Episode Transcript
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You were listening to bb revenue acceleration, a podcast dedicated to helping software executives
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stay on the cutting edge of sales
and marketing in their industry. Let's get
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into the show. Hi, welcome
to BTB revenue acceleration. My name is
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Dan Seeber and I'm here today with
Freak Heminger ahead of a mayor marketing at
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suit. Oh you today, freak? I'll fine. Thank you. Good
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so, freak, thanks to joining
us today. We'll be talking about how
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to market and open source company.
But before we go into that conversation,
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great if you could introduce yourself to
our audience and also tell us more about
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yourself, as well as sous,
which is, of course, the company
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you're representing. Okay, no problem. So, yeah, I'm handing up
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marketing for EMIA, and the main
past that we have here at Susa is,
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thankually, to generate demand and to
generate lead in order to fill our
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pipeline. That's the main reason of
of our being. The team actually consists
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of a number of food marketing managers
are spread across the geography and obviously they
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take care of the actual planning and
deployment in their respective region and also in
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country and with tous this over a
three and a half years now. Actually
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also in this role, before I
came on board to Tousa, I spent
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about three years at a service provider
where I was responsible for marketing as well
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as actually for severything they are in
direct routs to market and also, including
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that, was more responsibility for their
alliances relationships. Prior to this, I
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spend my time as a field marketing
manager in inverter software and actually, from
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the acquisition of Veritas by semantic I
was joining the MIA team where I was
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handing up ten of working for about
eight years or in total. So pretty
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much in indirect roots to market.
That can't in conguncing with marketing and also
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in terms of the rest of the
partner landscape. Alliances has also been a
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big part of of my past experience. Okay, that's just needs sort of
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a little bit about myself and my
background actually, and in terms of the
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company, obviously suits a slightly different
based in that you're not, you know,
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a normal sort of staff the solution, or you're not a normal solution
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where the sales guys go out and
sell it and then you go a year
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later and get a renew or whatever. You're an open source software company.
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So could you provide a bit of
background on Your Business and and the solution
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you're offering and and the way in
which you're set up? Absolutely what I've
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never dealt with open source myself before. Just to put that to to to
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make the clear up front her.
For me it was also a completely new
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journey when I went on board at
schoozer. But actually stooze is is the,
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as we call it, the open
open source company, and we work
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with an ecosystem of partners and communities
whereby we deliver enterprise great open source software,
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defined infrastructures and also application delivery solutions. So very much on the on
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the platform layer and the infrastructure layer
wererectly providing our services for and on.
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But obviously all of that is also
backed by our services and support to make
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sure that customers are getting a continue
to support on on the solutions that are
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are consuming from us. And many
people are themselves what about this open which
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is, I think, a very
valid question to ask. But what it
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really means versus that open means more
than just software. And then the open
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source software as so it's so for
its it's more of a business models of
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culture. So we're also very keen
to live it throughout our organization, leveraging
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our Linux heritage, because that's where
we have emerged from. We also deliver
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open source solutions across other areas and
we are very keen to make sure that
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whatever we develop, whatever we sell
in terms of solutions and services into our
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customers, that we actually really make
sure that there is no kind of vendor
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looking or anything like that. So
we really want to make sure that customers
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have always the freedom of rice and
therefore also never will feel looked in by
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ourselves. So the two very important
message I want to get out of here,
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and what we're also doing is on
their platform many for stricture layer is
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helping customers in their journey on the
digital transformation, because obviously they're the big
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seen these days, although since a
number of years, but it's a very
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long Johny for most companies. Show
only just started, but we're very keen
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that we actually help and support and
use a customers on that journey towards a
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ditical transformation of their business. Okay, excellent. Well, appreciate the background
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and it's seems like both yourself you've
got a guess, a long and relatively
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sort of focus background between channel and
marks and then suited as a company of
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and of developed out the Linux Open
source background into the into the business that
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you are today that you just describe. Now. One of the things that
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we just touch on there being an
open sort of open source software company.
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The nature of this business, of
course, in your role is are there
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must be a balance between marketing,
the brand, as in suitor and and
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the software, that technology itself,
as well as, to your point a
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few minutes go around, the services
and the support and subscription to old to
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me, generate the revenue for an
open source company in your role. You
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mentioned that primarily marketing on are in
place to generate demand and generate leads.
