging.
00:35:05.132 --> 00:35:08.076
So that's that's one one point.
00:35:08.076 --> 00:35:25.530
and I think the the most interesting one is that or the what I see is why founders are struggling to to do a clear or to define a clear ICP is that they think they will they will leave money on the table.
00:35:25.811 --> 00:35:42.867
But actually the opposite is true because you you will get more revenue from a good fit customer than if you're doing spray and pray and and and vertical agnostic and and whatnot.
00:35:42.867 --> 00:35:49.117
so I think y you will see it in the numbers very quickly.
00:35:49.309 --> 00:35:52.661
and especially if you're early stage you need to just focus.
00:35:52.661 --> 00:36:07.204
You you cannot put your you don't have a huge team to do multiple go to market motions, multiple segments, 'cause you need to mm customize everything for each each segment, right?
00:36:07.481 --> 00:36:08.291
Yeah.
00:36:08.331 --> 00:36:08.912
Yeah.
00:36:08.912 --> 00:36:16.257
It's interesting as well with the vertical agnostic thing, 'cause I think quite a lot of the founders I speak to anyway would say, yeah, but we're doing okay.
00:36:16.257 --> 00:36:20.099
But actually if you if you doubled down you'd be doing more than okay, wouldn't you?
00:36:20.099 --> 00:36:34.726
Because I think at the moment they probably don't look at things like the actual wastage and the inefficiency in their marketing spend, in their the time their CSMs spend trying to retain, like you say, bad fit customers in the sales cycle length with bad fit customers.
00:36:34.726 --> 00:36:40.081
You know, there's probably like a bit of work that they could do there to kind of maybe surface some of that stuff.
00:36:40.081 --> 00:37:00.384
I've actually been with a client who's done a repositioning and what they've discovered is actually Their products are great for businesses that have like deskless workers because they're the customers that we retain the longest, that have the highest adoption of the product, and they used to market like that, and they stopped because they wanted to go after everybody, and they've taken a hit.
00:37:00.384 --> 00:37:01.365
There's churn.
00:37:01.365 --> 00:37:04.050
So I'm like Mm.
00:37:04.050 --> 00:37:08.974
repositioned ourselves back against like what the product's actually used for and the type of customers that use it.
00:37:08.974 --> 00:37:15.702
So I think yeah, there's a lot there's a lot to to be learned for like actually being like, no, no, no, it's okay to be that those people.
00:37:15.702 --> 00:37:16.762
Like it's good.
00:37:16.762 --> 00:37:20.470
It's a good thing that those people like your product and use it and you retain them.
00:37:20.470 --> 00:37:27.177
Because lifetime value is as important as the instant AR instant hit of like getting a contract signed, isn't it?
00:37:27.177 --> 00:37:27.753
So yeah.
00:37:27.753 --> 00:37:28.693
Yeah.
00:37:28.693 --> 00:37:29.913
Yeah, absolutely.
00:37:29.913 --> 00:37:38.822
I mean, especially in times where now everyone is questioning how many tools and and software you actually have within the company.
00:37:38.822 --> 00:37:49.960
but yeah, I feel like pulling the data, showing the founder, okay, see, based on the data, we have a bunch of customers that are really not a good fit.
00:37:49.960 --> 00:37:51.173
We should let them go.
00:37:51.173 --> 00:37:53.499
I think that helps a lot.
00:37:54.327 --> 00:38:01.101
also mega scary and nobody wants to do it because like what do you mean we have to let go of customers?
00:38:01.845 --> 00:38:02.807
Wild.
00:38:02.807 --> 00:38:03.331
Yeah.
00:38:03.331 --> 00:38:03.887
Yeah.
00:38:03.887 --> 00:38:13.496
the word churn 'cause I feel like it's the thing that scares everyone, but actually there is there should be a category of acceptable churn, which is basically bad fit customers.
00:38:13.496 --> 00:38:16.996
If they're a bad fit from the get go, it's not good for anybody.
00:38:16.996 --> 00:38:17.708
It's not good for them.
00:38:17.708 --> 00:38:24.550
Also, it creates like it can create other pro problems like reputational issues, which I think people then don't think through.
00:38:24.550 --> 00:38:32.048
It's like actually if you've got a bad fit client and they're complaining all the time, what are they actually saying to their network about your business?
