Bridging Engineering and Marketing in Complex Industrial B2B SalesBridging Engineering and Marketing in Complex Industrial B2B Sales

Bridging Engineering and Marketing in Complex Industrial B2B Sales Transcript:

Jeff White: Welcome to The Kula Ring, a podcast for manufacturing marketers brought to you by Kula Partners. My name is Jeff White, and joining me today is Carman Pirie. Carman, how are you doing, sir?

Carman Pirie: Delighted as always to be with you here on this show. How are you doing?

Jeff White: I’m doing great. Mid-summer, feeling is going on here. How are we already halfway through? I don’t know.

Carman Pirie: Yeah. That’s the way it is. Life is like a roll of toilet paper; the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes.

Jeff White: Indeed, true.

Carman Pirie: We can get all the dad jokes outta the way now, or we can intersperse them throughout the program.

Jeff White: I think we can go either way.

Carman Pirie: People are like, please no, don’t. Alright. Oh, today’s guest, I’m really excited for it. I think there’s, I don’t know if there’s one key difference between the world of B2B manufacturing, marketing, and everybody else, but if there was one key difference, it is just how nuanced and complex it is. You’re often selling something that is oftentimes very highly customized and again, deeply technical in nature, selling to a technical audience, a large number of technical buyers in that audience. It’s not uncommon for a buying committee to get 10, 12 people deep. Yeah. I can hear the SaaS guys now saying, Oh, we’re like that too. The purchase decision doesn’t unfold over 36 months. It’s usually a little faster for those guys. Whereas here, it can be very long., 12, 18, even again 24 or 36 months.

So, the complexity is something that I think is worth peeling back, and I think today’s guest is going to be instrumental in helping us do that.

Jeff White: I think so, too. And I think one of the things that sets our next guest apart from potentially other marketers and people within sales in these complex B2B buying processes is that he also has deeply technical expertise in the subject matter and brings that to the problem. Which I think is a unique offering that should be very instructive for our listeners. Yeah.

So joining us today is Rajeev Thakur. Rajeev is the Director of Marketing and Business Development at Silanna Semiconductor. Welcome to The Kula Ring, Rajeev.

Rajeev Thakur: Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for having me on the show. Appreciate it.

Carman Pirie: It was awesome to have you on the show. Thank you for joining us and I wonder if we could start things off by learning a little bit more about Silanna Semiconductor what are you all up to there?

Rajeev Thakur: Thank you. Yeah, so Silanna Semiconductor, we are San Diego-based. It’s been around since 2008, and their claim to fame is analog innovation. So they basically developed complex technology to solve very unique problems. They started off with some RF antenna business, and they sold it off to a company, Qualcomm, about in the 2012 timeframe. And from then on they moved into developing power devices where you’re doing power conversion from one voltage to another voltage for multiple devices and that very quickly became a commodity business, especially with China coming in. And so they decided to change gears and go into even more technical market wherein we are heading into the cell driving sensors with LIDAR. And they came into developing laser drivers, which are used in these LIDAR sensors for autonomous driving. So that’s basically what they do. They have another group; the company headquarters is actually in Australia. So the group here in San Diego does this part of it. Other than laser drivers. We do analog-to-digital converters. Again, a very niche business highly technical. And the group in Australia is doing UV LEDs for basically taking care of the disinfection side, and also developing some unique material technology for that.

Carman Pirie: That’s really cool. And it’s sort a fascinating space to be in,especially right now. My guess is you’ve been in the automotive space for a while, and you brought that experience to the team at Silanna.

Rajeev Thakur: Absolutely right. That is the reason I’m here. I’ve been with Silanna for about a year, but I’ve been in Detroit Automotive for over 25 years.

I’ve been in Detroit since 1990, and I basically started off in engineering. So I was in engineering for 20 years, right up to being an engineering manager for a group at Bosch. And we were developing sensors, and essentially, it came to a point where I realized that we were winning business, but we were not profitable.

My sales guys would come and say, We won, but by the way, we are losing money. You need to find ways to get money out of this thing. And I say, there was no competition. Why did you drop the price so much? And so after a few cycles of that, I said, I gotta be on the front end of this business. I’m on the backside. This doesn’t work. So that’s basically how I moved out of engineering after 20 years into product management. Then into marketing and a mix of marketing and sales roles. And as I go along, I basically stayed technical, the technical part of the deal.

