The Resilient Entrepreneur, Edition #107
Hi there
I hope you had a great week!
Here are the topics in today's edition:
- Keeping Your Customers: Unglamorous Lessons From the Daily Grind
- If You Are a New Leader: Meet People First, Then Judge
Please reach out with comments, questions, or suggestions for articles!
Talk soon,
Tom
TACTICS FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS
Keeping Your Customers: Unglamorous Lessons From the Daily Grind
There is an often-overlooked superpower that helps you keep your B2B customers: Try to make the onboarding feel as smooth as a B2C onboarding.
Which type of customer is the best customer? You might argue that the best customers pay on time and pay a good price for your product. That’s certainly true. But from my experience as the Founder & CEO of Yonder, a B2B SaaS company, I would argue that the best customers are those who stay with you the longest. That’s the rationale for most SaaS companies, which operate on a recurring-revenue model. The underlying assumption is that it’s cheaper to retain a customer than to gain a new customer.
That’s easier said than done. We all know that entrepreneurial success sounds easy, but it isn’t. So let’s look into some proven tactics from the daily grind trail.
Be Responsive
No matter if a customer has a problem or a feature request, nobody likes to fire messages into the void. And nobody likes to wait forever for a fix or an answer to their question.
As a rule of thumb, you should fix problems and answer questions immediately if the fix or answer is straightforward. If it takes more time to create a ticket than to fix the problem or answer the question, just do it.
And if the fix or answer is more complex, do two things: First, tell the customer that you are on the problem, and when to expect the next update. That’s something you can do in a short email, even if short emails might sound like a platitude. And second, don’t stop at the short email. Dealing with complex issues usually requires talking to each other rather than writing emails and tickets. Everyone who has worked with me knows that I often say, “Pick up the phone.” For some reason, people are still afraid of the phone, even though it’s such a great tool to solve problems.
Be Helpful
Not all customer requests are well-formulated. My favorite is the apparently urgent bug that can be traced back to a misconfiguration of the customer’s IT.
Of course, this example doesn’t mean that all problems are caused by the customer. The majority of problems customers report need to be rectified by the supplier. But examples like the apparently urgent bug influence the sentiment towards a customer, especially when such problems are reported in a demanding or even rude tone.
Show some generosity. If a customer reaches out with a problem, assume they really have a problem. And then it’s your job as a supplier to be helpful in solving the problem. No matter if it’s a simple, straightforward problem, a complex edge case, or a problem you haven’t ever thought about. If you develop an attitude of being helpful, customers will reward you with their loyalty.
The Superpower: Quick and Smooth Onboarding
Now let’s move on to an often-overlooked superpower: A quick and smooth onboarding. If you’re selling a highly technical product, this is easier said than done.
Why is a quick and smooth onboarding so difficult for complex B2B SaaS products? First and foremost, it’s because people are used to the one-click onboarding for B2C SaaS products. Netflix, Facebook, Gmail, and many other tools let you sign up with a single click. Importing content or connecting other tools is just another click away.
Now try a one-click onboarding with a complex, highly configurable technical documentation SaaS tool like Yonder, importing your legacy PDF documents or complex Airbus and Boeing manuals at the click of a switch. It won’t work, even if you try.
But saying it won’t work is too easy. There is room for manoeuvre between the B2C-style one-click onboarding and the legacy B2B-style full project onboarding.
What steps have we taken to simplify the onboarding journey for our new customers?
- When dealing with large enterprises, project governance is very important. You can work as fast as you can on your side, but if the customer’s project team cannot make decisions within a reasonable time, the onboarding will be slow, painful, and eventually fail. We always assign a dedicated onboarding lead to a customer project to provide support with system setup, training, and subject matter expertise. And we ask the customer to name the overall project lead and give him or her full decision authority for the project.
- We developed a standard project plan for both the customer and our team to plan the necessary work packages. This might sound trivial, but often our new customers aren’t aware of all the steps that are necessary to transform legacy technical documents into fully digital documentation.
