TL:DR; Getting into the enterprise may be easy for Crypto AdTech companies. Staying in is a different story.
In thinking about Donny’s post, Why 48 companies step up to Blockchain AdTech and then my follow-0n post How Blockchain AdTech Gets Into the Enterprise, I was reminded that there’s another side to the story.
The enterprise sales side of it.
Recently, I read Mark Cranney’s post If SaaS Products Sell Themselves, Why Do We Need Sales? and I highly recommend it for anyone who sells to large orgs, but particularly for blockchain MarTech firms that want to.
Cranney, who is a legend of sorts in Silicon Valley and gets a huge section of Ben Horowitz’s great book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, reminds everyone that the “land and expand” strategy that is the hallmark of so many SaaS (and many blockchain adTech) companies has to components.
Cranney points out that “landing” (which we talked about yesterday) is VERY different than expanding.
You have to understand enterprise organizational dynamics. You have to align your solution to the highest level strategic initiatives. You have to answer three questions
I think that the answers to #1 and #3 as it relates to Blockchain AdTech are relatively easy.
#1– because you lose a ton of money on advertising, there’s fraud, waste, and more.
#3- because you’re tired of losing money and having no accountability, but don’t take it from me, the CMO of P&G feels that way.
It is #2 where the Crypto/Blockchain AdTech (and MarTech) vendors will be differentiated. In fact, the Blockchain MarTech Research & Insights Unit of Never Stop Marketing is building out an Buyer’s Guide for Enterprise Blockchain MarTech to help people assess this.
But our work isn’t going to be enough to help separate the winners from the losers. What the Blockchain AdTech start-ups do in terms of building enterprise-ready sales teams is going to be a differentiator in this space.
Cranney has the experience and gives them a playbook. We’ll have to see which ones use it.