And what brings me into this space is my knowledge of the automotive business and central business, and also the difference between Detroit, the automotive, and California. People don’t understand the automotive industry, how it works, especially on the California side. They bring in very good technology, but they get frustrated with the process on the automotive side. So I bring that blend of understanding the technical part, how things work, and marketing. And yeah, I’m enjoying the space and role. It’s a good fit for me between the technology being developed for autonomous driving and the automotive side of the business.

Carman Pirie: I don’t know if I wanna go down this tangent too far, but I’m curious about this difference between the California automotive sector and the Detroit one. Are you speaking mostly of regulatory differences there?

Rajeev Thakur: It’s not so much regulatory as the mindset on the California side. It’s very software-based in the sense that I develop a piece of code, try it out for an hour or two, run it on a couple of machines, and just flash it, and we start running with it. And Detroit is not done that way. We’ve been around for a hundred years, and basically we have had so many recalls over all the years. And the industry has learned you don’t launch something without doing thorough testing completely as a full vehicle and many levels, before all of these thousands of parts are put together.

Every part has to go through its own cycle of testing and evaluation before you put it together. So you know, nothing comes out for two to four years. Two, it normally has been four years, but two years is now coming in there. But nothing short of two years comes into play very often.  Whereas in California, one month, six months, I’m off and running, and that’s a different mindset.

Carman Pirie: That’s a very different mindset and culture. Yeah.

Jeff White: How does that play into your thinking when you’re marketing into organizations that are either wild west over here or so safe it takes forever on the other side?

Rajeev Thakur: Yeah. It’s a very interesting cocktail going on of technology now in this autonomous space. And on one side, very good, interesting technology coming out from California. Whereas when the rubber hits the road, it’s gotta come to Detroit. And so you need a blend of these two spaces. And after being in traditional automotive for a long time, I was with Bosch for a long time.

Then I joined Ostrom for five years in the semiconductor space. And there I was selling lasers to these lidar-making companies. And that was my first introduction to this startup space on the California side. And after five years of selling lasers to many companies, I ended up joining a startup.

Odine lidar, which was one of the leaders at the time in the lidar space, and I worked with them for four years. And I love the startup role. I love the technology. I don’t have to worry so much. Regarding the politics involved, the decision-making involved, there are a hundred people involved in making decisions.

Startup, three people talk about it… Yeah, that sounds right. Let’s go for it, so I love that part of it, because in the traditional automotive side, you gotta watch your back and your side and everything before you make a step, especially if you’re watching your career along with the technical part of it. And I just love to get rid of all of that clock stuff hanging over me and just do what I love to do, and I allow that part of this thing.

Carman Pirie: That’s fine. And it’s what I said I didn’t wanna go too far down this road, but it’s been a fascinating little tangent, and I think we could almost build the whole show around that, to be honest.

I think, Rajeev you were talking about how, what you’re selling is deeply technical and to varied audiences and I’m assuming that part of a secret sauce there is in some way getting out of the technical and getting out of just a listing of features and getting into more of a translation into business value and what’s delivered at a bit of a higher level.

How do you go about getting out of the technical weeds, if you will?

Rajeev Thakur: Yeah, so there is a point. So there is a process. First of all, you gotta understand what it is you’re trying to solve. What is the industry? Who are you talking to? And the very basics of this stuff. And at least when you talk about technical sales, B2B, it really starts with the engineering team. Which means that you need to be speaking the language of engineering, and you need to be; they are always constrained by time. So if you don’t have something of real value, you are not gonna get their attention.

So one of the toughest things is to make sure that you’ve got something of value, you understand the problem that is being solved, and then you gotta find the right person. Or the right people across the same problem. If, here in my case, I’m talking about lidar, I need to talk to the experts of lidar in different lidar companies the CTO and the top technical people, and I gotta bring something of value to them, which they say, wow, this thing is something that I’m trying to solve and it’s gonna make my life easier. That’s really so, finding those people, knowing that you got something of value, that is a first step. After that, and really, the sales process for this kind of business doesn’t begin unless you’re able to break through that technical part of the deal for us. And only then you start going to the backend, where the buyer starts coming in and the technical sales is quite far down the funnel, nearly 70% down the funnel before the buyer starts showing up. And you gotta go through the process of getting the quotes and all the collateral, and getting all of the different things in place.

