camels might be the new unicorn
Morning everyone. Congratulations are in order for Zoom, who announced Q1 earnings of a little over $328 million earlier this month. More than half (55%) of their $100,000 or higher paying Zoom customers began with a single employee’s free trial. How’s that for some upsell inspiration?
💰 COVID and the virtual global shutdown has impacted businesses of all shapes and sizes, but the tech giants of the world have managed to stay active in M&A. It’s actually aided in their shopping spree — with ample cash on hand they can be opportunistic with smaller, resource constrained competition, whose PPP loans only ended up getting them so far. Given the ongoing uncertainty around the pandemic's lasting effect on business, we’re guessing that this is only the beginning of a series of tech buys we’ll see from the big guys in 2020.
🐪 Camels are built for surviving in extreme conditions and conserve the essentials like food and water when resources get scarce. So as the UX Collective points out, they’re actually a much better representation of what a solid, reliable software company looks like than a fairytale unicorn. They’d like to think that a camel is the type of business that’s built on a strong core and isn’t likely to take huge risks in developing a new product. Sure, they (like nearly all software businesses) would often experience growing pains at the beginning, even operating at a loss. But they make the un-sexy investments to set themselves up for success and be more sustainable in the long run.
💼 No matter how great the resume looks, most people aren’t ready for their first leadership role and have a difficult time focusing energy on organizational strategy. Suzan Bond penned a great piece about what she’s learned throughout her years of interviewing tech execs. One point that hit close to home was the ever-changing structure of scaling companies. Trying to keep the delicate balance between retaining culture while preparing for growth is exhausting and not where anyone wants to spend loads of their time. So breathe, strategize, and if you’re a new leader, don’t feel like you have to do it all at once.
👥 Any marketer will tell you that the foundation of a campaign’s success is how well you understand your buyer’s persona, so building out those personas is step one to achieving your goals. As many times as you pour over your research, it seems that most people are missing a key ingredient – perception. Developing a solid persona, especially in B2B, you need to understand how your audience perceives and digests information so you know when they are ready to hear your message. Otherwise, your perfectly crafted message will still fall flat if the prospect isn’t ready to listen.
🥪 Sales and business development are cutthroat. As market spaces get more crowded, your team needs to be more aggressive to maintain and increase your market share. In Anthony Iannarino’s book Eat their lunch: Winning Customers Away From Your Competition, he breaks down how sales teams need to fully understand the goals of their prospect’s companies from leadership down. Be more strategic and less transactional. Ultimately, you want to not only close the deal but chip away at your competitor’s market share. Aggressive? Yes, but hey, all's fair in sales and business development