I saw something in an article this morning that had me nodding my head in agreement and I thought it was something that all of us should think about. It was a piece about how the growth of marketing technology companies has stalled and it gave as a reason this:
There is a long list of sales and marketing tech vendors that have had their growth stalled for a number of reasons: failure to find a use case with broad market appeal, product based on a feature, or quite simply couldn’t execute.While these companies might have received more funding two or three years ago, in today’s climate VCs are not replenishing their offers. Today, there are big rounds for those with momentum and a big story, or no funding for those that don’t.
In other words, many of these companies have been able to attract a client base but the results those clients were expecting haven’t been there. That’s a critical thought when you’re making promises, isn’t it? I can’t begin to count the number of tech companies I’ve spoken with over the years that made huge promises but failed to deliver.
I wrote about this several years ago. Way back in 2011, I wrote:
I can’t tell you how many presentations I’ve sat through for companies that were going to grow my revenues 10x but wouldn’t take 90% of the first year’s incremental revenues as a fee. Big red flag. Then there were the companies who promised great service but wouldn’t sign service level agreements that legally obligated them to provide that great service.
So at the risk of repeating myself, I’m going to repeat myself (this time from 2016):
Nothing like eating your own dog food, right? But that’s a critical part of serving our customers well and each of us needs to do that on a regular basis. When was the last time you tried to go through checkout on your own online store? How was the experience? How about trying to return what you purchased or put in a call to your customer service department? My guess is that none of your top managers have done any of those things in a while.
You can only grow so big if the results aren’t there. If you haven’t explored those results with your customers along with the time, effort, and expense it took them to achieve those results, you’re not doing your job. More importantly, you’re setting your growth curve on a downward course because nothing in business happens in a vacuum these days. People talk.
One thing I’ve learned in consulting on franchises is the importance of what we call validating the franchise. It’s when a prospective owner speaks with current owners to find out if the representations made by the franchisor are accurate and complete. It’s kind of like checking references when you hire except the FTC requires the franchisors to disclose the names and phone numbers of all their current franchisees so you can’t control with whom a candidate speaks. That means the results have to be there, pretty much across the board.
When was the last time you spoke to your customers about their results from using your product or service? If you have to think about it, it has probably been too long. Food for thought?
Consult Keith 