Steve DeBacco has had an absolutely stellar career in the software space driving growth from the start-up stage to enterprise, both as a senior executive and as a founding partner of Leaders Fund, a $100MM B2B SaaS focused fund investing in Series A and B companies. Steve reinforces a common theme of this podcast - B2B Sales has changed dramatically and success requires a renewed way of thinking and operating. A key takeaway from Steve is as a professional sales exec, make sure you put yourself in your prospects' shoes and think about the way he/she buys today, not how you might have been taught to sell.
The history of software/technology sales is one that was all about the seller. Every bit of training, from Miller Heiman, Target Account Selling, and Strategic Selling to Solution Sales, the Challenger Sale, and the Complex Sale, was focused on the sales person. Building relationships, understanding requirements/needs, preparing a killer demo, developing a strong proposal, and most importantly winning. This worked when the buyer was reliant on the seller. And therefore having a well-honed sales process was key to success. But much of what we learned has been upended as buyers have an arsenal to educate themselves about companies, products, and people. Buyers are much more empowered, start and even complete much of the buying process without anyone knowing. And they will not work around the seller's schedule. Access 24/7 is critical.
To adapt, SaaS companies have to make it easy and convenient for prospects to get the information they want - not what they think they need. To help buyers buyer (buyer enablement) software companies must make it easy to engage, easy to access and find relevant information for each individual buyer, easy to refer a colleague, and easy to do business.
Connect:
Connect with Steve on LinkedIn and learn more about Leaders Fund by visiting www.leaders.vc.
Connect with Greg on LinkedIn and check out Omedym’s website and their LinkedIn and Twitter
Greg Dickinson: All right. So welcome to the convenience economy podcast excited today, Steve Debacco from leaders fund is my guest today, Steve, as a way to get this kicked off. tell the audience a little bit about yourself and about leaders fund.
Steve DeBacco: All right, Greg, no, I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you this morning. And thanks for having me. So in way of background, you know, I spent, I guess the first 20 years of my career, working with early stage technology companies. First, as a technical engineering manager, supporting multimillion dollar enterprise sales opportunities. And then, after supporting the sales groups, I decided to go to the dark side. And I spent about 15 years as a sales leader, building and managing enterprise sales organizations. So I was part of the executive team at six different early stage technology companies, often with $0 in revenue when I joined, and I focused on building teams delivering well over 100 million in revenue, and then growing those organizations to to sell b2b enterprise software solutions. In 2015, I was the chief Revenue Officer of a company called apply predictive technologies. And we had grown the company to just over 100 million in revenue, and we are looking to do a liquidity event and MasterCard came and bought the company. So I was able to exit in 2015. And that's when I decided to, to make a little bit of a career change and find something that allowed me to leverage all my years of experience building and growing companies. So I reconnected with an individual named David Stein, who had worked with at three different startups. And we decided to, to launch a venture fund. So in January of 2016, we launched $100 million dollar venture fund called the leaders fund. David's in Toronto, I'm in Atlanta, we focus on investing in series A and Series B. b2b Enterprise SaaS companies. So that's kind of that the story of what got me to where I am today?
Greg Dickinson: Well, you left out a lot of details, because you've had a lot of successes. And for those on the audience, I met Steve in 1998, we were at Ariba, we both hire that exact same time. And a funny funny story is, you know, I flew into SFO first time ever at SFO, and Steve was gonna pick me up because we are going to do our first meeting at the company. So he rents the car. I never met Stephen my life. Steve's driving around the airport yelling, Greg, I'm outside yelling, Steve. Right, we found each other. But that's how we first met at the airport at SFO. When you whenever he was just getting started. We were early, early, early employees there. So that's full transparency. I've known Steve since 1998. And I'm glad to have him on the podcast today. Because as you can see from the introduction, boy, you know, kind of all sides of the coin. Now, which really, really need is he sees right tons and tons of new companies every day as leader fun tries to, you know, make investments and help companies grow. So, you know, Steve, with that kind of as the backdrop, you know, we both have been seeing a lot more of what you know, we call it the convenience economy, people call it the modern buyer, the Self Service buyer, but, you know, in your 20 some odd years of b2b, do you do you see a change in how you know, how buyers are going about in their buyers journey and how buyers are different is do you see that across, you know, your experience from 20 years ago to now and then your portfolio companies?
