"I want to make sure that the first thought that pops into the mind of a client leaving a meeting where I'm presenting a proposed solution is, "You've put a lot of thought into this!"
We've known each other for a relatively long time. Mainly thanks to the Mastermind Club, where I met both of them and had a chance to observe. To see and hear how they think about business. Inviting them on the podcast and asking them business questions that hopefully took them out of their comfort zone. They persevered. That's why I invited them both to the first Incubator of the year. And to the next episode of the podcast.
Petr Němeček and Aleš Roman are two young sales directors who have their heads screwed on straight. The results of their work only prove it. That's why I wanted to get at least a little bit of their know-how out of them for you. What did we talk about?
🔸 What made them participate in the Incubator?
🔸 What did the Incubator learn from the participants?
🔸 Are team management and team development one and the same?
🔸How to make a proper variant offer?
🔸 How much time should be spent on the analytical phase of the deal?
TRANSCRIPT OF THE INTERVIEW
Martin Hurych
Hello. I'm Martin Hurych and this is another Ignition. Today we're going to talk primarily about business, and when we talk about business, it's with none less than my two friends with whom we recently completed a B2B business incubator, Petr Nemeck and Ales Roman. Hi, Petya and Ales.
Petr Němeček
Hi, Martin.
Aleš Roman
Hi, Martin.
Where have they moved since the last time we shot?
Martin Hurych
Today we will talk primarily about B2B business with a long sales cycle. Before we get into that, you've both been here a while. Ales even helped me pitch Ignition, guest number 001. Pete was here a little while later. Before we get down to business, tell me where you've moved in the time we haven't seen each other on microphone and camera, because for each of you, the shifts are relatively large. Who's going to start?
Aleš Roman
I see shifts in our country on two levels. The first one is technological, but I think that is not really the goal when we are talking about trade, so I will rather outline the second area, the business. We've basically had one of the most successful years we've had in terms of new projects that we've won and, most importantly, our strategy is to get abroad. So we have started a couple of international projects in the last year, which again moves us into not being that small Czech company, but being able to compete with the global giants.
Martin Hurych
Where have you personally moved to, what has it given and possibly taken away from you in the almost two years you have been away?
Aleš Roman
The last two years have kicked me into enjoying business more and more. The more I do it, I've suddenly become aware of some techniques and tactics and you can suddenly take it to that next level. He can play around with it a bit more and at the same time I'm confident in the basics so I can try new things and discover new things.
Martin Hurych
Pete, you've even changed companies in that time, so tell us where you are today.
Petr Němeček
Today I am at Proficio, which is a marketing consulting firm, and some time ago Jirka Novák, my colleague, was there and I am a business development director. This means that we have responsibility for new business with my small team that is currently being created. In addition to that, I'm kind of helping a startup called Digitask by Filip Dřímalka, where I'm the guarantor for sales innovation. Basically what we do is that when a company comes to us that needs to implement a CRM or improve their sales processes, I'm the one who guarantees that it's done right.
What are the most common "obsolescences" that Peter deals with?
Martin Hurych
That's what you put me on for such an unexpected question. What's the absolute most wrong thing about what goes into Digitask in terms of business? What are the things that you have to deal with the most?
Petr Němeček
Paradoxically, we are always contacted by companies that do not even have a CRM, so they have 10 salespeople and each salesperson has their own Excel, which is not even shared. Ironically, we see that a lot all the time, so I would say it's the absence of any process, any control of the sales director over what his team is doing.
Martin Hurych
I had a feeling you were deploying artificial intelligence.
Petr Němeček
Also, yeah. If we were there, I think that's fine, and of course there are pioneers who are addressing that, but quite often it's still that routine stuff around some process automation, CRM stuff.
What made them participate in the Incubator?
Martin Hurych
Why are the three of us here today, why have I invited you, I said at the beginning that we have relatively recently completed this time a joint B2B business incubator. This year, I've invited you as people who do business every day, make a living at it, so we're going to somehow combine our experiences. Thank you so much for that, it wouldn't be the same without you. But not just to tickle your bellies and compliment you, I am curious what made you personally jump into such a project, which is not easy in terms of time and beyond your daily duties.