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But where do you see the main
for what do you see among main focus
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as being? How do you think
that differs from Your Traditional Enterprise Software Company?
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Yeah, very good question and in
fact actually it is always a balancing
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x to drafts both areas and in
a way I find it comparable to the
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traditional software vendors, however, that
accepts you. Where we have to deal
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with is also an upstream community where
we still have to make sure we're driving
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awareness around our brand, but also
around our solutions for the respective open source
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project that these upstream communities are responsible
for or that they represent, and for
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our course, solutions. We must
continue to build the market awareness of the
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problems which we are we believe the
open source is the solution to and also
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the lastly, what we can offer
in order to help them do that.
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Open source is, in a way, all about communities, whether it's your
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partner ecosystem, which we call the
downs, the downstream communities of the downstream
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areas, but equally important is also
the the upstream. So I'm not sure
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how how well where you are of
these upstream communities, but what I have
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started to experience that actually it's just
like a big fan base around this particular
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project. So it's a very different
way of how you're dealing with that.
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So it's not about the hardcore marketing
message that is completely setting people off and
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upsetting them at the same time,
and so you really have to make sure
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that you really contributing by by knowledge
that you were bring value to the conversation.
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So it's more of a dialog.
So if you want as well,
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and we also need to make sure
that we have a representation of to in
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these e open source project in order
to make sure there, you know,
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people in the community alls receptive to
what we're bring to them. So it's
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all about giving take and it's not
about it we going in with through traditional
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hardcore marketing message because again, there
is not working at all. So you
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have to be treating it in a
way that, you know, people feel
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that you as a brand actually bring
value to their community. Yeah, that
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and that's an interesting point in making
there, which is the nature of those
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individuals that reside within the upstream community, which are guessing developers and similar to
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the roles, just by their very
nature of their role and the type of
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person that typically goes into that role. They don't really react well to that,
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that standard sort of direct sales and
marketing approach, which is engaging with
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them from cold and just trying to
push products and messages down the throat.
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I think they they're difficult to find
on places like Linkedin and Zing and and
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all of those sort of social media
platform they don't really want to make themselves
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publicly available. So I think to
your point that that marketing around sort of
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knowledge sharing and being a trusted adviser
and and being part of that community is
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seemed to be extremely important for them. I guess we're touching on that now,
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which leads me to my next question, which is clearly marketing strategy for
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a company like yourself is to build
relationship with those communities, both the upstream
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communities and downstream communities, which,
of course, that the partners. Now,
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as we both know, communities tend
to be built organically, although you
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can of course accelerate that as a
business, and there are many ways to
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both have positively and, as you
just mentioned, negatively influenced communities, but
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will focus on the positive to now. So from your perspective, what are
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some of the marketing tactics, whether
at Susa or just generally, you can
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apply in order to develop and also
maintain the communities that you're you're building?
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Yeah, well, we do that
through must pall tactics. So you know,
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of course, you can think about
some of the big open source projects
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that have their own conferences attached to
it. You know, this particular week
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we had the carfindary simony in the
Hake, you've cube calling our open source
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summers. There are so many of
these conferences. So that's where you have
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an ability to do engage with.
You know, we at least a very
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specific community, because it's sort of
more of a comparing way to to protuce
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there in mind, and actually a
lot of the tech people are credit to
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though, on twitter, and also
what you typically see, and you know
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I don't generalize here, but what
if we generally see if your people are
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also very keen about their reputation?
So also this is about what they bring
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to their community, how they're being
perceived and obviously know how how valuable people
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will see that they need victual is
in terms of their knowledge and thransfer of
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that, as well as some of
the ideas and perspectives spring to the community.
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So we will also want to make
sure that, through the digital channels,
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were playing that well and we're engaging
actively in these conversations. So that's
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one way of doing it. And
on the other hand, just before I
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describe that, I also want to
sort of give a perspective where we sit
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in the hall, in the whole
solution, because in a way, who
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is a bit like an engine inside
the car. Most people don't really think
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about their engine when they purchase the
car and they are, unless you're eating
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neximum performance for race car, for
example. That actually on a different topic.