Steve DeBacco: God you know, Greg, so many things have changed over the past 20 plus years. It's crazy. And if I was driving around SFO airport today yelling Greg out the car window, I'd probably be arrested. But I'm on the the b2b sales side. Yeah, a lot has changed. You know, when I first started my career, you know, enterprise deals were very complex and sales teams were taught kind of a number of different sales methodologies. You know, it's all about sales and a sales methodology, whether it would be you know, Miller Heiman target account selling strategic selling solution selling the challenger sale, the complex sale, there are all these different sales methodologies that that people were trained on. And, you know, they all focused on kind of, you know, the salesperson building relationship with a prospect, you know, understanding their needs and the requirements. And then maybe validating those requirements and then putting together a product demonstration and demonstrating the solution. Maybe providing a quote or responding to an RFP, and everything was focused on one Around, you know, how do you win this competitive sales process. And at the time, you know, the process was really driven by the sellers, you know, the seller said, Hey, you know, here's our sales methodology, let's follow this methodology. And we'll adhere to the kind of this best in class sales process or sales methodology. And the sales teams, you know, a lot of them were focused on specific accounts, oftentimes, there were, you know, six and eight legged sales calls being made. So you had your sales executive, and then he'd kind of back up the bus with his subject matter expert, and bring in, you know, a technology expert, etc, etc. So, you know, it was a very laborious and face to face process, I guess, is what I'd say. And, you know, the buyers at the time, were typically educated by the seller, so they relied on, you know, the selling organization to educate them on, you know, kind of the, the solution that was being offered. Sometimes the buyers would go to trade shows or industry events, and get educated that way. But, you know, at the time, everybody's talking about sales tools, sales processes, sales enablement, you know, sell, sell, sell, and sales training at the time also focused on you know, sales process, product expertise, domain expertise, etc. But no one was talking about, you know, what does the buyer want? What does the buyer need, no one was building anything to address kind of the buying process or buyer enablement. So, that was kind of the, the early days, and today, you know, I, I've seen things just change dramatically, you know, the buyers now have an arsenal of weapons that they can go out and utilize to educate themselves, not only on the market, but also specific companies, specific products, even specific individuals, you know, through social networks, and LinkedIn, etc. So they can go out and find information, they can go out and find solutions, they can go out and try solutions, all on their own, you know, based upon, you know, personal referrals based upon, you know, online and internet searches, etc, etc. So both on the b2b and even on the consumer side, I think buyers have become much, much more empowered, you know, there's much more data available to help them understand solutions in the market. So, you know, they're out there, gathering all this information, oftentimes starting a process without anybody knowing. Exactly, yeah.
Greg Dickinson: That's blending, right. I mean, you think of the way you and I behave very Steven Gregor, we're going to go buy a car, refrigerator, vacation, plant a garden, whatever it may be, right, new tennis racquets, you don't walk into the store, raise your hand, say I'm here to buy anything, you start a process on your own, and you get to whatever that is, right, the 70 yard, you know, the the five yard line, the 10 yard line, and then that's when you engage, and that's how you are as a consumer, and I think what you're what you're saying is, we go to work as consumers now that those lines are no longer they're blended now, right, you know, bring your device to workday kind of opened up a flood of what Steve does at home the way he procures, you know, it's coming to work, right. I mean, you you, you do your thing when you're getting ready to buy something?
