Interview with Executive-in-Residence, Diana Nye,  Ariadne Capital

How did you start your career in sales? I worked for a groupware company in Cambridge, MA called Beyond Incorporated as a Sales Engineer in the early 90’s. That was my first role that bridged the gap between sales and technical marketing. When I came to the UK I had the opportunity to develop into a senior EMEA sales role, managing sales engineers, a field sales team and a telesales team. For me selling has always been highly technical and content rich. I’ve always been in markets where both product and industry knowledge were critical.

For start-ups, what do you think is the biggest challenge to securing customers?
You make it sound like it’s easy for established companies to secure customers!

One of the best ways to ensure that a start-up gets early market traction is to develop commercial partnerships early on. This is important for two reasons. First, it virtually guarantees customers and case studies when it’s time to go to market. Second, it provides an opportunity for market validation of your value proposition and often times, willing beta testers.

Managing commercial partnerships is a challenging proposition as there is always the risk that the commercial partner will hijack the development process and push you down a track specific to their own requirements, which should be a good incentive to make sure that you have some diversity in your commercial partnerships.

What company do you most admire and why?
America Works (www.americaworks.com)
A great example of a private, profitable, entrepreneurial company who has thrived and prospered by championing hard-to-place individuals into private industry.

Everyone has their own definition of “normal”, but I would imagine that a child who grows up in a home where none of the adults are in work would be less motivated to go out and work themselves which in turn perpetuates the culture of poverty and dependency.

The concept behind America Works is to transition welfare recipients, ex-offenders and other unemployed candidates into the workforce by developing the skills needed by private industry. Innovative approaches to training and corporate partnerships ensure that everyone wins. High self-esteem and self sufficiency for the employee, enthusiastic and well supported work force for the employer, and reduced benefit costs for the state. In fact a recent survey by the New York State Department of Labor has determined that 88% of the people placed by America Works remain off the welfare rolls three years later.

I’m also impressed with Salesforce.com. Coming up with flexible licensing models can be a struggle and they’ve come up with an attractive, streamlined way to deliver value. I love the fact that you only pay for what you need. It will be interesting to see what they come up with next.

What are the differences between sales in the US and Europe? What advice can you give companies coming from the US looking to expand into Europe?
Sales in Europe are more reliant on a relationship model, which often makes it difficult for North American companies to get a beachhead in Europe from the US.

European companies want more than localized product, they want local access and support. They want to know that their requirements will get the same mindshare as American customers, and that requires a local advocate.

I’m not saying that there is no role for technology in the sales cycle and I’d encourage companies to use every means possible to go to market. But leveraging technology has to be secondary with face-to face interaction.

The quickest way to achieve this is partnering with a European company who already plays in your target market space. If you’ve got a product that targets Purchasing Directors you have to find a company or individual who has a track record in the space. My experience has been that European companies are more hierarchical than American companies. Knowing how to navigate the influencers, approvers and champions can drastically reduce the sales cycle and once you get a good reference site, building revenue going forward is much simpler.

========================================================

Diana Nye is an Executive-in-Residence with Ariadne Capital, with a specialisation in Engineering, Automation & CRM.  For more information on Diana, see: http://www.ariadnecapital.com