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But actually, you know, we
are just part of that of that
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car and most businesses are being addressed
with a mix of independent hotware vendors,
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channels, system integrators and such that
actually sort of all together having integrated augmented
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way of their sellers to bring that
car to the market. So within our
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go to market we have multiple roots
to market. We need to play the
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firm. We need to make sure
it at also the receptiveness to our solutions
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is well in you stood by their
sellers, who are typically do control often
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the skills engagement before we get involved, but also that they are able to
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articulate the value that we bring.
So in terms of influencing or engaging with
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with the audiences, we are not
you looking just at sort of these print
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communities where we do a bit of
face to face physical events. You want,
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this is digital. But we also
really need to make sure that we
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don't get that that middle part who's
doing all the augmentation of the various elements
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to bring the total solutions customers.
So that part, for is is equally
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important that we make sure that we're
all, thankfully applying various tactics to bring
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that knowledge transfer and bring it insight
to our sellers of our indirect roots to
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market and our partner ecosystem. So
that's what kind of tactics can think about.
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We do actual love of engagement with
them on their big Trados where typically
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a large portion of their sellers is
available. We also spend a lot of
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time on partner enablement, whether it's
some of partners or alliances, wherefore actually
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we have also partner able the team
so lically toughly taking good care of that,
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and we also make sure that we
do actually a lot of say to
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a degree. Account Base Marketing Approach
is to make sure that within specific partners
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we are creating an uplift around the
awareness around our solutions that are specific with
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that particular of a partner that we
bring to market. So if it's a
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big as I we want to make
sure that we didn't. As I there's
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a good understanding that actually sees this
part of their portfolio and worth the role
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is is that we're playing in their
total solution they're being to markets or in
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the particular business practice at they're bring
to markets and so on. So for
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all these partners too, fights where
we're doing that equally. But also we
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need to make sure we're driving a
lot of tactics towards our end use of
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communities, because at the end of
today, we also say there's all that
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full and push at the end of
the day. So we also want to
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make sure that also the end uses
have an understanding why they actually need us
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and actually that they can also recrecent
from their partner. But also with the
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changes of the whole roots to market
these days, where you have the higher
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scalers, or the service providers,
if you want, that have been on
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the rise the last few years.
You know, likes of Amazon, Google
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and markets soft with Azure. There
was actually also more of a trend that
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and user style directly to these market
places and therefore wheelso need to make sure
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that also those people on the injuries
are side now where to find us and
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actually that they will find us,
or at least search for us, on
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those market places for building and putting
together their solutions on them on these public
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cards. So again it's a mixture
of face to face as well as digital,
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and the digital part what I've experiences
on the rise of the last three
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years by a riotically in comparison to
before. But again it's also about being
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more laser focus and more specific and
being able to deliver a more relevant message
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to the respective personas at the particular
stational buying cycle. Absolutely, and that
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will make sense and that does a
great sort of insight into what you're doing
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there and, course, those various
different mediums or tactics that you're applying a
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facetoface at the events and digital channels
across your partner ecosystem and then obviously influencing
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directly and uses as well. Clearly, from a marketing perspective that involves quite
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a bit of upfront investment, particularly
at for a software come for an open
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source company, before you actually start
recognizing revenue, because you're they're starting to
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use lize your solution and it's obviously
not until he gets that point in time
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where you're either they either require support
or further subscriptions and services around that that
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you you still actually generating revenue now
prior to that stage. Really, what
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are the some of the sort of
measurements that you can use to understand the
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impact that you're marketing is actually having
on these communities, both from a pre
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revenue but also a revenue stage.
How do you measure the impact that your
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marketings having on those communities? Yeah, and this is this is actually working.