Steve DeBacco: Yeah, no, you're exactly right. I mean, things have changed so much, you know, just in the last few years, and I think that blending is a good way to describe it. But you know, also, you know, like you mentioned, when buyers were starting a process or engaging, you know, they engaged at the very beginning of that process with the seller. So you walk into the store, and you're there to, to be educated and learn and go through the process. Whereas today, and even on the b2b side, you know, by the time the buyer and seller engage the buyers done a lot of their homework, yeah, oftentimes, you know, a seller may not even have the opportunity to get engaged and the buyer may go straight to a shortlist by doing their own analysis and their own homework prior to ever engaging with a vendor. So, um, you know, it's a, it's really, I guess, shortened the engagement time between buyers and sellers.
Greg Dickinson: Well, I mean, I think you would agree right. Gartner report published a report, I think six to nine months ago that, you know, 5000 companies, a buyers and they said that their chart, their pie charts show that the average buyer gives the seller 17% of their time during the buying journey, if you divide that by three providers, whether that means each provider gets 6% plus or minus 6%. So you know, if you think about the amount of time that's nothing right to to your notion that back when you and I were working together at Ariba, every meeting started off with you going Let me tell you about Ariba Let me tell you about what we do. Let me tell you where offices are right. It was a 50,000 because no one knew Right, there is no way to gain now. Glassdoor tells you everything about culture, right? gQ tells you about products, the internet referral. So I think, you know, the sales cycle starts now. closer to the end, all that 50,000 foot view stuff, the buyers already got it on their own. And yeah,
Steve DeBacco: Exactly right. You know, when I talk to some of our portfolio companies that talk to companies in the b2b space, it's like, yeah, the the buyer has kind of circumvented the first three or four steps in the, quote, unquote, sales process, you know, the introduction, the getting to know relationship building, the preliminary qualification work is done before they ever engage. So they're getting kind of right to the shortlist stage.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah, yep. And, and we see right across our, you know, our world we live in, right, this idea by noon is that what this is presented with, and companies are now are starting to wrestle with is, you know, Steve, regardless of, of what training you took back, when you were talking about the different types of your target, selling and solution, selling through relationships, where everything right relationships and listening, and today, if the buyer is doing a lot on their own, that ability to create that relationship to create that trust is harder, and how can you listen to the customer, if they're not talking to you, right? If they're doing things on your own. So we are starting to see companies kind of wrestle with this idea of, I have to, but we call it digital trust, and maybe the wrong word we talked about, I need, you know, what, my consumer world, if I'm getting ready to do something, and a company or website will give me a whole bunch of information to answer a lot of my questions for me, without friction without burden without having to opt in, I begin to start to trust them. So when the day comes, that I want to buy something in that area, I go to them first, they may not win the business, but I go there first, because they've established digital trust, and I and I think what what b2b is struggling with is if they're on their own, and the only digital tool I have is a website, which is, you know, high level, top of the funnel kind of generic information. How do I establish digital trust on what my product does? How does it do it? Can it do it, and allowing that that buyer to become engaged with the product on their own and begin to have that digital trust? That's a lot of and that listening, right? How do you listen to a to a to that prospect that you don't talk to? Well, you provide them with a set of tools in which they can build trust, ask questions, get answers on their own, and you know what they're doing? Yeah.
Steve DeBacco: Oh, I couldn't agree more, you know, we absolutely see the same thing over and over again, you know, buyers want the ability to see touch, smell, feel, etc, a solution on their own. And, you know, that solution not only includes the product, but it also includes, you know, the support that's going to come along with that. So, you know, how do you assess that without interacting face to face. And that's what buyers are doing. It's like, let me find all the information I can about the company, the product, the people, and they're using a number of different digital tools to do that, you know, you got all the time they're, they're engaging and paying for subscriptions to, you know, the LinkedIn subscription services, and all these other online tools to allow them to kind of do their own buyer journey, so to speak, with digital tools versus engaging with the sales executives.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah, I mean, it really wasn't three things, right? You mean at all buyers today, we're on demand, we want it when we want it. We don't want to wait, we don't want to schedule for next week. We don't want to opt in number two, we we live in a digital world. We're trying to get information. We want authentic real information. And by the way, self service, right? Those are kind of the kind of the three things and I think, you know, if I look at the data I see from research cap costs, right, customer acquisition costs are accelerating rapidly right there. One survey I showed I saw so that last five years of 70%, which means it's almost double. So what that says to me is your current go to market strategy that was built on you having control you having all the information, you being able to dictate the sales cycle, that's not working, you're having to work twice as hard to get the same amount of ACD are the same on our customers. That's pretty much a sign that says whatever you're doing is not working.