Aleš Roman
For me it was definitely the desire to pass on my experience and knowledge. I was always happy when I could help someone, move them somewhere and I knew I would have that added value there. So for me, that was the engine of education, because I try to educate on the weekends and in the evenings, so I wanted to be in that opposite role one day, where I would be the one passing on that experience.
Petr Němeček
For me, every year I make my vision for the coming year. So as I was thinking about 2023, I put one of the goals that was important to me, which is just to share more of the things that I know, to train more. So then when this opportunity came up, I said this fits into my vision, let's do it.
What surprised them negatively in the Incubator?
Martin Hurych
That sounds absolutely fabulous. What, for example, surprised you negatively? I'm sure you had some expectations of what it would be like. What surprised you?
Aleš Roman
I guess I was somewhat negatively surprised that I'm used to being very proactive when I go somewhere for knowledge. When the incubator was starting up and before the people got to know each other, I felt so apprehensive about sharing those things there. Everyone tried to pretend everything was working for them at the beginning and it was so cool as we got to know each other that suddenly it was such a safe environment. Suddenly people weren't afraid to get a little bit naked and admit to everyone what wasn't working for them, what they wanted to improve. For me, that's a huge courage because we're all trying to perform to the best of our abilities, although I'm sure we all have some areas where we feel we're not quite there and we should improve.
Martin Hurych
What about you, Pete?
Petr Němeček
I was rather positively surprised by the whole thing. All in all, I agree with what Aleš said. At the beginning we were getting to know each other, but what was nice was that although it took three months, I was pleasantly surprised by the endurance of the people. When we had the last optional module where these people may or may not have come, almost everybody was there and I really didn't expect that. I thought I was going to be the only one there. So the endurance was amazing, I really liked that. Because my experience is that when I was in college and there were about 120 of us starting, there were 20 of us finishing. When I was at various other
in courses where there were 15 or 20 of us, so many people came to the first lesson, but we finished at 5 or 6. But the stamina was good here, so the information was probably interesting.
What question derailed them?
Martin Hurych
You had to answer a bunch of questions, too. Which one of the audience, for example, made you the most nervous?
Petr Němeček
I think the questions that can generally derail are the ones you haven't experienced, where the person asks you a question you've never experienced and now you have to piece together an answer. Either you're strong enough to transpose some experience of yours into an experience that the person may be having, or you have to say in fairness that you'll bring an answer next time. Those are the things that can derail and I think it was in the last module that I was talking about that one of those questions came up. But the fact that there were more of us, especially the participants, because I was there on my own, so the participants were able to confer with each other. So it wasn't that I was the one with the patent on reason. It was great that those people shared with each other as well and were able to complement each other.
Martin Hurych
Do you think it's worth saying, I don't know, in these cases? Because a lot of people think that in order not to lose face, they push for an answer. I think in this complex and fast-paced time, there's no shame in saying I don't know and either I'm going to get my degree or they're going to throw somebody else in. That was part of the reason the three of us were there. We are each strong in something different and the older I get, I don't consider not knowing to be a bad answer.
Aleš Roman
Totally agree. As we had an interesting mix of people there, from the owner of a software company to a technical director in manufacturing, the topic of software and software companies is close to my heart, so I was able to be nicely derailed by questions from manufacturing at times. On the other hand, it has a nice added value because if there's anything I've learned over the years, it's that I can be inspired by a real estate owner, a manufacturing owner. It may not be my business at all, which I know in some way, but he's talking about something and I'm writing down ideas on how I would apply it to myself, even if the focus is completely different. So that's what I saw there.
Martin Hurych
When have you ever written anything like this yourself?
Aleš Roman
I write things down like this all the time. For example, I was interested now when I was talking to a marketing agency about the business model, about pricing, and the person was describing how they use a form of credit. They don't actually manage money, they convert it into credits. Even though it was a different business, it got me thinking and I had this blank look for a minute where my brain was scrambling and I was thinking how can I bring that to us, how can I leverage that.