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Start to differ quite a bit from
a few years ago. And where
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you see? That's all the traditional
software companies still have their potatial licensing models
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where you have a big deal,
you get all the cast up front,
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so it's sold one and this a
you know, you know exactly what it
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was that marketing has been contributing to
the business, in this case within subscription
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base or whether it's, you know, a recurring revenue stream. It becomes
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indeed a bit more complicated. So
it's still all quite possible to measure the
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contributions were making, but you have
to do that over a longer period of
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time to really measure correctly what your
actual impact is and therefore what your total
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returners of your investor euro dollar a
pound, and so where we are measuring
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in the first place, our success
from a marketing standpoint is what we are
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contributing to our pipeline, and I
mean the active pipeline. So hopeviously we
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bring an awful lot of opportunities and
some of those go go and loss,
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which is all totally understandable, but
we're also really measuring how, from its
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subscription based revenue do we contribute to
the total pipeline? So that's one side
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of it. And then, secondly, we're also measuring the extensive we know
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what's the revenue, the subscription based
revenue, that we bring to the bottom
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line, where we actually see also
the closed opportunities getting in our books.
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The one thing, though, that
we're also moving towards to industry to start
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moving in the direction where we are
able to measure the customer lifetime value,
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and this is a bit more complicated. It's particularly at least an hour space.
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is where you see that the initial
order, the initial subscription, often
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is relatively low in terms of value
because you know, they get it set
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up, they do the cause staff
and then actually is that all overnch day
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order, the next best which actually
is for their prediction, violens. And
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this is where, you know,
where it becomes more important and interesting,
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because then you see that, over
a twelve month period, for example,
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the value of that particular customer that
we through to the business significantly higher than
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what it might have looked after the
first month. So that's what I mean.
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You have to really look at the
longevity of the customer relationship on the
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one hand, and also the value
it builds up over the time. And
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you know, on the other hand, which is typically what you see by
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recurring or with recurring revenues strings,
is that you also have to start factoring
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any turn that you're getting from from
your customer base because it the end,
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it's Day, you have to make
up for that because if you get to
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you losing that revenue stream as well. And this is, I think,
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the next step for organizations like ours
that are to them the transformation of prescription
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even to recurring, which you also
have seen with the likes of Microsoft,
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for example. Yeah, good examples
are though. We you there to had
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a very Richard turn turn around food
extually came. I was very strong.
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So a lot of soup for companies
are gone through a transition to really become
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not to subcust in verse, but
even recruiting absolutely, and regarding that piece
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around reducing Chourn and really focusing on
the customer success, that you acquire a
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client and then how you can go
from, and she's starting with a small
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client to helping them to become a
larger client and then keeping them for the
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long period. We had an interesting
discussion a few weeks ago on this podcast
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with gentleman called Dan stilement from gain
sites, and if you have any interest
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in listening to that I encouraged to
do so because that was a an indepth
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discussion around the positive impact of customer
success and how actually the what the importance
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is about which of that function to
reduce. He gave some very interesting stats
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around what sales force are doing and
how actually a very, very high percentage,
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if not pretty much all, of
their bookings and now coming from repeat
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business and their churn has become very
low as they've invested more heavily in customer
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success and account management. Then they
have of your typical new business sales resources.
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One of the points you made there
was around tracking active opportunities and an
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opportunity and then subsequently revenue, I
should say. To get to that point,
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of course, from a marketing perspective
you have to generate leads and demand,
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as you touched on your role fulfilling
at the start of this corpor being
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in open source company. We've seen
it before when we open with companies like
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elastic, generate a large volume of
inbound leads that typically need some some qualification
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before they get in the hand of
your of your field sales rep where you're
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inside cells rap, whoever would take
that initial conversation that maybe because they're they're
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either two low level or they're not
actually a business that ever, just an
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individual that's interesting playing around with this
sort of software. It there's a lot
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of factors that will go into it, but they typically need some further qualification
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for a business like yours. What
sort of, I guess, percentage or
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impact is those inbound leads that you'll
generate a lot of them, of course,
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having coming on your on your pipeline
at revenue is at is that a
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large percentage or is that what are
the sources would you have? If not?
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Yeah, excellent questions. Are One
of the things that we started to
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focus on. More so we started
back two years ago on that. If
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you firstly really enhanced the quality levels
on an inquiry level, from from an
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inbound perspective. So we use quantities
of inquiries. At three years ago,
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relatively speaking, there was a low
number of the actually really filtered through.