Steve DeBacco: Yep, nope. Exactly. Right. Exactly. Right. You know, these buyers are forming opinions based upon the information that's out there. And if you're not making it easy for them to find and digest that information, you're going to be precluded as a seller from from kind of this whole buying process.
Greg Dickinson: Yep. That's what we we believe wholeheartedly Of course we do right here at Omedym. But I mean, the end of the day, if you add friction, you know, the walls I do, Steve, if you go someplace and try to find information, you can't find it fit quickly, or they ask you for Hey, opt in here, give me all your name and address and phone number. you swipe left there's another provider, you can go to another website and look for Information and eventually you'll find the one that begins to quote unquote influence you the way a salesperson used to or or allows you to get your questions. Your question answers hate a lot on that topic, right? And then we both agree on that some great, you know, anecdotes from your portfolio companies want to talk a little bit about about about, you know, because this this, you can tell me about naming names across your portfolio companies. The other thing that we see happening, in addition to the buyer on demand digital self services, SAS has been around for a long time, right? Not all of them have gone perfectly well, people buy by committee, now we're seeing the buying teams are much larger, those that have an input into the buy are larger. What's your opinion of that?
Steve DeBacco: Yeah, I you know, it's interesting, you know, as we look at people as they buy solutions, I don't know if they do it on purpose or not, but the buying teams are getting much larger, or the the people that are influencing the decision that that superset is getting much larger, because, you know, good companies allow you to access and look at their product and sometimes often, you know, use it for free for a while. And when that happens, more people on the enterprise side can engage and play with it. So more people are going to have an opinion and provide influence. So yeah, there's a lot more people I think that are being part of the buying process. And it's I don't think it's by design initially, but now it's happening because people have access to the solution can play around with it, and they can give their opinions very easily, you know, through slack or through some other tools. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. They all become influencers and hopefully you get enough of them to become advocates. Yep,
Greg Dickinson: Exactly. Yeah and and right i mean you think about you know, 20 years ago when we sold e procurement at Ariba 20, 25 years ago now right procurement bought it right and and and and accounting bought the the ERP package and marketing bought the morrow nowadays, right? a tool like CRM, right? You know, customer relationship management from Salesforce, if you will, well, marketing uses it, legal uses it, sales uses it inside sales, use it. So these apps are no longer quote unquote, departmental, their business wide right on purpose, but their business wide slack. It's not used by a group, it's used by the company. So that means you need right. And to some degree, as Gardner pointed out, I think a lot of the amount of the buying process is getting those influencers, to your point being advocates getting them on board, you spend a lot of time 30% of their time, according to study getting buy in, in the organization.
Steve DeBacco: Oh, yeah. Yeah, you know, and it used to be, you know, like you said, there was one defined decision maker, and then there are a couple people that made me to sign off on it, etc, etc. Now, it's like, hey, everybody's going to have feedback and opinion, and you there's no way the sales team or the selling organization can touch all those individuals.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah, that's my next point is that, you know, we think right, we see, that's great. You brought that up, but it makes it harder, because I think, you know, gosh, when I'm when I'm selling, right, I mean, two or three people is probably 20% of the team, right, the buying team and, you know, you never see the table and they're doing their shortlisting, to your point of they're trying to get consensus, Greg's not there. How do you provide a digital way for your to be there so they can refer to your product, your solution, your customer success, your win station, when you're not there? I mean, that's that it's hard today, right?
