From Complexity to Clarity

Speaker A: Hi, Sarah. Uh, welcome to the Megadees podcast.

Speaker B: Hi, Chris. It's fantastic to be with you today.

Speaker A: Lovely. So you've helped companies generate over $100 million in growth. What's the most exciting thing happening in sustainability tech right now? And what's the biggest challenge companies face in your view?

Speaker B: The most exciting thing in sustainability tech is that the global consumer is now ready for sustainability tech. I've m been in the world of purpose and sustainability and impact since 2007. And as a pioneer of this space, there was a trailblazer of founders and communities across the globe who wanted to bring about sustainable changes. But it was very difficult to sell the the tech, the products, the services to consumers because they weren't ready. Now, as we sit here in 2025, sustainability from a consumer point of view is one of the biggest growth trends out there. And I think that was really a big catalyst for that change was Covid when people had a year, two years timeout to really reflect on their consumption habits, what they do, how they behave, what the meaning of their life was and, you know, make changes. And I think this really readied the world to be able to adapt sustainability tech and want it. So I think that's the biggest, most exciting opportunity for founders today. And after AI, sustainability is one of the biggest growth areas of our time.

Speaker A: Time for sure.

Speaker B: And I would say the biggest complexity. Uh, sorry, the biggest difficulty in the sustainability tech space is complexity.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah.

Speaker B: So the biggest problem I find with founders in this space is that they're creating new services, products and solutions and innovating new technology. The hardest thing with innovation is how do you sell it? Because it's complicated.

Speaker A: Right. I can give you some. So I have a question related to that, but I can also give you some input. In one of the companies where I'm the chairman, we're helping big corporations source sustainable technologies. Do you know how many sustainability tech companies we've found in that company?

Speaker B: How many can you guess in one company?

Speaker A: No, no, no. In the world. How many sustainability tech startups and scale ups are there? And we have probably not found all, but I have a number.

Speaker B: 10,000.

Speaker A: 500,000.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: 500,000 in 1200 categories. And it's not exhausted. Like it's still counting. We're not done, but we found 500,000. So back to your point, there's such a buzz and on the customer side, if you look at it macro level, they're about eight, nine industries in the world that represent 80% or more of the CO2 emissions. And those industries are all consolidated. So there are between 10 and typically 100 companies in each that are 80% of the volumes in that industry. So macro wise you're looking at maybe let's say nine industries and let's take a higher number, 100. So you have about 900 companies to represent 80% of the global footprint. Now most of these need to make a lot of changes, like quite a few. We were looking at a big luxury brand. They have to do about 3,000 changes in both the content of their products but also the way they produce and ship them. So it's a big task at hand. And so a question I have related to. So again, yes, positioning and communication and sales is key because there's such a buzz out there and immune size and large corporations. They see all these 500,000 companies and they don't know which categories to pick. They don't know which vendors to pick in the right categories. It's a hassle which is both for the buyers but also as you represent for the sellers in that space. I have a question connected to the increase on the consumer side. Do you have any. I should probably have it, but I'm asking you, do you have any numbers of how the kind of the attitude towards sustainability have shifted over the years? I don't. I should probably have it, but I don't.

Speaker B: I know that according to Harvard Business Review, companies with a really clear purpose from the consumer's point of view are growing 10% faster.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: That's what I know.

Speaker A: There's a, uh, there's currently. Let's not go too deep into that because then we end up in politics.

Speaker B: But you know, some. Maybe we can Google it while we're talking.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or.

Speaker B: Daniela, can I just say something else? Uh, Chris, I'm also. Something interesting about myself is that I'm working with founders today. But I was uh, for 10, 12 years a buyer trained. Right. So it could be an interesting point of view.

Speaker A: Right. So you were running a purchasing.

Speaker B: Extensive background in luxury. That's where my whole background stepped.