What did the Incubator learn from the participants?
Martin Hurych
Was there anything in the incubator that the students taught you?
Aleš Roman
I'm sure it is. I thought it was great when there was a person who was selling without having any website, without having a LinkedIn profile filled out. It actually gave me that really that sales isn't about the brand, about those things in that first moment, that when I have a small business, the first thing I have to deal with is sales because that's the area that brings money into my business.
Martin Hurych
How about you, Pete? Was there anything that you learned that made the roles completely reverse?
Petr Němeček
I probably wouldn't single out one particular thing, but what I extremely enjoy is getting to know these companies and going in depth with them. What I always take away from that is that I get to know that particular company more, but also that particular industry, so then I'm also stronger in terms of communicating with clients because of that. I know how things work in the tech and manufacturing company because I also have mainly experience in software companies, so this was definitely enriching for me.
Which module did they enjoy the most?
Martin Hurych
We had those three months divided into plus or minus thirds. When you look at the program, which module did you enjoy the most?
Aleš Roman
I have to say that I extremely enjoyed managing the team. It's really important to me when I see some feedback, I see people thinking about it, writing about it, and when I saw in the video how everyone has their head down in that notebook and they're slowly not able to write, I was so excited. We even dragged it out, we had that one module for two hours and I feel like we could sit there for another two hours and there would still be questions about it. That was really fun and energizing for me.
How to manage a sales team?
Martin Hurych
So come tell us some two or three things about how to manage a sales team that the attendees wrote about the most.
Aleš Roman
I had it very much based on feedback, because I think that's the most important thing in the end. If I want to develop someone, I want to move forward, feedback is often taken as criticism. People put their head down and wait to see what criticism comes and what they're doing wrong. But when I set my mind to the fact that when I give feedback to someone, that it's basically a gift, that I'm allowing them to be better, that changes completely. If I don't give them that feedback, I'm actually limiting them and not allowing them to improve. That's the most important thing for me in managing a team. At the same time, it's also about what kind of team I want to build. I definitely want to have a team that's independent, accountable, so shifting that responsibility to them and not being the one that's going to figure it out for them, dictate the steps and then the deal falls out. I don't think that works.
Everybody has to figure it out for themselves, you learn by making mistakes, of course it's better if somebody else makes those mistakes and I learn from them, but unfortunately that's rarely the case.
Martin Hurych
Do those who receive your gifts get the same joy from receiving gifts as you do from giving them?
Aleš Roman
Whenever. I'd say it's not always the way I have it set up. Of course, it happens that one doesn't quite deliver it in the way one would like, but that's a matter of setting it up and knowing how to say it.
Are team management and team development one and the same?
Martin Hurych
There was one other thing that caught my eye. If I put an equation between team management and team development, I would understand, that it's more or less the same for you?
Aleš Roman
Yes, I feel very much the same way, because I don't think it's about having a huge team to have any kind of displacement. I think you can make a big push with fewer people if it's the right people in the right positions.
What is Petr proud of within the Incubator?
Martin Hurych
So it shouldn't just be charts, KPIs and pressure, but development. Pete, what did you like, what are you properly proud of from your modules?
Petr Němeček
I might follow up in that as I've had the opportunity to lead various sales teams, I've had quite a lot of those training sessions done historically. But this has given me the opportunity to refresh and do those know-how trainings that are current again. The thing that appealed to me the most, and I think to the participants afterwards in some of the feedback we got, was how to create a solution proposal for a client. A solution proposal to me is an offer, I don't use the word offer much because it's negative, just like advertising in marketing. I had it constructed in such a way that I had some tips from practice on how to work with it, how to prepare it and how the proposal should look visually. Due to the fact that there was good feedback on it, I rate it as the most beneficial for me.
What does a proper offer look like?
Martin Hurych
So don't ask us to do that, and even though we can't show it here on PowerPoint, come tell us what a proper solution design should look like for you.