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So obviously it's nice to have a
high volume of inquiries, but if the
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qualities on on part, you know
what we what we require in order to
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be successful, then you need to
see, okay, what you do we
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need to do to make sure the
quality level is going up. So that
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was also where we started to become
more targeted, do more segmentation, you
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more want to feel really embark on
the digital side where you know you have
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a lot of ability to to be
more targeted, to be more specific,
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has a better and a more relevant
method to the individuals. And actually now
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we really have seen a big fift
in terms of that quality so on.
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Just on the inquiry level, we
are actually pretty much static you're over here
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at the moment. But on the
contrary, we are driving first twenty percent
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higher volume on the lead side.
So actually is really starting to pay off
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that, you know, you can
still make a similar investment but actually drive
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much more potential pipeline on the back
of it. Your other question in terms
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of yeah, how do we sort
of sit through that? We have teley
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qualifiers and the actually within marketing.
So they are also my team, and
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what they do is they go through
all of these leads. So's tried to
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contact all of these individuals. So
you know, we work with the traditional
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orging Model S. it's old,
based on the serious decision methodology which actually,
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I think these as most people use. So nothing, nothing too specifical
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or tailors, I would say.
But anyway, they they do work on
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on the qualified, the automated qualified
leads, and they made sure that they
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have a capability to identify thankful interest
based on then criteria. If they do
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that, then actually they will convert
it and then it's being natal to stills,
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and we do that by means of
a so called warm handle. So
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we just not throw it over the
trends or just push it through the systems,
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but we also make through that the
tally qualifiers work with our insight feels
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we actually picked it up. They
do the first place on the still side,
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that they know what it is,
that they're seeing where it comes from
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and that get some of thistional their
part in order to be effective with their
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follow up, either themselves or actually
that they conveyed to stills wrap or to
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a pint our card manager that then
consequently can also work again with a partner
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on those leads. So that's so
the typical model that we apply at the
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moment. Okay, interesting and,
as you said, over the course of
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our discussion. I think approaching marketing
for an open source company certainly has some
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differences, for particularly around the the
the communities piece, or be it still
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important to build trusted communities as no
matter what type of Software Company are?
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But I think that there's added value
there for an open source company and also,
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obviously it's some slight differences when it
comes to to understanding what impact you're
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having from a pipeline. In any
perspective there's also some some similarities. Really
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interesting conversation. Appreciate your insight.
So I think we're coming too the end
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of Lup of our time today.
Free So, and I really appreciate what
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you've shared with us today. So
I guess last point would be if anyone
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wants to connect with you learn more
about you or suitor as a company,
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00:24:26.009 --> 00:24:29.450
what would be the best way to
get in touch with pie person, man
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00:24:29.529 --> 00:24:33.009
or sad the business? Well,
personally, people can always retalk to me
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00:24:33.170 --> 00:24:36.809
on Linkedin on there. I'm also
on twitter. So how people can find
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me there. Two if you want
to connect with whos or want to know
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more about what will for, and
also if you want to get in touch
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00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:47.599
with Schooza, you can visit schoos
it or come and you can either use
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00:24:47.680 --> 00:24:49.960
the text or you connect the also
submit a request called for and you will
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00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:53.549
be called back for the twenty four
hours. Excellent. That sounds like a
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00:24:53.589 --> 00:25:00.230
good SLA. Okay. Well,
once again, thanks not for Johan yesterday
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00:25:00.789 --> 00:25:03.150
free and being great homing on.
Sure there's been a pleasure. Thank you
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00:25:03.190 --> 00:25:11.700
very much. operatics has redefined the
meaning of revenue generation for technology companies worldwide.
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00:25:11.740 --> 00:25:18.420
While the traditional concepts of building and
managing inside sales teams inhouse has existed
333
00:25:18.500 --> 00:25:22.890
for many years, companies are struggling
with a lack of focus, agility and
334
00:25:22.089 --> 00:25:29.609
scale required in today's fast and complex
world of enterprise technology sales. See How
335
00:25:29.730 --> 00:25:36.359
operatics can help your company accelerate pipeline
at operatics dotnet. You've been listening to
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be tob revenue acceleration. To ensure
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