Speaker A: Wow. So you ran like a purchasing department or something?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, cool. Yeah. That's super valuable. Is actually in the megades research. It's the third link that we actually. We took it out of the equation to kind of have some kind of limitation in the scope. But we did go deep into the big executives and the big mega dealers. So buyers and sellers. We excluded the purchasing departments not because it's not important because we couldn't cover it all. So that is interesting. We can double click on that sometime, maybe touch on it today. But that's super interesting. So good. Um, good, good. So switching gears a bit into positioning. How do you help companies figure out what their HERO offering is and the related messaging that sets them apart and drives growth?

Speaker B: So if we start, um, with the point of, uh, sustainability, tech complexity and simplicity you just mentioned there's 5,500,000 sustainability tech companies in the world, all trying, still counting, and all trying to sell. And when I speak to founders, I'm sure I know it's the same for you, Chris. I say that, you know, when you're selling, you're not just selling to the person in front of you. That person has to sell it to their board.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And, um, if you can't explain people in corridor and people in the corridor. Yeah. And then the customers buying it. And if you can't explain very simply the positioning of your business and your, what I call hero offer, if you can't explain it in a way that someone can remember it, how do you expect it to be bought? And this can really delay. It can either sabotage sales and growth or massively delay. I mean, founders I speak to are taking six to eight months to close deals. And this is a big reason why. So when I work with founders in terms of positioning, we really have to bring it back to the basics and make a short, simple statement that's no longer than 10 seconds that really people understand in the language of a nine year old, you know, basic communication.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And I also, um, encourage founders to sort of decomplic, complicate and also bring in words that connect with the heart and mind of somebody. So to bring in a feeling word, right. Like that connects to the impact that they want to make a transformational word like, um, we create, uh, real, real food. I'm going to give you an example about that and how that impacted a founder. So positioning, keep it simple and create words that mean something. Check it out with, you know, your team members, check it out with your friends, families and peers. Does actually what you say, is it clear, not clever. Because, you know, one of my mentors said to me, I love this saying, be clear, not clever.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Because, uh, you know, we all sound great, but saying these complicated and fancy statements, but if they don't actually mean something real, no one's going to buy what you do.

Speaker A: Totally.

Speaker B: So that's, that's on positioning then on the hero offer, it comes back to

Speaker A: remove into hero first. So yeah, would you have two questions there. Would you have any good examples of like they, this is how they described before and this is what we came up with. And uh, now it's clearer first of all. And secondly, how would you go about to find that? Like what's the kind of approach you take to be able to craft that, those kind of statements or pitches?

Speaker B: Yeah. So the first example, one of my founders, organic food tech is where they came to me and that was their.

Speaker A: What they had when they came to you.

Speaker B: That was what they, when they, what they came to me with.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And when they left me, it was real food. So that small transition is a big deal because I say to founders, saying something like we're organic as an example isn't a unique positioning. It's your category. And when there's 500,000 plus companies out there, you can't lead with your category. You have to go deeper. And when we make the micro pivot from organic to real, this M is about the beginning of the journey and it connects into how I do it with founders. You have to start to go within you as a founder and find what your mission is. And that founder's mission was to create real food tech that had real nutrients, real ingredients, really good things that were going to transform the customer's actual nutritional value and with inside them. So the first point into getting really clear on this is to going inside yourself as a founder and connecting to your mission and connecting to who you and the other founders are as a person.

Speaker A: And what was their mission as a good.

Speaker B: Their mission was to bring real food to majority of people that they could reach and influence.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So that they could have nutritious food without having to make it themselves. And um, and they worked a lot with doctors and nutritionists to be able to do that. So when you get really granular into your mission, then you can find a word and it's all about finding this word that links. That's the beauty of what I enable founders to get really clear on their positioning by starting first to go into the mission, finding that word, then linking that word also to the customers that they want to influence. So there's many customers out there. Again, the beauty of online is that we can reach anyone anywhere, but if we're not hyper focused on a micro niche, we're going to.

Speaker A: So what, what, what's the like how do you then take it from real food into uh, the uh, like a minute kind of next storyline on it.

Speaker B: So the unique positioning goes to we make real food and things. And then the story goes again to the heart of the founder founders which Is, you know, we wanted to be able for everyone at home after a long hard day not to have to be able to cook, um, to have to go to the supermarket to figure out how to build nutritious food. We were going to deliver it for them so they could spend more time with their families and loved ones.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And so that's the simple story. Now this is a client from three years ago. That's M the power of a simple story that I just remember that.

Speaker A: Right, right. Yeah. Good, good. Do you have any, uh, I'm super geeky. Do you have any more good examples, like from a maybe more techy company?

Speaker B: I have E commerce businesses that I've worked with that are like curating all sorts of different makers from around the world under one platform. And their problem was, you know, when we talk about the hero offer, M, their problem was that they were curating thousands of makers at one platform. So how do you show multi brand retailer, basically? Pardon?

Speaker A: A multi brand retailer.

Speaker B: Yeah, a sustainable multi brand retailer.

Speaker A: Right, right, right.

Speaker B: So how do you show the customer what the hero offer is? And M, their profit margins were very low. Their average basket size was very small.

Speaker A: M and high customer acquisition costs, typically.

Speaker B: And very high customer acquisition cost. When they went through this simple simplification process of both their unique positioning and um, getting clear on their hero offer, they were able to reduce or improve their ROAS from 1 to 1 to 1 to 5.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Or they were able to advertise and spend.

Speaker A: Yeah, we had an advertising spend. Exactly.

Speaker B: Yeah. And they were able to acquire like 90% new customers in a very short amount of time.

Speaker A: Right. Because they were like, uh, what was, what was and what is their, their positioning? How could you. What was a simplified version and what was that?

Speaker B: Or it was before that positioning was like, ah, ethical multi brand marketplace. And afterwards it was like the number one curated marketplace to find crafted collections from artists.

Speaker A: Right, right. Yeah, that's clearer for sure.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Ah, and um, it's also more limited, which is often good.

Speaker B: Exactly. They were able to.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: From the thousands, they were able to cut it out because of the fact of the curation it gave customers that have time to waste today they want you to do this work for them. And um, when then the cost, it gave also the team's clarity, which is a massive part of this.

Speaker A: Oh yeah, yeah. You need to get alignment internally. What. What do we really do?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, yeah. And another big part of this is being able not only to give people clarity in words, but, uh, I also say to give People clarity in terms of the visual appeal of your business. So you talk a lot about thought leadership and the visual appeal of the founders, you know, being really clear online out there. And it applies to everything. Like in this online space today there's, I think there's 10 seconds say what we mean.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, but there's five seconds to make an impression online. Right. And that means that we have to give an instant clarity, visual appeal of who our business is. And when we come back to that example of the E commerce business, when they have clarity on what they were doing from a curated marketplace point of view, they were able to change that imagery so that when someone went on their website, they could see immediately what curated collection that went into the adverts as well, which is why they improve their return on ad spend. And that went into increasing the basket speed guise of the products.

Speaker A: Mhm. Right. So storytelling has become a buzzword in marketing. What's the secret to making it work in your view? And can you give some examples of even more powerful stories that help a company to scale?

Speaker B: Yeah, the storytelling. I work with another business in Asia that they source like amazing yak knitwear from around, from, from Tibet. And um, they wanted to really expand their.

Speaker A: Yak what?

Speaker B: Yak knitwear. Yak knitwear.

Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. So, okay. The technology, they use the fur to create knitwear.

Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, yeah. And they wanted to expand their social selling Right. Online in Asia using like the equivalent of TikTok in Asia, which is an Instagram in Asia. And Asia's Instagram is called Red. Yeah. And so the power of storytelling is

Speaker A: like a mix of TikTok and Instagram, isn't it?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, totally. Now the power of storytelling doesn't work if you don't have an amazing product or service.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: You can't just sell a great story, like a great sustainability story.