Petr Němeček
The right solution design must certainly address the client first. Quite often the solution proposal looks like I describe my company, who we are, what we do, how long we have been in business and so on. That's usually how I start, which will kill the client. So that's probably the first thing that's very common and it's good to avoid.
Martin Hurych
Does that mean you have nothing about yourself in the draft solution?
Petr Němeček
I have something maybe at the end, in the last slides, that I don't even go through in the meeting and then I send it afterwards by e-mail or whatever.
Martin Hurych
Viewers, listeners, the first 5 pages about how great you are, either throw it out or move it to the end.
Petr Němeček
In that first phase of designing a solution, I have some common things that we want to achieve. It's some goals, a description of the company, a logo to make it personal. Then, based on the definition of those goals, the actual solution design is how we approach that potential collaboration, what we see as possible things there. I usually try to put in some extra thing that the client doesn't expect, but is of great value to them, and at the same time it doesn't even have to cost that much that we would spend 20%, 30% of our time on it, which in the end nobody pays us. So I'm trying to deliver a lot of added value there, both to that client and to my company. I think that's one of the things we presented there. Then we went through how to increase the offer in general, how to increase the value and how to increase the final selling price in the form of a variant offer.
Is Peter spoiling his clients?
Martin Hurych
You said that you always put a surprise in the solution design with high added value that is not expected. You like to spoil clients?
Petr Němeček
I'm thinking, but basically I want to achieve one thing. When the client slams down the laptop, most of these meetings are online these days, or leaves the room, I want their first thought to be that they've gone to a lot of trouble.
How to make a proper variant offer?
Martin Hurych
I was also interested in the variant offer. This is something that we all actually see around us a lot in terms of, say, saas services in business, or even in our private lives when we buy something as a saas service. It's a normal thing, yet within that bubble of mine when I see offers being made, it's something that is absolutely not used. Come and maybe enlighten us a little bit on what it is and how to deal with a variant offer properly so that we increase the value of the deal.
Petr Němeček
The point there is that the variant offer has a lot of great benefits. One of those benefits is that if I give a client two or three solutions to their situation, where there's a range going from some option that's minimal to an option that's maximal, I can show them what we can solve together.
The maximum option may include things that the person or the company does not currently need. Sometimes the client says they don't like it and we start with the maximum option. If I don't do that, if I really only put in the things that, based on those identified needs that the client wants to address, I may lose some turnover to some extent. But the important thing is that within that variant offer the person is making a mental decision. I see two or three options and whether I want them or not, I'm already thinking which one fits me and which one is more suitable for me. By the time I make a decision internally in my head, I have already made a decision. If I'm dealing with multiple competitors, or I'm choosing from three vendors and I'm one of them, the comparison between those vendors is going to be that much worse because that client has already made some decision based on my bid. So this effect is also quite crucial for me, because I always try to get information out of the client at the end of the meeting, which is the closest of the options.
Martin Hurych
I've heard the opinion that it makes the client think and they don't like to think much. So if the offer is clear, you get this, it's going to cost this, it's like the yoghurt shelf where you have a white and a strawberry and you choose natotata. What's your experience, does that lead to decision paralysis?
Petr Němeček
He leads, but when there are 5 or more variants. When there are two or three, I think it's perfectly fine, that there is no paralysis at all, or I don't have that experience. Even the theory is pretty good about that, that if there are really 5 or more variants, then there is already decision paralysis. Most people take the happy medium, which is pretty clear from the three variants, if I have 4 variants it's already worse, with 5 it's also a bit worse because I already have some side variants in there, so it's harder to make decisions. When it's three variants, most of the time my experience is that I don't think I've had anyone tell me they want the minimum as well. In the end, it ended up being that he said the minimum, but then it didn't work out anyway because it was too expensive anyway. But most clients will take the middle and some will take the maximum.
Aleš Roman
I think it's a lot about personality typology as well, that some people want one clearly defined option, but a lot of people, especially in management positions, want to have that power over their decision. So if I give them multiple options of which way to go, they're happy that it's their decision to weigh.
