Customer Connect Speed Mentoring – Financial Services Focus

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Customer Connect Speed Mentoring – Financial Services Focus #

The AIIA with support from Pushstart, Fishburners, Fintech and Commercialisation Australia will jointly be holding a Speed Mentoring Event on Monday, 14th October 2013 at Ernst & Young, 680 George St, Sydney from 6pm–9:30pm to help accelerate Australian companies operating in this space to better understand their potential customers and what it takes to serve them.

This event will afford emerging ICT companies the opportunity to speak with executives and senior managers at a variety of Financial Services companies to validate that the needs they are seeking to meet are real, and also to learn what they need to do to be successful in selling to these organisations.

Those familiar with the work of Steve Blank and Eric Ries will recognize that this event will be a golden opportunity to undertake “Customer Development” with people that they would normally not get access to. It should be stressed that the focus of the event is not to start a sales discussion with a particular company executive, moreover, it is an opportunity to test and learn. Should a genuine opportunity arise, progressing the discussion to the next level is something that should be deferred until after the event.

We already have confirmed mentors from leading organisations such as CBA,EY, QBE, HP, Cisco, Westpac, and Commercialisation Australia – ensuring this will be an excellent opportunity for all parties involved.

Interested companies are invited to download the company one page application form here

Some notes on the one pager:

• Please do read both the MENTORS GUIDELINES & COMPANIES GUIDELINES pages to see how the event is structured.
• Bullet point answers are fine, the aim is to get a gauge of how well progressed your company is.
• Filling out the one-pager shouldn’t take any more than 20-30 minutes for a company that is up and running. If it takes considerably longer than this, it could be a sign that you’re unclear about your Value Proposition, Initial Go to Market Strategy, or that you might not have had enough conversations with customers yet. We’d still encourage you to apply and will contact you with some feedback prior to the event to help you maximise the value of your conversations. If it’s clear that you’re really just not ready at all we will let you know.

Companies will be provided with feedback and notified by 9am Wednesday 9th October as to whether they will be eligible for sign up for the event.  Successful applicants will be provided details on how to make payment plus given information regarding booking mentor appointments on the night.

GUIDELINE FOR MENTORS #

• The focus of the evening is to educate entrepreneurs in small to medium size businesses who are seeking to secure sales with an Enterprise or Government client about what it takes to achieve that goal.
• The companies speaking to you should not be trying to secure a sale, moreover, to understand what they need to do before they approach an enterprise customer and what to expect should discussions progress.
• Be clear that you are not providing professional / commercial advice nor are you creating an expectation of a relationship between the company talking to you and your own company.
• The companies who will be speaking with you should either be ready OR will be ready in 12-18 months to sales ready. (They might well discover during the course of conversation with you that this is not the case).
• Should you discover that there is something of immediate interest to you that you might want to take further, we would suggest that you continue a general conversation and set up a follow up meeting outside of the event.
• If you feel that a company is overstepping the mark feel free to warn them that what they’re doing is outside the spirit of the event and if they continue to persist feel free to invite them to leave the mentoring session early.
• If you believe that a company is about to disclose commercially sensitive information that might compromise or resulting in tainting please alert the company that they are not under NDA and that anything that they disclose to you should be considered to be in the public domain.
• Each person / company will have a total of 20 minutes to talk with you, please be firm in keeping to time limits and do not let people run over.
• While the companies you will be speaking with might never be customers with your company directly they will also talk with others who might. Help the ecosystem better understand how to approach you so that they don’t waste their time nor yours.
• Use this as an opportunity to understand the challenges small companies are facing and how to better position your business to partner with them. For example 2 things that make things these partnerships hard are unbounded liabilities (suing a small company will kill it so it won’t sign a deal) and long payment terms (small companies don’t have deep balance sheets and can’t support large account receivables balances, they survive on short term cashflow).
• Finally, have fun!