Steve DeBacco: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we kind of do that same thing, when we're looking at investment opportunities. You know, when we want to look at a company's product, it's like, Hey, can we go to the website? Can we easily engage? Can we feel the product? Can we play around with it? Can we sign up etc. Yeah. So you know, companies have to make it easy for people to engage, they have to make it easy for you to look at the product and get comfortable with it and then you have to make it easy for those people to you know, recommend or advocate that product internally so if you don't make it easy for people that sign on or play around with the product you're going to lose a lot of opportunity to create advocates yeah
Greg Dickinson: Yeah. I mean we we see all the time right that the that the cheer point right of it all you want to do properly schedule a meeting right and by the way, you know that meeting to get you know your team together Steve is a chunk of work to get all the people at the sellers to work so you wonder why sales cycles are longer because you're not willing to do you know self service allow that customer and listen we see a lot of product lead growth companies that are doing you know, fantastic right calendar Lee comes to mind down there in Atlanta where you are right a huge success story of of a, you know, product product led company, but kind of like SAS came about in 2000 2001 and not every company can move to SAS overnight, right and and not every company can move to be a product Lead, you know, kind of sign up for a trial of this technology, because they're just a the technology's not ready yet the company itself is not geared towards, you know that model. But you got to figure out a way to let them get their hands on their product much earlier in the sales cycle, because technically, it sounds like a really has been going on for a long time. You just weren't a part of it.
Steve DeBacco: Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, you're, you used to be kind of like, you know, you're successful in the sales process, if you engage with a prospect before they do an RFP? Yeah, you can influence the RFP? Well, today, you know, you're going to be successful only when you know, that people are from, you know, you see multiple people from the same company, hitting your website, accessing the product, signing up for the product, etc. So the sales process has changed dramatically from kind of this well defined process to almost a, you know, how do I influence as many people as possible, turn them into advocates? And, you know, that's kind of like, it's almost like an election where people internally outfielder or build their own opinions based on their experience. product, right?
Greg Dickinson: Yeah, listen, I I tell the story all the time. And I remember, you know, at Ariba with another sales rep. And we did a meeting, it was 15, 20 people in the room, and it was me and a sales guy and did a demo. And he got in the elevator. And, you know, Mark, high five me, said, Greg, great job, man. We nailed that demo. And the next day, he got feedback. And three people who didn't ask any questions at all assumed because I didn't cover a certain topic that we didn't do that. And it was actually graded as a poor meeting in the eyes of the sponsor, because they they came back and said, No, they don't do parallel workflow. They don't do this, because I didn't cover it. They didn't ask the questions. And I didn't cover it. When you let a person experienced the process on their own, every single buyer, every single person involved has a different perspective, right? That the compliance person that wants to make sure your software meets compliance, doesn't really care about the functionality, they care about compliance, the security officer, the purchasing person, right? I mean, to your point, everyone has a say, and by the way, they're not voting on the same thing, they don't understand your business and understand your ROI. What they want to know is, from their point of view, does it meet what they think it would? or could they use it if they were ever asked to etc? You know, it really is interesting, what you said, rewind a little bit of that when you as an investor, right? In some degree, right? You're a buyer, right? You're out trying to understand does this company do it? How does it do it? And you're doing the same thing, right? You're trying to learn on your own?
Steve DeBacco: Yeah, exactly. We're trying to, to engage as a customer would. So you know, we look at what it takes to get access to a product, we look at how quickly we either get an email or a salesperson reaching out to us. So yeah, we kind of do the same thing a buyer would do when we're looking at companies, and a lot of them haven't gotten to the point where they provide a notch enough digital engagement to get us excited. Right.