Speaker A: You have to have substance behind it.

Speaker B: Yeah. Mhm. So this business had the great sustainability story, but they were lacking a really, really great visual appeal. Product or service and service. So they could say that they wanted to attract like the top influencers to wear their products, but the influencer wouldn't wear it just on the story. Uh, so the importance of storytelling is to combine a great story with a great product and um, really clear problems you solve and benefits of your solution. So it's like you have to get the, the, the nuts and the bolts of your product and service clear first and then layer the story on top of it so that you're mixing in like very tangible. This is why you should buy from us with an amazing story that for me is the, uh, when I see this working. So when we did that with this brand, um, she was able then to take a collection and that had high visual appeal as well as the story, and then attract the top influencers from Asia who would have said no just three months before. And this led her to have a $300,000 sellout in 30 days of a new launch.

Speaker A: Right, let's switch gears into, uh, your experience in a purchasing department. What are like, give us some examples where you were involved in getting, uh, a new vendor on board with some kind of new equipment or new components, whatever, or new ingredients. And, uh, what, what this, this vendor did really well to sway decisions their way.

Speaker B: Uh, so my background's the fashion industry. Today I work with businesses across 12 different categories.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: But it's really funny, like whether the business is making tech, food, beauty, e commerce. The rules that I learned being a purchaser work for every single kind of business. Right. Because there really is a formula to buying no matter what you're buying. So my job was to help brands get stocked by the retailer, new brands that would want to come in and also choose brands that, that I thought were great to come into the store. And imagine I was working for one of the world's top retailers, um, Harvey Nichols in the UK back in the early 2000s. So the, this was every single brand wanted to be in this store. So the competition is very high. So the success formula for any brand to get in somewhere, whatever you make, is the steps that we've already started to lay out in our conversation. The first is to build a unique positioning that will differentiate you from any competitor within your category. Um, by connecting to the words that we shared and creating a simple statement that when you pop up on an email or on social media or someone clicks on your website and they say, back to that example of real food. They're like, real food tech. That sounds interesting. And then once they see that hook, that line of the positioning, you then build in a powerful story and a powerful hero offer. These are the winning formula tips. So imagine someone looks on your website, they say, real food tech. Great. What does it mean? Then you have a line underneath it that's a story that says, well, we want to bring people nutrition at, uh, home we, without having to travel for miles to get it. Then you show the product offer really, really simply with high visual appeal imagery that hooks the buyer. They are the first three key steps. So as a buyer, the buyer wants to see from the business, this clarity work already done. So you are almost a finished product. Ah, a finished, you know. Yes. They, the buyer needs to see that the customer is going to love you. And for the customer to love you, they're going to have to see that unique positioning that really, that hook of the story as well. And then an amazing, amazing visual high appeal product or service.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: That makes you stand out. And I can't underestimate the power of this part of the visual appeal. But how was it to play out?

Speaker A: Let's say you, you are now, uh, in your previous role at Harvey Nichols, uh, I guess you were split into purchasing teams per category. I guess like, or was it no brawl.

Speaker B: No.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: So I've worked in my background in corporate, was working in for a Harvey Nichols, which is a department store, and then also as a product developer for a retailer.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So they're different kinds of purchasing. Uh, for a multibrand retailer, you're doing, um, and you're a curator. So your job is to curate from the brands that you already see.

Speaker A: But how would, uh, let's say I represent a new fashion brand, I come to say Harvard Nichols. Like how, how, like how did they go about you? You met this brand for the free. A new brand. You haven't met them before. How did they mix marketing and sales to. And also, was it you alone or was it a bunch of people that were included in the kind of jury of whether we should bring in this brand or not or how did it work?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's always a jury, Chris. So the buyer purchaser is the one to hunt the brands or to sort of first sift through and then they will make the call to present that to the board and the directors and say this is what I think we should fight for. Like, I think this is an amazing business. I mean, I'll tell you. Acne jeans, right? You know acne?

