Early Wins with Chris Sachse, Founder @ NetCov
Hey. I'm Vince Beese, the host of the Early Wins podcast. And on this show, we interview startup founders to uncover their secrets to success closing their first customers. During this ten minute three question episode, you'll gain insights and lessons to help you land deals, find market fit, and chart your path to scalability. Our guest today is Chris Sachs, the founder and CEO at Netcove.
Vince Beese:Welcome to the show, Chris. Did I did I hit it okay? Did I did I say your name right?
Chris Sachse:Nailed it. Thanks, man.
Vince Beese:Awesome. Well well, tell us, tell our audience what you're up to these days.
Chris Sachse:Yeah. So, these days, Netcove is a, managed service company. We serve, financial institutions, architecture engineering firms, CMMC firms nationwide. I started my company fifteen years ago, ThinkStack, and then just recently merged with Netgov and then became CEO of Netgov. So it's been it's been exciting the last eight months now that I've been part of that team.
Chris Sachse:But overall, it's been it's been exciting fifteen years.
Vince Beese:Yeah. That's awesome. Congratulations. So as a founder, you know when you start a startup, you've kinda lead sales efforts in the beginning. Do you is there a memorable always.
Chris Sachse:And still.
Vince Beese:And still. Right? Is there a memorable win from back in the day that you can recall?
Chris Sachse:Yeah. Absolutely. You know, I I think the the first big win when I started when I started the company you know, going out and starting your first company is obviously a big a big risk. In fact, I remember I had just gotten engaged, and my wife thought I was nuts. And so be wrong.
Chris Sachse:No. And so we really needed to obviously get some revenue. And so I went out, and what I did was start an advisory board. So we found three prospects essentially, and I asked them. I said, hey.
Chris Sachse:I'm building this company, and I'm creating services to serve your industry. Would you be interested in being part of my advisory board to help to and build and participate in the creation of our services. And as part of that, we will give you these services for a discounted rate, but you're gonna help me design the future services to have influence over that. And they all jumped at that opportunity because really there wasn't a great service for their industry. There wasn't a great service out there that they felt was checking all of their boxes.
Chris Sachse:And so they came on board and did that. And then not only did I get revenue to help build the business and get three clients, but then I had three advocates who started to go out there and really be our champion and help close additional business. So that was the key to success in the beginning.
Vince Beese:I'm curious when you were forming this advisory board, did you have an idea that these folks really needed and wanted this service? Or is this was this your thesis and you're, like, trying to figure it out?
Chris Sachse:I'll tell you the biggest the biggest thing, and and, Vince, it's it's been the key to my success the whole time has been vertical focused. And so, yeah, I started the company with a desire to focus on credit units, And that vertical focus was absolutely the key to our success in many ways, particularly as a small organization being able to plant the flag and build expertise and penetrate that market very deeply was critical. We were we were able to meet all of the various different vendors that serve that market. We were able to become the builders in that market and just build tentacles and networks within one vertical, and it was it was really the feeder sales and marketing success early on. Didn't spread ourselves too thin.
Chris Sachse:And I'll tell you when we went to market and ultimately sold this year, that was the single biggest thing that drove our value to where we ultimately got. So it's done a tremendous amount for our organization.
Vince Beese:Yeah. I mean, it's I think it's still today, verticalization is one of the smartest go to market strategies because to your point, it keeps you focused. Right? You know, you've got your North Star, and you build up so much credibility when you focus on specific verticals as you land them. So your first deals, what were some of the mistakes you made and the challenges you had to come up against, and what did you do to kinda correct those things?
Vince Beese:I'm sure you made mistakes. I'm just assuming. May maybe you didn't.
Chris Sachse:Oh, no. We we made so many events. It was difficult to find.
Vince Beese:Let's narrow them down.
Chris Sachse:To find them. But, you know, I think, and and it's funny because I've I've done a few, startup, startup, you know, questionnaires or panels before. And I and I get this question a lot. Particularly when you have attack or a cyber service, a lot of people wanna try to get their foot in the door, and we did the same thing. And so one of the things that we did was we offered free assessments in the beginning, and it opened a lot of doors, tremendous amount of doors.
Chris Sachse:But in retrospect, it was a terrible mistake, and I really regret doing that. And the biggest reason for that is people didn't value the the work product at all. It didn't put decision makers ultimately in the room. You know, when people saw free assessment or free you know, sometimes we would do different various small things for free. I'll open the store, but it would put lower level folks in the room with you, and they would have high expectations for what they were getting, but not be willing to participate at the level that we would need them to participate to deliver the quality deliverable that we would want.