Greg Dickinson: Right. And you know, and the other the other thing I think you probably will concur with this is that we see like so across 1000s upon 1000s upon 1000s of portals a week that our customers have created for their customers and prospects. 48.6% to be precise of all engagement from your suspect prospect customer is before 9am after six and a weekend. Not everyone has, you know, everyone has a job nine to five, they don't have time, though, Steve, I'm sure you're doing work eight o'clock, nine o'clock at night investigating a company trying to learn trying to get an authentic answer to to their security or to their product, right. I mean, you don't do it all nine to five.
Steve DeBacco: No, the workday is a 24 hour workday now.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah.
Steve DeBacco: You know, we want to be able to get access to data and information, you know, around the clock. And if we're trying to log into somebody's site or, you know, download something, or find information, you know, it's always being done, you know, when you may not be able to talk to a person in real time. So you do need access, you know, pretty much around the clock. Yeah, yeah. Providing that, you know, again, it just kind of like you said it, eliminate them from the ongoing process. Yeah.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah. Because let's see, what we see is the fact that listen, a lot of companies, right, thank Gosh, for us here at Omedym, and a lot of companies still build their processes on Hey, we're in control, we're gonna control the sales cycle. You'll do it from you know, when we'll schedule it when it's convenient for us. Bla bla bla bla, bla, and the buyers like, Well, wait a minute, you know, it's six o'clock on the East Coast, three o'clock in California. And I was wondering if your software does X, Y, or Z, can I get my hands on it? Whether it's a video, whether it's searchable video, whether it's a product demo, whether it's a trial, I need to validate that because I have a meeting in two hours with my boss and he asked me three questions. And I can't get the answers from you. So what do I do right? That's real.
Steve DeBacco: Yes. Definitely is real really, absolutely.
Greg Dickinson: Hey, Steve, let's finish up with how I always like to finish up as you know, God, here's a person that's been in the industry for a while. And, and and now you'll kind of went to the investment side what you're seeing what's making companies successful, which maybe some companies not successful, you know, give my audience one lesson that if they were to go out and start doing it today would have an impact on their lives or impact on their business.
Steve DeBacco: Wow, you know, I've learned, I've learned so many lessons sometimes the hard way. But I guess, you know, the one, the one big lesson and, you know, it's, it's, I guess it's probably pretty obvious, but a lot of people interpreted different ways. The one big lesson is, you know, as a professional sales exec, always trying to put yourself in your prospects shoes, you know, in today's world, you know, there's so many data sources that a prospect has, and they're being overloaded with data. So, you know, you just, you just don't want to be another data source that adds to the information overload to these prospects. So put yourself in their shoes. And it's like, what, what can be done to make their life easier, as they're trying to sort through all this data? You know, data sources? Yeah, they're valuable. But being able to really sync up those data sources and make them more concise and a clearer view for them is key. So as a salesperson, why don't you make it easier for the prospect to get data and digest data? Yeah. So hopefully, with the right digital tools, you can do that.
Greg Dickinson: Wow. See, that's great advice, because I think that we could have a whole hour conversation on the frustration that people have where a salesperson will start them off at step one, even though they've done eight steps on their own, right? They already know about your company. They know how big you are, how many employees you are, the culture you have, where you're located, where your headquarters are, who competitors are. And yet, a salesperson will start the deck off, let me tell you at the 50,000 foot view about x company, and nothing is more frustrating to a buyer to say, Gosh, or even worse, they want all that information off of the inside salesperson, the salesperson takes over as the lead is is handed off. And they start again at square one right to your point. Be respectful. Put yourself in their shoes. How would you buy from yourself? I always ask companies when I'm trying to sell them. Would you follow your process? Would you opt in? Would you schedule the demo? Or would you move on? Funny how they answer the question off the record?
Steve DeBacco: That's a great point, Greg.
Greg Dickinson: Yeah. Hey, Steve, great to connect with you been a friend for a long time. I appreciate it. And you're kicking it over there leaders fund so that's fantastic news as well. And the audio is gonna great, get some good stuff out of there. So thanks so much, and have a terrific day.
Steve DeBacco: You too, Greg. Thanks for the time and it was great talking with you. Take care.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai