SalesTechStar Interview With Marko Maras, CEO At Audiens

Serial tech entrepreneur Marko Maras joins us in this SalesTechStar interview and shares his experience running bootstrapped tech start-ups. Catch the complete interview to read about his interesting tips and insights on the changing martech/salestech landscape and his thoughts on what will be the next in-demand features for CDPs.

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Can you tell us a little about yourself, Marko? What has your tech entrepreneurial journey been like so far?

I’m a serial entrepreneur who likes to bootstrap tech start-ups — that is, without VC funding. I’ve worked extensively in the UK and Italy, chose Milan for my latest venture – Audiens. Italy has many talented people, but there are not so many opportunities for VC investment, which can be a hurdle for entrepreneurs. You need to make sales almost from day one to succeed – which is a challenge I really enjoy.

I have been involved in many start-ups, my first was Onebip in mobile payments back in 2005 where we had many customers, large customers like Electronic Arts and GameLoft. Onebip was acquired by Neomobile in 2011.

The next was Digitouch, a digital media agency, where I was CTO. We took that public in 2016.

Audiens is the most recent, which I founded in 2016. We started with data sales, a short-term tactical mission that quickly established a solid revenue stream and allowed us to develop our planned SaaS customer data platform business. Audiens was acquired by Bango Plc in 2018.

How do you know when it’s the right time to end a venture?

If your vision is right, then it’s all about delivery and market perception. It may take some adjustments to get that right. I run on a listen-and-rapidly-adapt rule – listen to the market, to your customers, then try things fast, learn and quickly adapt.

Ultimately, sales is the indicator. If people are buying and renewing, you’re getting it right. As my ventures are self-funded, if those sales are not meeting our goals within our defined period, that’s when we re-evaluate and may ultimately decide to stop.

What have been some of the best and worst moments? Difficult times from your experience so far?

One of the best moments was when Audiens won ING Bank as a client. It came via a competitive RFP against Adobe and Oracle and it showed us that we’d build a product that could win against large, incumbent enterprise solutions. It was a big deal for us and ING is a great company to work with.

The worst times as an entrepreneur are shutting down a company and letting people go. I will never get used to that. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen often.

There have been a couple of times where significant regulatory changes in the industry have tested us. For example, in the payments industry, regulatory changes required us to have significant redevelopment of our product and company structure. This was tough. It delayed some valuable projects and consumed a lot of time and resource, which was difficult for a small independent company like ours.

You were recently invited to join the Forbes Business Council — what are some of the goals you hope to achieve as part of this community?

I’m hoping to bring my experience of bootstrapping software companies to the wider business community and I hope to help them understand some of the unique challenges faced by tech businesses, particularly as they grow. There’s an important balancing act that goes on between managing the commercial and technical sides of the business effectively. On one hand, closing deals quickly and early is important for cashflow, but on the other, you need to keep focus on your vision and help the dev team make that vision the best reality.

This becomes more critical as the size of your contracts increase. You need to maintain high standards and consistently deliver to grow those large contracts.

It’s so easy to let customers exclusively drive your business and end up just another me-too product driven by price alone. I think there’s some takeaways in there for the wider business community.

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How do you see the demand for CDPs and the wider martech market evolving?

 CDP has become a great buzzword in the last few years, it’s taken over from DMP as the new must-have martech poster child. As a result we are now seeing many of those 1st generation data platforms try to catch up, either by evolving their legacy products to become a CDP, or by acquiring existing CDP solutions.

This has resulted in significant growth in awareness and demand for CDPs, which is great for everyone, including Audiens. However, some brands are buying into CDPs because they think they need to, or because their trusted supplier or consultant told them to. This can happen without a full understanding of why they need one or what features will give them the best results. Often, it’s just the latest cool add-on to the big product suite they have already invested in. That means they are spending more money with existing suppliers and not getting something that delivers actual competitive advantages.

While Audiens clearly delivers many of the required capabilities of a purebred CDP, our vision is much bolder. The market will see more of that over the coming months. First-party customer data, and an ability to fully understand it, within the right market context, is so important to building productive and lasting customer relationships.

What are some of the biggest in-demand features that CDPs are being asked to deliver?

 Automation of e-commerce events and onboarding transactional data are the most common requests. It’s what everyone is focused on and something Audiens already excels at. But it’s not the biggest in-demand features that are the most important – it’s the features that businesses really need but haven’t started asking for yet. Watch this space!

Do you have any tips for brands looking for a sales tech / martech solution to support their sales and marketing activities, but struggling with the wide variety available?

First of all, I would say – focus on the business or data challenge you’re trying to solve. What are you trying to do? What is your focus? Second, unless your business is a large enterprise, avoid a heavy, on-premise solution. Same for large enterprise marketing cloud solutions. You won’t use most of the features you’ll end up paying for. I suggest looking to smaller independent vendors that address your specific business needs.

How do you think the typical role of a B2B/Tech marketing or salesperson will evolve?

I think it already has. These days tech salespeople need to be more like educators than salespeople, and you need to have a deep technical understanding of what you’re selling. In a meeting with a potential client you could have the head of marketing, the head of IT security, the CTO, the CRM lead and the head of legal at the same table. You need to be able to answer questions knowledgeably from any of these people and be able to address your sales messages to each of them in a relevant way. It’s much more about understanding challenges and objectives than simple features and pricing.

How important is it for marketers or salespeople in tech to have a tech background?

Very important — though at a push I’d say a 50/50 split between marketing knowledge and technical knowledge is ideal. As a marketer in tech, if you don’t have a tech background, skill up! This doesn’t mean you have to rush out and do a degree in computer science. Spend a regular block of time with the dev team, use and get to know the product inside and out, and investigate the competition and related products. Take an online course in engineering or similar. If a tech company’s sales team has a deep technical understanding of the product, it means they’re less likely to come back with a deal for something that’s impossible to deliver or out of scope for what the product does. We’ve all been there, and it can be frustrating for everyone involved.

Do you have a favorite sales quote?

Yes, ‘Lazy salespeople sell more’ – it makes me smile every time, but there’s a lot of truth in it. They work on the right opportunities and know when a prospect is ready to make a decision. Sales doesn’t have to be a statistics or numbers-driven exercise. You can be a very effective salesperson by making one call a day — by planning for the call, doing your research and having a deep understanding of the customer you’re about to call. It’s more methodical than working your way down a list each day, and usually much more effective.

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