Carman Pirie: So I wanna be clear on, when you say the buyer, are you talking about procurement, like the…

Rajeev Thakur: Yes. The procurement part of the deal

Carman Pirie: and how… I guess I’m, it’s hard to ask this question without being a touch pejorative almost in nature, but I think oftentimes sales folks are inclined to think it’s their bubbly personalities and ability to order an old fashioned at the hotel bar that gets them the deals that it’s superior relationship building that helps them navigate that process once you’re 70% of the way down and you have to start dealing with procurement who doesn’t care about the old fashioneds. I guess I’ve always rolled my eyes a little bit at that and my guess is that you can’t get there and stay there without having the technical chops. And that the good relationship can only carry you so far. Would you tend to agree with that?

Rajeev Thakur: Oh, absolutely. Especially when you talk about technical sales and your entry point is a technical person and usually a very highly placed technical lead person, his time is constrained, so he may be nice and give you one meeting, but if you don’t really deliver in that meeting, you’re not coming back.

So you gotta be respectful of that, which basically means that you need to do your research. You need to know exactly what you got. You gotta know exactly where he is at, and you gotta bring him something of real value for him to invite you back

Carman Pirie: Because you’re really seeing that person as your, that’s your champion, that’s going to help you get all the rest of the way through the buying committee.

Rajeev Thakur: Absolutely. And you gotta go in there with an open mind. Just because you think what you got is absolutely fantastic doesn’t mean that he agrees with you. And a lot of times. They will give you very good feedback about the technology, about the strengths and weaknesses, and if you see that this is not a good fit, the best thing to do is say, Thank you for your time.

I’ll come back when I have something better and move out. Don’t waste his time and don’t keep knocking on his door, because that will spoil the relationship for the second time around.

Jeff White: There is something so incredibly powerful about walking away from any sort of, where you or your organization stands to benefit, and you’re like, you know what?

We’re just not the right solution for you at this time with these specs, whatever. And be willing to walk away. I think it shows tremendous strength of character and definitely ends up helping you down the line, even if it’s just more karmic in nature and not necessarily directly with that prospect.

Rajeev Thakur: No, absolutely. And when you start, when in this technical world, it ends up being a very small circle, and you tend to run to the same people. If you’re gonna be staying in the same business, you’ll come across them again, and they will remember you, whether you serve them well or you help them out, it comes around. So you will always get it back if you did the right thing in this case.

Carman Pirie: Baked into that is this notion that no, they didn’t see the business value that we saw in bringing this product to them or the solution to them. How, but how many times does the prospect illuminate a business value that you didn’t realize that your solution brought?

Rajeev Thakur: Yes. So you’re right. I would say nearly 50% of the time, they will come out with, we came, we walk through the door, thinking we have a certain value proposition on that side. And of course, before he opens up, he needs to understand what you got. And he’s gotta see something interesting, and then he will offer, okay, yeah, you’re doing it this way, you know it’s a cat. You’re skinning it in three ways. But I got this fourth and fifth way, which is even better than that. And this is where you know, the marketing person, you gotta have enough of technical skills because you’ll usually have a highly technical person from your side also at that meeting. And if you don’t handle the egos involved, because now we’ve got a guy on your side who is also very technical. He has got his ego on, regarding how good my stuff is, and the other guy’s got his own stuff. And you gotta really balance that. You gotta allow them to go at each other to some extent, but then pull them apart at the right time, and that is really a skill that you develop over time, knowing that you’re getting enough value and you gotta pull them apart for the next.

Carman Pirie: We have we’ve had over 300 episodes of this podcast. We’ve never had anybody on the show talking about that, but that is exactly what happens. And it’s…

Jeff White: It’s wonderful insight at that point, it’s not really herding cats so much as you have very dangerous, very large cats.

Carman Pirie: I think we can tug this in a bunch of different ways, but I’m just trying to, trying to get a little bit deeper into, because I think you’re uncovering parts of the nuance of the sales process and marketing into these highly niche categories, that are very valuable to listeners.

Just to hear this kind of boots on the ground perspective. How do you go about nuancing your messaging, your positioning, or how you talk about the benefits and business value between verticals. Do you ever find that you have to layer different messaging or different value props even though you’re selling the same product but it’s in a different industries?

Rajeev Thakur: Yes, we do. So in our case, we have laser drivers and laser drivers. You can use them for very powerful lasers, like for the lidars in sense in self-driving cars. And you can also use them in the golf scopes, where using them to figure out how far you’re gonna hit or hope to hit, let’s say, on that side.

And, yeah. So you don’t need a thousand yards on your golf scope, but you need three to 400 meters on the lidar side, and your product may be very similar on those tools. And so you need to not only differentiate the different value.

So what exactly does he need? So here he needs a longer battery life; he doesn’t range, but he needs to make sure that it’s very efficient. So that you’re not using too much battery on the golf scope. So that is his value proposition. And then of course, the price points are gonna be different the qualification you need, whereas industrial versus automotive is different.

So you really need to make sure that you have a product that can maybe meet different verticals, but then you cannot have a similar kind of pricing. They don’t have this, you gotta find the proper value proposition and place it in the right way to get the traction from the market.

Jeff White: Part of that, too, is also knowing that you don’t provide the entire solution. So you are integrating with other partners, and you are bringing. Your ability to work with them and understand where your product fits is really important for the end buyer, too, to show that you can play well with others, eh?

Rajeev Thakur: Oh, absolutely. In this technical world, your part is touching at least 10 other parts around you, and this is your ecosystem because what you do is almost like a pick a basketball team. You gotta know the best players around you. And you essentially tend to promote each other, saying that, Hey, you’re looking for this component. I know a really good company that can support you with that. And you build up this kind of a relationship in the ecosystem. And as long as you are not deceiving the engineering team because you cannot deceive technical specs. You can give a PowerPoint, whatever, as soon as you test, this is scrap, or this doesn’t work.

So you gotta have your reputation behind what you’re recommending, and over time you build this trust within your ecosystem. And I, a lot of times, I’ve had, so we are laser drivers, so obviously we partner very closely with people who make lasers and so on. On the one hand, we help them sell their lasers, and they help their customers find a good laser driver by recommending us.

So it’s a win-win proposition on this side. So this kind of relationship, you gotta build along everything you are touching and interfacing for you to really grow over time.

Carman Pirie: You mentioned this diverse array of partners selling products into diverse sectors with different benefit messages, et cetera.

Different kinds of ways of speaking about the value that they deliver. Consistency globally has to be a big challenge. I guess that’s how you think about that? Do you feel that you’re wearing two hats? Like one is your global brand consistency hat, and then one is around how do we provide tools for people to localize their messaging to their more local contacts and prospects.

Rajeev Thakur: Yeah. So in the technical world, it’s not that much of an issue because a technical problem is a technical problem globally. It’s the same problem on that side. So the messaging is mainly in terms of, how do you say that, you got a good product. Like I might say that, Hey, here, our laser driver can deliver a thousand watts and three three-nanosecond pulse widths on that side. And, you want that same message to be said globally. You don’t want one guy to say, We can do 800 watts in two nanoseconds or one nanosecond. So that kind of stuff has gotta be similar going across. But at the same time, you gotta allow for local regulations, whether you need to obtain automotive qualification, silk qualification, or the local stuff in the different region. China or Japan, or Europe, wherever, may be different. So you gotta make sure that they can adjust for that. Saying, I meet this kind of spec or that kind of spec, across different regions.

Carman Pirie: I wanna, I’m gonna bounce around a little bit here as we bring the show to a close in our last seven, eight minutes or so together.

I wanna understand, because you’re this odd hybrid Rajeev between marketing and engineering what’s the biggest mistake that marketers make with engineers?

Rajeev Thakur: Yeah, this is actually pretty common, is that, you gotta think of a long-term relationship with these niche group of clients that you’re working with.

Your top 25, let’s say, huge customers, which basically means you’re gonna be hanging around them for a long time, 10 to 15 years, which means you gotta build trust, which basically means that you don’t over promise and under deliver. If anything, you under promise and over deliver.

That is the number one thing. When you say you’re gonna get something done, that guy’s timeline is hanging on you. So make sure that you are absolutely able to deliver what you say you can deliver, and that is the first line of trust. Which you cannot break. And that builds up with time.

Carman Pirie: I think it’s really important that our listeners hear that, as we often talk about success in niche markets, it means that you’re selling into a finite prospect pool.

