Issue #21
In This Issue: Vile Rumour & Gossip | Is The Model Broken? | The Myths of Demand Generation | The Art Of The Drive-By Meeting
This issue’s preview text was brought to you by Ben Mercer, who is sad enough to message us after each issue he reads – thanks Ben 🙂
Vile rumour & gossip
Chatbot wars
You can tell by the way vendors have stopped SHOUTING about their AI credentials that by and large they all have something that’s less than shiny. After the GPT frenzy last year it has emerged pretty rapidly that CS and bots are where the early value is, and there’s a politely played-out fight coming our way. Platforms like Ultimate, Digital Genius, Zowie and others are leading this charge, but there’s an avalanche of vendors coming.
Screw GA4
I know we’ve mentioned this twice in 3 weeks, but we honestly can’t believe what’s happening out there. Products like Triple Whale are seeing huge spikes in demand from Shopify customers, and we chatted to Tableau who – indeed, are rubbing their thighs with glee.
Do customers lie as much as vendors?
Yes, is the answer. Customers who are selecting tech, agencies and creative dissemble, ignore and avoid the truth all the time. We occasionally have a disgruntled vendor complaining about this, and to be honest we always remind them of two things:
1 - It’s their money, they’re allowed
2 - You all started it
In search of the exit – is the model broken?
Lying in a corner somewhere, covered in cobwebs, is that dream everyone at Klarna had a few years ago when they stuck around for two years longer than they wanted to – waiting for the IPO. A great platform and a great team – it was very sad that the worst outcome prevailed… no exit.
We can see signs of the same story playing out right now – SaaS is full of little teams of colleagues giving up on the exit they’d worked for and deciding to move now. It’s a really tough decision – some have invested 7 years of a career towards a single goal, only to see the deadline extending further and further out.
The chatter we hear is that 2025 will be the first point that anyone gets the exit they’ve dreamed of. At Buyingtime we’ve watched every software firm we’ve ever worked for start to fail, immediately they sell. It is a necessary part of the circle of SaaS, but this time we wonder if the chaos of the last 4 years will give us some calm for a little while.
We suspect this decision really lies with investors and VC’s who, right now, are keeping their powder dry.
The myths of Demand Generation
You may have seen a few videos from me recently – notably kicking up a little storm about “Demand Generation”.
We see part of our role in ABM as calling bullsh*t where we see marketing “fashion” taking over from common sense. Let’s face it – for most vendors and agencies “ABM” is simply a dressed-up old school Lead Generation program. The data is shonky, the content is self-serving and the poor SDR’s get beaten to a pulp as they learn to sell and generate poor meetings for AE’s at nothing like the required rate.
A story about “demand”. At NRF I sat next to three members of a tech team from a British retailer, in NYC on a shopping trip. They were looking for a new merchandising solution, and thinking about product data. The business had just completed 5 Capex projects and so this freed up the time and money to move forward and fix these next two issues.
That – is what you call “Demand”.
Notably, they weren’t looking for a categorised piece of software – instead they’d identified problems that they wanted to fix. In a world where most SaaS we work with is in a unique category that hasn’t been seen before – how can customers be demanding it? They don’t even know it exists!
We’ve spent 20 years delivering a “lead generation” service. It’s not Demand Gen – that’s a lie… and those “engaged” accounts 6sense tells you have intent don’t really. Do they? Seriously?
The art of the drive-by meeting
Anyone who has seen a truly great outreach caller will smile at this next part. I’ve worked with some really brilliant people over the years who truly understand how to build rapport quickly on the phone, who can tease and mould a value proposition into a digestible and amusing talktrack – and then can guide, cajole and flatter someone into that first meeting – all in 5 minutes.
It’s very rare these happen of course, and when they do we call them a “drive-by”. All too often the person agreeing to this meeting has forgotten why pretty quickly, and whilst charm is incredibly valuable in this instance it masks a weak first engagement.
We prefer sticking to an old-school 8-10 point touch pattern. Sometimes we write letters to give us a first touch, then maybe a single interesting email, or a social connection - but we take time inbetween and we do not “swarm” or annoy at scale.
We like a “crawl-by”... with context – they’re solid, meaningful and we are 100% sure there’s a problem our client can fix.
Sorry / not sorry for a little more content that relates to us in this issue. We offer opinion that’s unfettered, nobody has to agree with us.
Buyingtime Dictionary
Frequently used (but never about you) phrases from Buyingtime Ltd.
Glovebox
/glovebox/
adjective
1. Full of stuff you don’t need and won’t shut up
"Yoohoo!" Your spine tingles. The mini hand of a novelty back scratcher waggles at you. "Did you get my email? Never mind, I'll come over!" Run, for the glovebox beckons.
