5 lessons we learnt at B2B Rocks

Normally, I’m dubious about participating in events labeled "startup". Before even looking at the content of the event I often discount them - from experience they run late, are poorly organised, the content is not useful and I leave feeling like I’ve wasted my time. B2B Rocks on the other hand, was excellent - everything was perfectly organised and the content was really interesting and inspiring - a huge well done @Axeleo for that!

1. When it's "boring", get your clients to talk about it

Many B2B services are not "sexy", whether it’s a CRM or a language test, there is no real "wow" with certain products or services - at Pipplet we are not selling a dream, but simply a product that does the job.

Nobody wants to listen to or read a marketing speech about a proficiency test. On the other hand read a success story from a Fortune 500 company , which improved its process of recruitment thanks to a language test, and then it becomes interesting.

The advice we’ve learnt is therefore to speak less about ourself, but rather to rely on our ecosystem to show the value of Pipplet.

Several speakers talked about "brand management". And the fact is that if we just concentrate on summarising a brand with its logo and its colors, we are missing out on a lot of other essentials.

The mark of a company are it’s values and its philosophy - a B2B service will inevitably encounter some problems along the way. Your brand is it’s attitude, it’s values and they way it communicates, especially when there is a problem. So in essence your brand must be passed on to all your employees, it must be infused everywhere.

"The call from the CEO to your customer when there was a crash, that's your brand."

For start-ups the advice was not to invest too much in the "visual" identity of the brand but to spend more time defining the fundamentals of behaviour, writing them, and sticking to them!

Where does marketing stop and sales start? Should we report on these activities to the same person? The conclusion is that every company has its model that works and that everything can work as long as all individuals are aligned with that vision.

And above all, you need clear goals. What are the best metrics to use? The number of customers? Revenue generated? Churn?

The common finding is that France is a small market and that for any startup wishing to expand, it’s necessary to speak English and to speak English well. This is not something to worry about when one has a team of 50 people, but something that should be considered from the beginning.

Of course at Pipplet, this idea resonated with us! Today, several startups use us to check that their future sales people speak perfect English, German or Mandarin. We’re happy to help our fellow French people check that their future head of sales will be able to handle that meeting in the US in 2 years time.

Several speakers mentioned being wary of sales models from "before" .

The worst mistake of a startup that has raised funds, is to recruit a sales person from a big company.

When selling SaaS it’s more about thinking of the after sale. You need to focus on customer satisfaction and engagement so they continue to buy. To sell SaaS is to create a relationship, to understand your customer, your needs, to get them to focus on the brand.

So there we have it, our top 5 learnings from B2B Rocks! We're already looking forward to next years conference :)