Speaker A: Yeah, Swedish.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I, uh, I was responsible for bringing acne into the uk So I think this is a great example. Like they, I met them in Berlin and they brought me to their studio. They were already had the elements in place. So again it comes back to this. They have the hard work already done. They had a cool positioning, they had a very high visual appeal range. An example right then was I was buying menswear. So in the UK there was no like rock and roll super skinny jeans. Like that was the very Swedish look. And so when you saw this group of um, very cool guys wearing these super slim jeans that were rocking a totally different look, you could See, immediately. Okay, this is avant garde, but it's different. It's unique. It's a unique positioning, a unique product, and it's cool.

Speaker A: They also created a kind of different style in the stores. And yeah, they had it.

Speaker B: They created a unique positioning, a different vibe and a great offer. And it's the elements that I've shared brought to life. So then it's like they'd created the package. Imagine like, uh, the. The full brand package of the positioning, the offer, the story, the cool factor, the visual appeal. Then that package was complete. So where businesses go wrong is that they are not completing the package or presenting it to the buyer. And then the buyer, how do you take.

Speaker A: So you met them in the. They took you to the studio and then what was the journey? Until they had a deal signed and they were on the Harvey Nichols shelves again.

Speaker B: When you get this right, the journey isn't long.

Speaker A: So, um, but did you turn around and presented to. To this jury or.

Speaker B: So I took them back to the. I took the brand back to the uk. I said, this is like really cool. I wanted to get it in. Then we invited the founders over or meeting and then we bought the collection.

Speaker A: Right, right.

Speaker B: So that period of time, four to six months.

Speaker A: Right, cool. Great. So let's switch. Let's geek off a bit about, uh, around AI. When you do the positioning and messaging and storytelling work for your clients, are you leveraging AI already or are still not?

Speaker B: Absolutely, yes.

Speaker A: So how would you use it?

Speaker B: So asking ChatGPT AI for questions on, you know, like when we talk about these positioning words, um, you can ask ChatGPT. Well, my company, I want to sound inspiring, I want to sound revolutionary. Give me top 30 words that I could use as a unique positioning word that means something to someone, that means something to a buyer. You could even say it so clearly as that and then you can. We're using it. So you can then use the top word straight away. You can ask like if I want to, does this make sense? You can ask it to check. Does it make sense to a buyer? Is it clear if I position myself like this, how will I sound?

Speaker A: And pressure testing stuff.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right. So a lot of. I, uh, mean, we mostly engage with the B2B tech companies in the best of worlds. They're pretty good at describing a fairly kind of a more hard positioning. What can they learn from companies like acne?

Speaker B: So I met a B2B tech company last week who wants, um, to sign up to my mastermind. Because of the reasons that you just shared, Chris he's done the work. You know, he's like, I've spent 50,000 plus on hiring the top brand experts, right? What he says his website looks great. His services, you know, we are going to impact the world through our, uh, telecommunications systems. It's going to be clear, simple, uh, impactful, something like that. As examples of what he wrote on his website. Right, okay. But the problem is. So the website looks good and the services look clear, but when he tries to describe the services that he sells, it's super complicated.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: Okay, so he's done that work, but I would say then the offering is not clear.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: So what you can learn from acne is this alignment, right? It's not just positioning, it's not just looking cool, it's also then bringing it down to the product offer. And that has to be really, really clear. The benefits of why to buy that product. Um, and if we take back to acne, simply, the benefits were that was a completely new trend of super slim, you know, look and feel, Swedish rock and roll. That wasn't here before. So it was a really clear point of difference. The product itself looked very simple and, um, you could see it for itself. If you're talking about a tech service.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, it's not so easy to see.

