My way of Thinking Podcast: Making DEALS and Growing Beards!

22 January 2021

Mark Edwards Guests on "My Way of Thinking" Podcast with Lee Greenhough

There are only 4 rules:

1) No BS
2) No Judging
3) No Negativity
4) Have fun

Mark Deals with Big Deals

Mark explains that he is a software strategist, working in mergers and acquisitions, positioning and marketing communications.

He sometimes wonders himself, how he arrived where he is because a lot of people in M&A tend to come from financial, banking or accounting backgrounds, whereas Mark wanted to be a photographer from 11 years of age.

He did a general arts foundational course and spent 3 years studying photography, which he loved. In his final year, he held an exhibition of his work and also won the International Salon of Photography Student Photographer competition.

At this point, Mark thought his career as a photographer was launched.

Eye-Opening Experience of Photography in the Commercial World

He went on to work in London for some of the advertising studios for a while but found it a frustrating experience as he hadn’t understood, from a business perspective, what photography was about. Additionally, he wasn’t given any creative autonomy as there as always an Art Director overseeing what you produced.

He handwrote 100 letters to the best photographers to see if he could work with them and received a handwritten response from Lord Snowdon - a beautiful letter.

In hindsight, Mark realises a mentor would have been helpful at this point in his career - Somebody who could advise him to use his own time to be creative and gradually build a reputation for himself.

Sales Career

Mark then went on to have several sales jobs, which he enjoyed. He had had early exposure, aged 14, knocking on doors with his dad who had a football pools round. After about three weeks of accompanying his dad, he was given his own round. He found it a bit daunting but it was a good learning experience

He then went on to sell scales for W&T Avery, selling to greengrocers and butchers, which built some resilience in him as it was a job he enjoyed but was also a challenge.

Mark says that in the UK, sales tends to have a bad reputation and be viewed with some suspicion. Mark has always tried to listen to the prospect and really understand them and their business so he can offer a more consultative sales approach.

There is a lot of pressure on salespeople and companies will tend to blame the salesperson for a lack of revenue, when in reality, they have no proper process in place and the salesperson hasn’t had any training.

He says marketing and sales need to work cooperatively because if there are insufficient leads coupled with pressure from management to meet targets, sales personnel may start selling to people who aren’t a great fit.

Move to Selling in the Tech Sector

Mark got into selling data storage in the mid-90s, when companies used to back up their data on tapes which they stored in huge cabinets.

After this, his next step was in document management software and workflow management and this is where things became a lot more interesting. Hardware costs were always going to be diminishing.

With software, you’re closer to the solution. Data storage was just one part of the jigsaw.

In the early days, software was comprised of specialist components, like OCR (Optical Character Recognition) for converting documents to digital information. Nowadays, that functionality is present across solutions but you also have specialist solutions created specifically for niches such as restaurants or manufacturing.

Digital transformation is still ongoing - The ‘paperless office’ has never happened but many more documents are digitally-born these days. That said, document capture bureaus are still quite big business - scanning paper documents to digital. The capability for complete transformation is there and has been for some time. It’s simply a case of changing people’s habits

Working for a German Software Company

Mark was part of the pan-European management team for a German software company. The company had borrowed a lot of money and spent it all and the company went bust. At this point, Mark received a fax from the solicitors to say he was no longer allowed to sell the software as the company was now in the hands of the receivers - and, also, where was the £250,000 they’d given him?!

It turned out the owner had been doing things he shouldn’t with the finances. There had been underhand things going on and the executive team were angry they’d been deceived and let down. So, they got together and raised finance to buy the company themselves, which they did, for £1.3 million.

Making the Transition to Selling Software Companies

Having done this and let the dust settle, Mark began to realise that this company may not be the direction in which he really wanted to go.

A chance call from a friend, asking him about it, led to the two of them setting up Document Boss in 1999 to headhunt senior software execs and then progressing to mergers & acquisitions (M&A) in the software sector. After a brush with ill health, that friend went off to run another company. Mark bought him out, changing the company name to Boss Equity and continued with the M&A side of the business, dropping the senior recruitment.

Tips for Dealmaking:

Be yourself and be comfortable with what you’re saying
Don’t over-complicate things; Don’t try to convey too much information too soon - We work with our clients and get them to present to Boss Equity execs so they can hone their presentations and be comfortable with what they’re saying. It’s important they only present the most relevant information at each stage of the sales process.
Don’t overload slide decks! People tend to put every single word they want to say on each slide. Rule: Make it visual. Use no more than 6 words per slide
You don’t need to know every single answer - If you don’t have the information, just say you’ll get back to them with it.
Give a good high-level overview of what you do - You can go deeper at a later stage. Just don’t overload people with too much information at the outset.

About Outsmart Strategy

There’s more of an outlet for Mark’s creativity in the Outsmart Strategy business, which is based on one of the 5 methodology modules from Boss Equity - Competitive Space.

It’s about strategic positioning and scientific-based messaging - How companies communicate with their audience in a way that is both engaging and compelling.

The background to setting up Outsmart Strategy was that Mark had met a guy called Neil Cumming and spoken with him about Boss Equity. Mark explained the business methodology used for Boss Equity’s clients and how well it was working. He shared with Neil that Boss Equity managed to consistently sell businesses for price tickets well above what the founders were expecting.

Mark believed the biggest component of this was understanding the importance of strategic positioning and communication. He and Neil realised there were big implications with this - outside of when people want to sell their business.

As Outsmart Strategy, Neil and Mark help their clients understand their business and where it sits in the marketplace as well as where it sits against the competition. They need to be able to articulate their offering and create key messaging around that. When they get this right, it makes a huge difference to the business.

A lot of the time people are too close to their business to see it clearly. The key is to create emotional buy in.