GUIDELINES FOR COMPANIES #

• The focus of the evening is to give you as entrepreneurs running a small to medium size businesses an increased understanding of what it takes to secure sales with an Enterprise or Government customer.
• The Executives you will be speaking with are volunteers who are giving up their personal time to tap into their experience to help you accelerate your learning. Respect this in the way you conduct yourself when talking to them.
• Mentors will have supplied the backgrounds via a linkedin profile under the Mentors menu tab. Take a moment to look at where they are working now AND also where they’ve worked in the past. Many of them have deep experience in multiple industries and / or organisations that might surprise you.
• Please select which mentors you wish to speak with carefully. If your company is highly unlikely to target a mentors’ industry please don’t schedule a meeting with that mentor just for the sake of it: You may be preventing someone else from having a much more focused conversation that would benefit their company which is targeting that industry.
• You should have a working offering that has beta users / early sales and plans that mean you are either ready to sell or will be ready to sell to enterprise customers within 12-18 months. If you are a solo operator or do not have a working offering please reconsider attending this event since you are likely not in a position to put the counsel you will receive into practice.
• You should not disclose commercially sensitive information nor expect that the conversations are covered under a non-disclosure agreement.
• Focus your conversation with the mentor on discovering what it is you need to do be to sales ready. Some examples that may come up include:
  • Timing: many big corporates plan budgets during a 2-4 month period each year and once locked down, find it very difficult to consider new engagements that are “out of cycle”
  • Budgets: Fit within the procurement process in terms of who, which department / budget, responsibility levels, decision criteria.
  • Regulations: Compliance around certain data, operational, and legal standards is essential for some engagements.
  • Partnering: Many Enterprise and Government customers use large outsourcers to manage the integration and operation of their process and IT. It may be better to go via one these large outsources than to go direct.
  • Platforms: Big Business typically standardise around certain platforms for efficiency and cost. If you don’t or can’t tailor your product to integrate with them then they can’t buy from you.
  • Relationships: Just because someone in a big company show interest in your offering doesn’t mean they have the power to say “Yes” to buying it. You need to know who the right people to talk to are to be successful.
• Be sure to make this a two way conversation, share what you need to deliver (within the bounds of what is sensible) if you were to become a partner or supplier to a larger company. Often larger organisations are not used to working directly with smaller businesses help them to help you succeed.
• Finally have fun
•  

MENTORS

• Stephen Jack, Partner at Ernst & Young
• Judy Cole, Vice President, Account General Manager at Hewlett-Packard
• Daniel Biondi, CTO, Financial Services, Australia & New Zealand | Strategist & Distinguished Technologist at Hewlett-Packard
• Amy Renee Hovorka, Innovation Strategy Senior Manager at Westpac
• Malcolm Donnell, Case Manager for Commercialisation Australia & Director at Donnell & Associates Pty Ltd
• Patrick Mooney, Technology Commercialisation and International Business Development
• Andrew Davis, GIobal Head of e-Commerce Strategy and Innovation at HSBC
• Don Cundy, Senior Manager, Business Analysis & Transformation at Perpetual Limited
• Sudesh Shah, Chief Technologist, Strategist at Hewlett-Packard
• Ross Barclay, Global Account Manager at Cisco Systems
• Maureen Murphy, Technology Commercialisation and Strategy Execution
• Topaz Conway, Entrepreneur and Angel Investor
• Gary McLaren, Chief Technology Officer at NBN Co
• Michael Hinton, Head of Application Services – QBE Australia at QBE Insurance

Some notes on the one pager

• Please do read both the MENTORS GUIDELINES & COMPANIES GUIDELINES sections to see how the event is structured.
• Bullet point answers are fine, the aim is to get a gauge of how well progressed your company is.
• Filling out the one-pager shouldn’t take any more than 20-30 minutes for a company that is up and running. If it takes considerably longer than this, it could be a sign that you’re unclear about your Value Proposition, Initial Go to Market Strategy, or that you might not have had enough conversations with customers yet. We’d still encourage you to apply and will contact you with some feedback prior to the event to help you maximise the value of your conversations. If it’s clear that you’re really just not ready at all we will let you know.

In order to ensure that both Companies being mentored and the Mentors have a great night we will be reviewing the one pagers and getting back to people with feedback to them prior to inviting them to register.

In some cases this feedback might be of the form “You’re on to a potentially great idea”, however:

• You’ve only just started and such haven’t really validated your customer proposition sufficiently yet.

AND/OR

• You’re on your way however there’s some key issues that will possibly hamper you executing within the next 6-12 months that you should be aware of before talking to a mentor and it would be a good idea to address the issues as best you can before talking to the mentors.

In some of these cases, this feedback might even be “Love your enthusiasm; however you’re nowhere near ready to chat with these mentors yet with a view to learning what’s necessary to make a major sale to an Enterprise or Government customer in the next 6-12 months. Putting you in front of these mentors at this early stage in your company’s lifecycle means there’s a high probability of you blowing your credibility with them. This would result in a bad experience for you and also for the Mentor who may not take another meeting with you in the future. We’d strongly recommend you do some additional work before making an approach (we will point you to people and organisations who can help you), and as such we will be unable to let you register this time. We will run similar events in the future, so you will not miss out in the long run.”

Companies will be provided with feedback and notified by 9am Wednesday 9th October as to whether they will be eligible for sign up for the event.  Successful applicants will be provided details on how to make payment plus given information regarding booking mentor appointments on the nig

Sponsors

EY Building a better working world, Commercialisation Australia, fishburners.org, pushstart