- Our expertise is often needed for the data migration phase. While it might sound simple to transform a few PDF documents into XML format, it’s anything but: XML is highly structured, and PDF can be very unstructured. Because we’ve seen a myriad of different document types over the last few years and because we have many tools to assist, this is where we can make the largest difference for our customers during the onboarding phase.
- Last but not least, we are very transparent about possible onboarding project risks: Too many stakeholders involved, cultural change during digitization, and extensive feature requests during the onboarding phase. This links back to the first point on project governance — there is no way around a project lead with decision authority to avoid those project risks.
Does this work? Yes, it does. We can onboard a large international airline customer with a complex technical documentation landscape within weeks.
Did we always do well during onboarding? Of course not. Like everything in entrepreneurship, coming up with a solid onboarding process takes time, blood, sweat, and tears.
STRATEGIES FOR RESILIENT ENTREPRENEURS
If You Are a New Leader: Meet People First, Then Judge
This is an episode about one of the most profound leadership lessons I learned as a new leader almost 15 years ago
When I recently took command of a new assignment as an active reserve officer in the Swiss Armed Forces, I dived into an entirely new world: a new branch of service, a new function, and new people.
When you’re new in a leadership position, many people approach you and try to prime you with their views on people and organizations before you’ve landed in your role.
Let’s look back at how I handled this in my first leadership position in 2013 and then zoom back to the present.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
When I held my first leadership position at Swiss International Air Lines back in 2013, I remember how my new colleagues and my future superior badmouthed a member of my future team and said that I should fire him.
Every time I interacted with this person, his behavior confirmed what colleagues and superiors had told me. Self-fulfilling prophecy at its best. So eventually, I decided it was time to get rid of this colleague. Funny enough, now my superior (yes, the guy who primed me) chickened out. “You know, it’s still early in your career, you really cannot do that.” It took me some chutzpah and a bottle of wine to clarify my position with that employee I should have but couldn’t fire.
That episode is one of the most profound leadership lessons of my entire career. Ever since that episode back in 2013, I have done my best to make up my own opinion before judging people and organizations.
Form Your Own Opinion before Judging
Back to my new active reserve assignment in the Swiss Armed Forces. Just like in my first leadership position at Swiss International Airlines in 2013, people were telling me all sorts of things about other people before I had even met them.
There was that member on my battalion staff who apparently was an authority in his domain. Other people said this person was useless and complacent. Funny enough, the person everybody talked about was absent during my first duty period. So I decided to summon that person for our next duty period before judging — how should I have an opinion of a person I’ve never met and I’ve never talked to? Only after talking to the person, I was able to form my own opinion on the person and judge how we can best make use of this person in our battalion. I paid attention not to be primed by other people’s opinions, which was a lot easier than the episode I went through at Swiss International Airlines in 2013, because the opinions on that person varied wildly.
Forming your own opinion before judging isn’t just important for opinions on people, but also on organizations: Battalions never operate alone. The Armed Forces are a system of systems, so battalions must work together. Just like different departments in a large corporation. And just like in a large company, my new comrades in the Armed Forces ranted about other battalions and units in the Armed Forces. Before carrying the rant any further, I met with those units to find out what’s really going on. On some occasions, I noticed that we need to sharpen the way we collaborate, and on some other occasions, I found out that collaboration with the affected units was smooth and professional.
Conclusion
In the meantime, my experience from 2013 found its way into my core leadership principles. And besides just living this principle myself, I use every opportunity to tell my team that they should form their own opinions before judging people and organizations.
About Me
Growing a company in uncertain times is like running a marathon — it demands grit, strategy, and resilience.
As a tech entrepreneur, active reserve officer, and father of three, I share practical insights and write about entrepreneurship, leadership, and crisis management — no AI bullshit, no promos, just my thoughts in plain text.
When I’m not solving problems, I recharge and find inspiration in the breathtaking mountains around Zermatt.
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