Speaker B: Always it's not as easy to see. So then it's all about how you describe the service, right? So it's like I said to this telecommunications tech business the other week, right? I'm like, as I said, the branding is done, your website looks cool, but what you're missing is the backend, um, the back end of how you actually describe your service. So it means something to the buyer, right? And with a tech company, you need to be able to also, like, I would say, have services that are very simple to understand. And that's where your HERO offer comes into it. So I might, I meet businesses like that company was doing bespoke telecommunications system solutions. So with the HERO offer part, you can take like the jeans range. And how do you transform that into a tech service? You take like, you take all this complication and you make it one, two or three key services that are so simple that you can put in a brochure that any buyer can understand the person who you give the brochure to, to their board, to everybody it needs to. And, and the way to do that is to go through this process first.

Speaker A: I've, um, we've often there is a. It's like a hack that we've developed, uh, which, I mean, we don't do consulting, but we share it with our clients. Uh, we used to do consulting, now we just push our SaaS platform for stakeholder maps and, and media orchestration. But, but there's a one hack that I did it with big companies and then I kind of made it into a meta model that a lot of people have adopted. Even clients we don't work with, we call it the red Fiat. So uh, when you have. What's often tempting for a tech founder or a tech commercial team is to tell customers too much. They want to quickly get the customers to understand everything they do. What we have seen is that a smart way especially works well with larger corporations to get in. Imagine uh, a parking lot outside of uh, Sainsbury's or something. So grocery retailer, you might have five hundred to a thousand parking lots. That can be an illustration of uh, uh, a normal company's existing vendors. So now there's a new vendor who wants to get in. What they attempted to do is to give the full blown pitch. Now that can be illustrated by a red bus. You're driving into a parking lot out of, outside of Sainsbury's. And uh, you want to be able to park this red bus, which is not so easy. You need to kind of crash into a bunch of cars to even fit it there. While if you think about how the big corporation is working, they have too many hierarchical levels. There are quite a lot of silos between the functional areas. They have very strict rules on how who can sign off, what both amounts and which scopes. You know this, you've been in purchasing. So and often the sign off levels are way lower than most people think. Even on VPN director level it can be like €50,000 a sign off level. Even though Sarah Simmons got a uh, uh, budget of 100 million euros, but her sign off level is 50,000. So a way to hack this is what we call a red Fiat. So you basically find an entry offer that is smaller. So, so you carve out something from this red bus to make a red Fiat. Actually I had a red Fiat before, um, and you want it to fit in a very clear spot. So you scope it so that it doesn't conflict. Let's say you're a functional head of something and then you design it so it's only creating value for your function. Even though the red bus would benefit from five functional areas, you intentionally go, now this we can do for the functional head of logistics for example or the functional head of, I don't know, whatever. And then you design the sign off level. So actually the first ticket is 50k which is exactly what you can sign off without having to run it by other people. And thirdly you, you actually uh, because a lot you've been in a big corporation, you typically if you're especially middle management they want to hack the system themselves. So if they like a vendor and I want to bring them in, they don't want to have to ask others. So uh, you can also the third component in the red Fiat is to find the budget row that Sarah Simmons is already having. So where you go. So for example when we sold a marketing service in my earlier life we knew that the regional marketing ads in big and the big Fortune 500 companies they had the 50k sign off. They could sign three months at a time, contract length, they had big events budgets. So we were coming with the first ABM platform in the world. But there was no budget roll saying account based marketing. So we basically said in the meetings look, some of our clients want us to put event on the invoice. And they were like wow, yeah, gladly do that because then I can buy from you without having to ask others. And we kind of, we keep quiet about this and we just do it and then when it's working we can tell. So can that be connected somehow to your. As you say, you try to simplify because again whether you have a big complex solution or a huge portfolio, you benefit from a red Fiat thinking uh absolutely.