00:38:32.048 --> 00:38:41.567
So I I I do think that that like thinking about it like that as well helps 'cause it's it is ultimately it's like if you have good relationships with people, you can retain your clients.
00:38:41.567 --> 00:38:47.070
If you have good product, if you have good service, you know, and you retain people, then people are gonna say good things about you.
00:38:47.070 --> 00:38:50.432
If you don't do that, they're gonna say bad things about you.
00:38:50.432 --> 00:38:54.483
Um which then makes it all even harder.
00:38:54.483 --> 00:38:58.421
Um I right?
00:38:58.590 --> 00:39:02.733
I I wish the flywheel had really taken off, guys.
00:39:02.733 --> 00:39:07.514
And said we're still stuck with this funnel mentality, aren't we?
00:39:07.869 --> 00:39:09.392
it's been an awesome conversation, yeah.
00:39:09.392 --> 00:39:10.653
Super practical.
00:39:10.653 --> 00:39:17.010
so if you're listening to this, I hope you've got loads of takeaways and lots of things to look at now that you've got some practical tips to go off.
00:39:17.010 --> 00:39:21.452
But just to wrap up the episode, we'd love to hear if you've got any marketing gossip for us.
00:39:21.452 --> 00:39:25.699
So something that you love or you hate or something that you just can't stop thinking about in the marketing world.
00:39:25.699 --> 00:39:31.902
Yeah, so what I hate is actually that everyone is doing the AI enabled outbound.
00:39:32.416 --> 00:39:35.161
feel like everyone is, we don't need marketing.
00:39:35.161 --> 00:39:45.257
We can just do, you know, a bunch of emails on certain target account lists and then we'll we'll, you know, get our customers.
00:39:45.358 --> 00:39:52.943
and to be honest, I get like flooded with emails every week and I think and bad ones.
00:39:53.081 --> 00:39:53.682
Yeah.
00:39:53.682 --> 00:40:03.778
very bad ones that are not even personalized and and so I I'm not even sure this this channel or this motion will prevail.
00:40:04.195 --> 00:40:07.836
what I love is it's obviously the best time to be in tech.
00:40:08.677 --> 00:40:25.414
with everything you you you can automate like you can automate the boring stuff you can be more creative now we're playing around currently with A AI agent services, so building agents for nurturing, for for lead routing and so on.
00:40:25.414 --> 00:40:27.166
So I think that's a lot of fun.
00:40:27.166 --> 00:40:33.474
if you yeah are courageous to test it and if you know how to to set this up.
00:40:33.474 --> 00:40:35.206
I think it's a lot of fun.
00:40:35.206 --> 00:40:38.639
Brings back the fun into our profession.
00:40:38.791 --> 00:40:44.635
It's it's almost a bit like use you get to play with all this really cool tech, but please use it in the right way.
00:40:44.635 --> 00:40:45.606
Yeah.
00:40:45.729 --> 00:40:49.423
Yes, I mean you still need to to know your strategy, right?
00:40:49.423 --> 00:41:09.005
You still need to know your ICP, you still need to understand the buyer decision process, you need to understand d you draft your positioning 'cause that is essentially the context that you have to give the LLMs and all the tools out there, because just using the the tools won't won't help you.
00:41:09.005 --> 00:41:09.775
Yeah.
00:41:10.115 --> 00:41:11.567
Thank you so much, Anastasia.
00:41:11.567 --> 00:41:13.418
This has been a wonderful conversation.
00:41:13.418 --> 00:41:22.105
we didn't even get to, you know, creating a new category, which is I feel like the the ultimate version of a new segment, but that's the whole of the conversation.
00:41:22.105 --> 00:41:23.164
don't do it.
00:41:26.108 --> 00:41:27.909
unless you have a lot of money.
00:41:27.969 --> 00:41:31.112
We tried just unless you have a lot of money and time, don't do it.
00:41:31.112 --> 00:41:31.840
Yeah.
00:41:31.840 --> 00:41:36.715
thank you so much for this, and yeah, all of Anastasia's details will be down in the show notes.
00:41:36.715 --> 00:41:39.621
thank you so much for joining us, and we will see you in the next episode.
