Why you shouldn't fake it till you make it.

“Nail it once you’ve made it”, don’t “fake it ‘til you make it”

As those of us who use LinkedIn regularly will know, many users are becoming more and more disenchanted with the site’s growing resemblance to Facebook. Fuelling the fury are irritating maths puzzles, maddening “likebait” status updates, recruitment industry-bashers/defenders, engagement, marriage and even death announcements and, of course, the so-called “Inspirational quotes”.

The latter are designed to wrestle you from your self-induced stupor, resurrect your hitherto failed existence and inspire you to take on the world, one skinny latte at a time. One particular little nugget is often attributed to a very successful, bearded UK entrepreneur, who shall remain nameless as I can’t confirm he actually said it. Even if he did, I venture the opinion that he is wrong. The phrase, to which I refer, is: “Fake it until you make it”.

Now, given the entrepreneur in question is arguably Britain’s most successful ever businessman, this may sound a trifle impudent, coming, as it does, from a lowly IT sales guy, wallowing in self-induced stupor. But hang fire, let me explain.

I spend an alarmingly sizeable proportion of my sales guy time telling people our product isn’t suitable for them. If some of my competition had any idea how many people I have sent their way, I wouldn’t have to worry about not getting any birthday cards or Christmas presents for a while. Believe me, it goes directly against every commercial sinew in my body. But I do it for a good reason.

I do it because it’s true. Our software isn’t right for everybody and it was never intended to be. It was written for a specific market, namely the small to medium sized business, and our solution is widely recognised as best in class – in its intended surroundings. When global concerns make enquiries, we enter market segments to which we are not suited. It’s flattering to be considered test-worthy by household names but, if I sell my product to someone for whom it’s inappropriate, the reality is I start the ball rolling on a chain reaction of disappointment, irritation and possibly even litigation.

This isn’t just me; this is a specific directive from our management. Large enterprise customers require and expect more than companies like Paessler can currently offer. We are honest about the fact that, although we are a fast-growing organisation (doubling our workforce every 2 years), we are still relatively small and aren’t in a position to offer the superior levels of customer interaction they would get from a juggernaut vendor. Neither do we have a product that scales out to hundreds of thousands of users. If I were to pretend it could, the customer would ultimately end up disappointed, my post-sales support team would end up wanting to throttle me and, perhaps most importantly, my integrity would go out the window.

Many IT vendors seem to have a perennial issue with lack of confidence in their corporate identity. They are constantly striving to be something they aren’t, striving to appear bigger, stronger, experienced in fields outside of their main expertise. It no longer seems good enough to be an expert, a specialist in one area. Stock markets need to see growth and vendors often equate growth with diversification and/or acquisitions. History has shown this only works well some of the time, with Google being perhaps the most obvious example. Analysts always look for core business growth before anything else.

Perhaps one day we will be that juggernaut vendor with a 250 strong team of Global Key Account Managers and an internal team of voracious legal eagles. But, until then, companies like us should continue to do what they often do better than anyone in their space. Concentrating on core capabilities and taking market share. Nailing it now we’ve made it, not faking it until we make it.

Unapologetically specialist.