This episode of the DevReady Podcast features Matthew Whyatt, Co-Founder and Technology Sales Specialist at Tech Torque Systems—the first integrated, purpose-built, precision growth system for the tech sector. Listen to the conversation as host, Andrew Romeo and Matthew talk about how tech businesses can be better positioned to sell more products and benefit more people.
In his career spanning over two decades, Matthew has started 10 successful businesses, run 4 national companies and two international organizations. These days, he specializes in helping companies win more business by attracting, engaging and empowering buyers to buy. When consulting in the tech space, Matthew soon realized that just having a great sales engine wasn’t enough, there needed to be fuel to power the system—and that fuel was marketing. Having understood the same, Matthew, who considers himself to be the lead singer of the band, works with a talented team (of musicians and roadies) of managers and project leaders to deliver what is needed to ensure sustained growth for any business in software and technology.
Matthew says that there are some gaping holes in the businesses that come to him, challenges that he and his team help the customer overcome through their sales engine:
1. Undermining the importance of sales and marketing
Technical people are capable of building great technical things but often fall short when it comes to sales. They either find the process cumbersome or simply believe that if their product is good, the customers will come to them on their own. Alas! Reality paints a different picture!
2. Wanting to solve everything for everybody
When businesses try to build something for everybody then they end up being nothing to anybody. There’s this fear that specifying and niching might lead the business to miss out on large segments of the market. The truth, based on Matthew’s experience, is quite the opposite. He believes that, if you are just one inch wide and just a mile deep, you’re in a good place because:
I. You can immediately ask for more money
II. You can immediately provide a perspective on the past work. Because if you have been doing one thing for the last five years and doing it really well, it will be easy for you to cut to the core of the issue fast and cater to the needs of your customers faster.
Matthew highlights that there is a need for human-to-human connection in any business, first and foremost. Then, he adds, are the 3 keys to driving growth:
1. Branding
It is important for the team to understand what the brand stands for so that the same understanding can then be shared in the marketplace. Brand positioning needs to be clear in terms of what the problem the brand is solving is so that it can then guide everything else in the business.
2. Marketing
It is important to offer value to the marketplace and that comes with being able to share the secret sauce of the business. Don’t just ask people to ’buy’ from you. Instead, work on creating value for the customers. Drawing from Gary Vaynerchuk’s ‘jab, jab, jab, right hook’, Matthew’s mantra is ‘give, give, give, ask’.
3. Conversion
Matthew reiterates that marketing and sales aren’t some complicated mind manipulation tricks. They are ways to connect with the potential customer so that they understand what their problem really is and seek help in solving it. In fact, Matthew has a question stack to help with just that:
· What’s your challenge?
· How often have you had that occur?
· How much is it costing you right now?
· How much will it cost you over the next 12 months if you don’t do anything about it?
· What have you done until now to solve that problem?
· Is it something that needs to be solved in the next three months?
Once the potential customer understands their need to grow, when the potential customer is tired of wasting money on marketing ideas that did not work, when the potential customer wants to increase their own customer base, they convert into being actual customers for the business.
Being able to monetize the process is of utmost importance here. However, this can be tricky when:
· You tell the potential customer that that pain can be eased quickly and that drains their enthusiasm in buying the product/service
· You build the entire scope of work just for generating a quote
After all, as Matthew says, “free consulting is appropriately priced.”
Topics Covered
· Marketing Fuels the Sales Engine
· Building a Team of Talented People with Specific Roles
· Challenges When Selling and Marketing
· B2B and B2C Marketing Strategies
· 3 Key Areas for Growth (Branding, Marketing, Conversion)
· How to Engage Customers
Key Quotes (Time Stamps)
“So that’s been more than 23-24 years doing sales in software and technology and sold pretty much everything—from, you know, from products for couple hundred dollars SaaSThe term SaaS stands for Software as a Service. SaaS is an evolution of an application that runs on the... through to million-dollar installations to multi-billion dollars or the second or the largest mining company in the world. So, I have done a lot of things.” (1:59 – 2:21)
· “Couple of years ago, I was consulting in the sales space and I was building these really great sales engines. But, without fuel, an engine’s not gonna go very well. And fuel is marketing. Fuel is that incoming lead or lead inquiry.” (3:03 – 3:23)
· “One of the big challenges is: technical people are really capable of building technical things and they do some really amazing work in solving some genuine issues in the marketplace…. I guess the greatest problem that’s there or the greatest fallacy that has been put out there in the world is: if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat the path to your door.” (6:23 – 6:41)
· “If you try to be something for everybody then what typically businesses find is that they are nothing to anybody.” (9:26 – 9:32)
· “Marketing doesn’t need to be mental, Jedi mind trick of manipulation. Sales doesn’t need to be that. What you do need to do in sales, …. we need to make sure that the customer understands the problem that exists really well.” (28:17 – 28:36)
· “People typically buy from us when they are ready to grow their software and technology business (that’s what I say); they are tired of wasting money on marketing ideas in avenues (that I know); they want to raise the number of high-quality customers and they want to reduce the number of C class customers in the databaseA database is a storage mechanism which allows you to store structured or unstructured data for future keeping. You can....” (33:17 – 33:36)
· “Free consulting is appropriately priced. And people take free consulting and they value it as free and therefore no value.” (38:49 – 38:58)
Social Media Clips (Time Stamps)
· Marketing is the Fuel for the Sales Engine (1:59 – 3:23)
· Challenges Faced when Selling and Marketing (6:17 – 10:41)
· Advantages of Niching (12:01 – 12:34)
· Key Areas for Growth (16:19 – 20:50) & (31:49 – 33:36)
· Does the Customer Understand the Problem? (28:17 – 29:00)
· Monetize the Sales Process (34:13 – 37:40)
Useful Links
Connect with Matthew Whyatt
Connect with Andrew Romeo
Connect with Anthony Sapountzis