Petr Němeček
I might add, you're talking right out of my ass. Typology plays a huge role in this, because a person who is very analytical sees a draft solution where there are three options, that you're terribly under-competent at what you do. That's where you really need to go down that path of two options where both are fine, just one has something extra. The typology interferes an awful lot and you can't say in general that three options are ideal and keep using that, but you need to bring the typology into it. It's constantly about having a group of people against me, or one person, and I'm making the solution design for that person, tailored to them.
How to assign a price to the variants to increase the value of the contract?
Martin Hurych
We'll stick with those three options, which is perhaps the most commonly seen offer on the internet, apart from some free trials for a while. You also have recommendations on how to attach prices to those variants so that, paradoxically, the value of the deal goes up relative to what I might sell by default.
Petr Němeček
I usually work with scales there. The theory says 1, 3,5, 5, I use 2, 4, 5. We as traders take responsibility for the person's decision. I'll sell him something, but if I don't deliver that value within the context of what I sold him, then it was really all for nothing anyway. We do a lot of long term collaborations for x number of years, so I need to be very confident that any of those options, or at least the middle and maximum ones, will deliver that outcome. We want that client to come in six months later and be really happy with it.
Aleš Roman
Moreover, I don't think the option means that I tell him he can go left or right. It's about having a base and then adding more services. If I tell him he can go left or right, it leads to exactly that decision paralysis and the trader has no value added at that point. So I have to be convinced that all three options will meet the goal that I've defined with the customer and that there will be that added value. That's the key.
Can I propose a solution if I don't know the client?
Martin Hurych
I will confess to you one thing that struck me about the whole programme. It is obvious that people today tend to gravitate towards instant solutions, quick shortcuts, band-aids, and you have actually both said it nicely here now in the menu. A properly constructed solution design needs to respect what the client really needs, what they want, what they have a budget for, and how they are typologically based. I know that client very well in those earlier stages. But what I find is that a lot of people, not just in the incubator, skip those discovery phases and push too quickly into some solution design that can't be a solution design because I don't really know what that person needs. I was terribly intrigued by what you said about the business person taking responsibility for the solution. How can I take responsibility for the solution when I don't even know what the client requires, what their situation is, and what I have to offer them? Am I completely out of line or is that how you see it as well?
Aleš Roman
I can't make an offer if I don't actually know the client, I don't know their needs, so I can't solve their problem if I don't know them. So for me, it's about taking that time to meet and analyze before I make an offer to make sure that this solution is for them. The goal isn't to send 10 quotes a day, the goal is to send two that fit that customer, and there's something on top of that.
How much time should be spent on the analytical phase of the deal?
Martin Hurych
When I started my business, the pressure to make a living logically led me to start throwing out offers after 30 minutes of some very short conversation. You can probably imagine what the conversion was like, which leads me to a question from your industries. How much time do you estimate, in percentage terms, you spend on that analytical phase of figuring out who's making the decision, what they're interested in, what their needs are, what their actual needs are? Because it seems to me that the non-business public thinks that the weight of the business hangs on the last things that are the most visible, the most training, but that beginning is often invisible. How do you have that in your business, for example?
Aleš Roman
I'll answer it maybe a little differently. At the beginning, the goal is to clearly identify the client's needs and whether we can solve them at all. If I don't have that, then I can't get to the negotiation stage because in the negotiation stage, someone will then ask you why they should work with you and what the solution will bring them. If I don't know those needs, I can't answer that and I'm diminishing my bargaining power on that end because I'm just another contractor who made a generic offer that doesn't take those needs into account. Clarifying the prioritization of needs is key. I am happy to devote a separate meeting to this, which may not be the introductory meeting, but a follow-up meeting where we have a purely conversational meeting. Today we hear about automation everywhere, we all want to automate, but why, where is the pain, where is the benefit, why do we want to automate. If I don't go that deep, I can't find the best solution.
Martin Hurych
Your business cycle is definitely a year plus. If you were to put it in percentages, how much time do you spend on those preparation stages and then how long does it take you to close the deal itself when it's well prepared?