Speaker B: I think it's brilliant. I'm just thinking of one of my clients now that's got like a uh, very complex business selling um, different finishing solutions. And through this process what we've done first we simplified her offering and then yeah we found her red Fiat which is going into big corporates with like a gifting solution. Like something very small, very bespoke and very attractive because the, her company can give all sorts of additional creative benefits or the services they deliver in this space.

Speaker A: The way pick the scope, the sign off and the finding a uh, sneaky way to steal some something else in the budget.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And it brings her to be able to sell to the leading automation and uh, all sorts of global luxury companies, yacht companies. It's a big enabler for her to get her services in and then scale. So it's very, and I'm thinking back as well to my purchasing days when I was sharing example of a supplier I met and they, we, they won me from the red Fiat. Yeah, uh, you know it was some like shiny spangly is very special uh, like um, thing That I saw from them that I really wanted to bring in. And I brought in just say 300 units in a tiny budget.

Speaker A: Because I mean, if you. Even if you have. So I give you an example for from even very senior. So the CTO of a huge company. No, she's no longer the CTO there, but she used to be the cto. She was like, I love the red fiat because even if you're on the group C level, you don't want to have to run by, uh, too many people and too many jurors and instances. If you like something, you as a buyer want the hack, you want the red fiat, because then you can buy it and get on with it, and then you can move in the red bus when it's proven to work. And this vendor has built their relationships and their trust internally.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And it's a way with. Also, as we know, with all these megadeals, corporate companies, all the layers of management, there's a lot of politics involved, uh, and a lot of competing.

Speaker A: So first of all, there's competing key initiatives, there are competing problems to solve. They're competing priorities between functional areas, between countries, between business units. Everyone wants the attention and the money to be play around with. I mean, not play around with in a negative sense, but to get things done. So, yeah, that's a ton of politics. And, uh, even people at the very, very top are exposed to politics from the lower levels and also from around themselves. So.

Speaker B: Yeah, and competing vendors.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so if you're that buyer and you want to bring in the shiny new innovation, you want it, you know, because you know the benefits that it will bring to your organization. So it's very smart to make it something small. And, and with that same, um, example of that supplier, they started by bringing in the very small, very shiny little, uh, item, and then they became one of the biggest suppliers in the.

Speaker A: Right, yeah, exactly. No, uh, we propagate for the same thing. Like, I haven't seen yet that they exist. But it's very unusual to do a mega deal from zero. You typically do a land and expand. You come in, you prove value, trust and all of those things and reliability in a small area. Then you get, uh, invited to the bigger tables, like, okay, now you've proven to be trustworthy. We have a. We sink on the values, we sink on the principles of doing business. Uh, and you guys seem to be knowing what you're doing. Uh, then you get the chance to do the mega deal, move into the big league. But it's a way to mitigate risk for big corporations, they allow you to do something on a smaller area, and that needs to be respected by vendors. That's why the red bus doesn't really work so often. You need to find a land and expand approach, even when you have the big ticket game. I mean, there are instances where it's not so easy. If you sell a big power plant, it's not so easy to carve out a red Fiat. So there are cases where it's just not possible to do a red Fiat. Uh, but in very many businesses, you can. You can. Great. So, Sarah, uh, I think we are, uh, coming up to the end of our session, as always, amazing to interact with you. I hope we see you.

Speaker B: Thank you very much, Chris. Yeah. I'm excited to meet you in real life at our, uh, next Purpose Driven event. Wherever that is in the world.

Speaker A: Exactly. So if people want to get in touch with you, what are the best means?

Speaker B: The best means they can reach out to Sarasimmons.com they can also reach me

Speaker A: on the link Simmons with a D Sim Simmons.

Speaker B: Um, yes, absolutely. And they can reach me on LinkedIn. And if they Google Sara Simmons, impact innovator, I will come up. Right.

Speaker A: Amazing. Thank you so much, Sarah. It was amazing to have you.

Speaker B: You too, Chris. Thank you.

Speaker A: Thank you, Sam m.