Chris Sachse:Or if we did deliver a quality deliverable, it was going to a person who wasn't a decision maker in the organization. And so, you know, our hope with the free assessment was, hey, we're gonna show you these things that you need to do that we're gonna ultimately sell more of our services. But unfortunately, that was going to a person who didn't have the authority to, you know, drive change. And so not quickly enough. But, unfortunately, after fifteen, twenty of those realized that we need to we need to monetize those.
Chris Sachse:And once we started monetizing them, it got the appropriate attention. And and then we could credit things on the back end, and we could do various different things.
Vince Beese:So the correction you made was once you saw the mistake was you charged for the assessment?
Chris Sachse:Yeah. We started charging for it. And then if they bought services, we would give them a credit towards, you know, turn up fees or or various other ways to do that. But, yeah, as soon as we charge for it, all of a sudden, it got the CFO's attention or the CEO's attention.
Vince Beese:Amazing what the word free attracts? It is. You know? Yep.
Chris Sachse:It got the value it deserved.
Vince Beese:It's like when you, you know, you get that free offer to come look at this condo or this vacation place and all that stuff. It's like, I'm assume I assume 99 out of a hundred people just go in there to get that free whatever it is, and one person actually accepts it. So maybe it works for some industries, but certainly for your service industry, it eats up too much resource. Right?
Chris Sachse:And it it wasn't a %, you know, it wasn't a failure rate, but it wasn't it wasn't the success rate that we expected and certainly not for the level of effort that we put in for it.
Vince Beese:Exactly. So so more broadly
Chris Sachse:Mhmm.
Vince Beese:What's kind of a thing or a couple of things you would offer other founders out there that are going through this early stage journey right now?
Chris Sachse:The one we we we talked about early on was that was that verticalization. I think that that is that is the for many reasons, you know, it's funny because I hear people go, oh, I wanna put all my eggs in their basket. And it's like, listen. You're gonna spread yourself way too thin. You can make yourself an expert in one vertical, penetrate that vertical, then go repeat it in other vertical, create a proof of concept in one vertical.
Chris Sachse:So I think verticalization is a fantastic idea, especially early on. You can build wins, you can penetrate way easier, particularly if you're trying to get into big organizations. If you're trying to get into the enterprise, you're going to have way more success if you verticalize than if you've got to go just pick the Fortune 500. I think the other thing and this is where so many people fall short, especially if you're in some type of tech, any type of tech, which most people are these days, is selling on the human outcome of what it is that you're doing. Stop talking about features and functions.
Chris Sachse:Don't talk about it. And it's easy to say, you know, strategy. People think when they say, oh, this helps you with your strategic plan. No. Physically sit down and talk about the human outcome and also make sure you're talking to the right person.
Chris Sachse:The tech person probably isn't the right person. We used to do a thing, Vince, called couples counseling and we would we would actually sit the CEO and the CIO in the room and we would do a a session where we just taught them how to speak to each other because they were speaking completely different languages, but ultimately, very commonly wanted the same things. And so a lot of times it was just, hey, the CEO wanted this out of the tech, and it was probably nimbleness, and it was the ability to to grow fast. And the IT team wanted the same thing, but they just weren't speaking the same language or they weren't asking for it at the same time. And so make sure when you're when you're communicating, whether it's your marketing materials, your sales pitch, that you're talking to all of the audiences.
Chris Sachse:Because guess what, you got to sell to the tech folks, you got to sell to the cyber folks, but you also have to sell to the CEO and and whatever product you're you're selling to in the organization. So think about that human outcome. Think about that human experience that you're touching. Sell the emotional side of it through an educational way, but then also make sure you're doing it. Don't don't give a sales pitch.
Chris Sachse:Nobody wants a sales pitch. Give something that is educational. Give them a leave behind. Let them feel like you taught them something. And if you taught them something, then they're gonna come back to you.
Chris Sachse:I always tell my sales guys, I said it's like it's the anti sales method. Right? Imagine imagine that you're you're out and if you are out at the bar and you seem like the person who's desperate to find a date, you're never gonna find a date. So act like the confident person who's out there that's just teaching something and and and you're walking away. That's gonna attract the client, and so that's how you have to be.
Vince Beese:I think that's great advice for folks listening out there. Don't sell features, sell benefits. Right?
Chris Sachse:Absolutely.
Vince Beese:Hey, Chris. Thanks for coming on Early Winds. Really appreciate it.
Chris Sachse:Thank you, Vince. Appreciate it.