There aren’t another 2000 new prospects showing up tomorrow that you didn’t know about yesterday. I don’t think anybody’s ever put it quite like the fact that you’re gonna be hanging around these people for 15 years. Yes. Maybe you don’t piss them off in your first interaction.

Rajeev Thakur: Exactly. Exactly.

Jeff White: Product better work.

Rajeev Thakur: Yeah. And of course, engineering, they love technical details, so you know, don’t hide stuff from them. Give them whatever they want, whatever details they want. As long as you have an NDA, be open. Make life easy. Don’t make them pull things like teeth out of you.

Jeff White: Does that translate as well to your, and this is just a very simple tactical question, but do you gate resources on your web platforms about these things, or do you insist on capturing an email address?

Rajeev Thakur: So some of them we just give it away. You can download for free. But then, something which is more deeply technical, we ask for at least an email address, a business email address.

To make sure it’s legit before we provide that, because a lot of effort went into creating that document and information. So we need to at least follow up on that lead.

Jeff White: I think that’s a smart strategy.

Carman Pirie: Yeah. I love that. It’s one of the things I like about manufacturing is we still get to do that.

There’s a lot of other areas of marketing where they just had to give up on gating resources that we can still get away with it, and I think there’s, you can’t be, if you’re providing something true to your value. One of the things that I think is challenging in these highly niche spaces is that the lines between marketing and sales get blurred an awful lot, and I think to an awful lot of marketers, what we can, what we’ve been talking about in some ways sounds a lot more like sales, and less like marketing.

So I wanna ask, what’s your favorite campaign? Let’s take it back up to marketing. What have you done in the last while? Or what marketing initiative have you deployed that you’re like, I killed that. If I had more like that my career is going to go up and to the right.

Rajeev Thakur: Yeah. So for me, of course, from account-based or target marketing, wherein you have a niche pool of customers accounts defined, and you gotta know what’s their favorite watering hole or conference is where they tend to meet. And really, what you want to do there is that, other than having your own booth where you’re providing your stuff, you try to get a speaking spot, you try to go and have a talk in there wherein you’re not just pitching your company and a sales material. You also try to hit a few technical points regarding the kind of challenges that you’re solving on that side. And what that does is that if there are 300 people at that conference, if you just have a booth, it’s very hard for people to come to you and ask you about the stuff you’re doing. But if you speak on the stage and you explain some of the things you’re trying to solve, that 300-person audience kind of feels, Hey, I know this guy.

I know what he’s talking about. This is something of interest to me. So out of the 300 people, there may be only about 30 people who are really a good fit for you, but you can’t find time to meet these 300 people. But that 30 people they will come to your booth now because they know you, they know what you’re talking about.

They feel comfortable approaching you. And to me, I’ve found that to be one of the best techniques to bring that funnel closer to you because it’s not easy to meet 300 people at a conference and have a decent, confident conversation and figure out who are the best fits are for you going forward.

Carman Pirie: Have you, a lot of people try to navigate their way onto speaking slots in the conferences and onto the stage. They find it challenging. So I would just wonder how you have just found that to be an easy ask and people are keen to have you, or is it a pay-to-play type of situation?

Rajeev Thakur: No. You build up your own brand, if you will. So I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. I’m an SA instructor for a lidar infrared camera. I’ve done a fair number of speaking spots. I basically build myself up, so it helps; it tends to open doors for me, and that’s really what you have to do.

And of course, at the end of the day, you need to have some cool technology. And then, you can be talking in thin air essentially.

Carman Pirie: Something cool to talk about. And if you’re an instructor on the subject, I could see how that would help. It would give the conference organizers a level of comfort that you’re not just going to be simply selling from the stage, but that you’re bringing a different perspective.

Jeff White: Some real legitimacy. Yeah. That helps

Rajeev Thakur: on both sides.

Carman Pirie: Oh, this has been a fascinating conversation. I think it’s… I thank you for shining a light on it. It’s not a lot of people get to see inside the inner workings of marketing and sales of this type of technology, and I thank you for guiding us through it today.

Rajeev Thakur: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure being on the show, and I appreciate it very much.

Jeff White: It is pretty neat to go from deeply technical sales all the way to personal branding and back. Thank you, Rajeev.