Aleš Roman
The customer meetings and those conversations are definitely higher units of hours, when you add one to one the internal time and then I'm just going to present the offer. I guess that's how I would put it. Before I present the offer, before I even go to do it, I get clear on the needs of that client, what objectives it's going to meet and then I know what I'm going to do because I have a clear brief. If I present an offer early, it's a nice offer, but I wanted something completely different from it and then you wonder why I spent hours creating it in the first place.
Martin Hurych
How about you, Pete?
Petr Němeček
Let me try to generalize. When I take some medium case, some medium client, the flow is usually that I make some basic brief about that client, what I can find out from BizMachine, from Merk, LinkedIn and similar tools. Then I have a meeting where I find out more about the current state. Again, I have a form ready to guide me through that a little bit. In order to make sure that the solution proposal has a head and a tail, I usually don't work on it myself, but I take a strategist who has experience in that particular field. Together we then go back to that client and do a second round, some debriefing of that initial brief and talk more in depth, get to know the client more. Even maybe on that client's side, not just one person from marketing is already there, but maybe the owner is already there and so on. So it's kind of two wheels. Then we know quite well roughly where we stand and on the basis of that we are able to do some digging into the design of a solution. Many times, maybe not even with a price yet, we are just showing the direction we can go. It's not until maybe the fourth iteration that we propose that refined solution with some kind of price tag. We're able to do that for a smaller client where we know very well and they have typical pain points, so we're able to do it fairly quickly there, but we also have larger clients where it takes longer.
Martin Hurych
So it's two thirds at the beginning and one third at the end plus or minus?
Aleš Roman
I'd say, give or take, that's how it's going to be. I would point out what Petya said, to check the solution without any price at all. Because one can make a few inquiries during the process, ask a little bit about the budget, so that one doesn't think that one is going to build a three-storey house when the customer expects a garden house.
Where do they want to take the business?
Martin Hurych
You obviously enjoy the business. Where do you two want to grow within the business, what interests you, where would you like to see each other in another two years when we see each other here again?
Aleš Roman
I would definitely like to grow into international business, because I consider it a competence that I have not yet fully developed. I did some work in international trade before, where we exported food to the Far East, to China and basically all over the world, and I found it very interesting there. You had to think about the cultural differences, how to behave, and I saw that I wasn't quite as solid in that. So that's definitely the direction I want to go in. You're an experienced international businessman, so I'll write to you later when I'm completely lost.
Martin Hurych
I'm tempted, cultural differences are a great thing. Pete, what about you, where does it tempt you?
Petr Němeček
One of the reasons I am at Proficio today is the expansion into the CE region. That means we are tackling Germany, Austria, Poland and setting up more offices and branches there. So for me it's very similar, although I'm not heading to the Far East, that we're doing marketing consulting services.
Will they be with me at the next Incubator?
Martin Hurych
Last question today, can I count on you for the next incubator?
Aleš Roman
Yes.
Petr Němeček
es. It was like a wedding.
Aleš Roman
It's recorded now, so we can't say no anymore.
Martin Hurych
I'm a little frightened by the silence, but I'll count on you. Thanks for sharing your experiences and your feedback here, I look forward to working with you again and maybe we'll meet again sometime. Thank you so much, may you be well.
Aleš Roman
Thank you.
Petr Němeček
Thanks, Martin.
Martin Hurych
So you heard, you can look forward to Aleš and Petya at the next incubator. If anything we've discussed here today has caught your attention, we'd love to hear from you. In that case, I'll ask you for a few things. The first one is standard, make sure to like, share, subscribe, because that's how the world works. The second one is, if you're interested in the B2B business incubator and the information shared and disseminated there, definitely let me know. To give your business a good kick-start before the summer, we're looking at another incubator in a slightly changed format, an accelerated format, but you'll definitely still get to hear what we've discussed here today. So definitely write, definitely share with those that you think this information should be shared with. I'm just looking forward to the next installment, fingers crossed and best wishes for success, thank you.