How Selling Sunny Delight and Software are Similar: 5 Truths of B2B2C

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Personal Story

“I'm the kid from the Midwest who graduated from the University of Michigan, had opportunities during quite a recessive time in the economy to go take fancy jobs at places like Goldman Sachs and Accenture and instead, I (chose) Proctor & Gamble… I was lured by the fact that they were the pros at marketing. And they were also the nicest most consistently high-quality people I came across”

One of the most exciting things we did was launch Sunny Delight.

What I didn't know when I accepted the job at P&G, was that they were going send me to Cleveland. When my friends were going to New York. And I would be selling consumer products to inner-city's Cleveland grocery stores. (I didn’t know that) I was gonna spend my first year scraping bubblegum off the shelves of inner-city Cleveland grocery stores ( I didn’t know that) I wouldn’t be selling to the CEO of Kroger (or Safeway) but instead I would be selling to Freddy.”

The first customer I met was a store manager named Freddy. “Let me tell you about Freddy. He initially didn’t give me the time of day…finally figured out that he was available on his lunch break… So I started coming in during lunch even though I was told not to go to that store after noon because it was a relatively crime-ridden neighborhood. Apparently criminals sleep in, and the afternoon's a bad time to be there.”
“Over the course of time, I found out that he had several kids, that he was a widower, that he had worked in that same store for 15 years. That he had been held up at gunpoint many times, one of which I happened to be present for.”

“So, what does selling Sunny Delight have to do with selling Software?” I didn't know it then but what I learned from P&G was that in B-to-B-to-C, it means you have to understand that in consumer as well as, or better than your buyer. The enterprise. P&G spent most of their (?) and sales in marketing investments on consumer research, development, TV and direct advertising as opposed to the economic buyer. The retail channel. But while these business relationships are usually important, they don't work if the consumer doesn't want your product.
“What do I mean when I say we lose sight of why we exist?”

Truth 1
Drinks market was high growth, big opportunity and P&G went after the consumer they know best – the stay at home mother – and they identified the material problem she had. It was a nutritious
drink at a low cost. Much in the way Luvs was introduced to the diaper category. They were looking for way to drive consumption. That is how P&G went to market. You need a large enough market to penetrate. Under the consumer, there’s a big enough market to solve. PagerDuty was founded on a painful problem that affected developers. You have to have all three: (1) identify market that is big enough, (2) find problem that is meaningful enough for someone to solve (3) make sure it’s not being solved by someone else. Best way to identify best market fit is when people buy your products.

Truth 2
I see this everyday in the SaaS industry. We are so excited about our innovative technology, the blood, sweat and tears that went into our inventions, we lose sight of why we exist. To solve problems that matter for our customers.

Once you know the problem, don’t fall trap to putting the technology ahead of the solution. Mac was the better fit here. Windows didn’t understand the needs of the business and as a result, Mac lost the war to Windows. It’s all about striking the balance stakeholders and not getting lost in the feature technology. We get so excited of our technology that we lose sight of solving the meaningful problems

It's this confusion between ... It's our over-excitement, our over-rotation on the technology and the product as opposed to (understanding and) solving the problem.

Truth 3
Because it’s about people, it’s also about relationships. It’s about the people stupid. Freddy was a crusty guy who was up high in a plexiglass office above the registers. He was a tough nut to crack .I changed my route to catch him when he was more likely to take a moment with me. Over time I learned…He hated previous P&G reps because they talked down to him and wore fancy clothes. He had been held up at gunpoint in store so many times he couldn’t count and I had the misfortune to be there with him once when this happened. Within a year we’d been through a lot together – literally. He taught me a lot about retailing, especially what he was up against to make his margins, and we established a trust. When the Sunny D launch came around he was skeptical, but he wanted to help me. (THIS IS HUGE!) That opened up an opportunity for us both to be successful together - It paid off dividends when we stumbled upon a merchandising tactic that drove sales...and sent me to Club as the #1 rep in my region.
SaaS – We cannot forget that BUSINESS IS HUMAN!!!

You cannot wait for the crisis to build the relationship. In enterprise SaaS, people internally and externally are betting on your business. Internally, people are betting their careers on you. The relationship is a tie breaker. A customer who doesn’t care about you won’t tell you what they really think. We often react to the hand-raises and we assume that all is well but that may mean they are disengaging. Maybe our metrics for success needs to change.

Truth 4
Your consumer is not always obvious. We thought we were marketing to a stay-at-home moms but instead our target consumers were men – weekend warriors.
The great tech innovations came from a customer had an idea. [Envoy is an example of a founder that saw a challenge of signing a NDA.] Be open to where your customer will lead you. Your consumer is not always obvious. Be open to new use cases. For SunnyD, Superbowl and inexpensive cocktails/screwdrivers won the day.

At PagerDuty, we built a product for DevOps but we find use cases for all kinds of areas like IT HelpDesk, customer support, Safety and Risk Management, IoT.

Truth 5
Time is our most precious commodity. Time is money. Time is irreplaceable and invaluable. Once lost you don’t get it back.

As a rep at P&G we tracked our activities – length of sales calls, drive time between meetings, prep time – so we could optimize for outcomes. Today we don’t drive without Waze in the hopes of securing a few extra minutes. We build 1) productivity tools,2) we monitor flights, 3) we track our pace, 4) we focus on workforce productivity, and 5) we automate everything (when listing, pick 3 – only 3) to save precious time.

Of all lessons I have been fortunate to learn, none are more true, more predictable, more frequent than this. No matter how much control you think you have, how hard you try, something will always come up and 1) put a spanner in the works, 2) create bad press,3) derail your team,4) blow up your deal, 5) cause a crisis, and 6) mostly suck down precious time. (list only 3 and end with “mostly suck…)

The world is multiplied. Remember why you exist. The urgent problem is time. We’re time starved. It’s my commitment to our investors, to my employees to make them better. I set to deliver against my commitments but what matters to me at the end of the day is my personal time and time with my family.

How Selling Sunny Delight and Software are Similar: 5 Truths of B2B2C

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How Selling Sunny Delight and Software are Similar: 5 Truths of B2B2C