Entrepreneurship and Personalization

I recently spoke to Etai Beck, CEO and Co-founder of Folloze, a personalized B2B marketing platform.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

Etai: I’ve held many enterprise leadership roles over the years, the most recent before Folloze  being at Juniper Networks. But entrepreneurship has been in my blood all my life. In fact, when I was much younger – only 18 – I started a small software company without really even understanding what running a company meant. But we did develop a product and even managed to get some sales and installations. It never got very big; we were just kids, after all, but it did vividly teach me the difference between just having a great product versus having that plus a really good go-to-market plan. So, the experience was incredible and set the stage for later success like we’re seeing here at Folloze, where we’ve done our startup more “by the book” as it were: go through the MVP, find a few customers who are willing to pay for that, and then from there get some funding for the company and then more customers and more funding. And here we are with a groundbreaking product and world-class customers.

Adam: How did you come up with your business idea? What advice do you have for others on how to come up with great ideas?

Etai: While overseeing global marketing strategy for a business unit of Juniper, we focused on ways to improve our go-to-market strategy and drive overall increases in the size of the market and our share. I ended up working a venture separate from Juniper with someone who would eventually become one of my co-founders at Folloze. It was during the launch of this other startup company that we realized that personalization was underutilized in the business-to-business (B2B) space. That and the lack of coordination between sales and marketing teams were serious problems that we were interested in solving by leveraging our own personal experiences.

We knew that by creating a more personalized buying experience for each customer, you are likely to create more brand loyalty and improve coordination between marketing and sales. But as you increase the number of campaigns you personalize, the challenge of scalability quickly arises. That is another problem that we were interested in addressing when we started Folloze. 

The best advice I can give to those interested in developing great ideas is to find an interesting challenge that you’re passionate about solving. That’s exactly what I did with Folloze and have never regretted the decision.

Adam: How did you know your business idea was worth pursuing? What advice do you have on how to best test a business idea?

Etai: It can be difficult to have confidence in your own idea until you begin sharing it with others for feedback. So, you have to push aside any potential insecurities that you might be experiencing and consider engaging with your peers about some of your ideas, because honest feedback can only be beneficial to your pursuits. Being an entrepreneur and starting your own company can be challenging and difficult at times, but it is a long journey, so it becomes important to gain feedback from those who may be impacted by your offering at some point in the future.

Once you start engaging with your peers, you should start setting personal milestones to achieve. As you create these milestones, you will then begin setting the personal goals needed to achieve your desired success. This process starts by speaking with others and not being too secretive about your ideas and then building from that point.

Adam: What are the key steps you have taken to grow your business? What advice do you have for others on how to take their businesses to the next level?

Etai: The most important thing is identifying your core business value and creating messaging around that. Your audience’s key takeaway should be the ability to easily identify your firm’s value proposition within a few words. Once you can identify and articulate the core solution messages, your audience will automatically be enabled to “connect the dots,” so to speak. Delivering the message is powerful for brands seeking to push their business to the next level.

Adam: What are your best sales and marketing tips? What should everyone understand?

Etai: My best advice for sales and marketing teams is to develop a deep understanding of your buyer personas and key accounts. Properly identifying these elements within your customer universe will improve your personalization marketing strategy. Consumers are becoming more complex and intelligent, and they’re seeking greater and more detailed information when it comes to making purchasing decisions. Sales and marketing teams will need to maintain a similar pace to keep up with the speed and intensity of their customers. Ideally, this process starts with correctly identifying your buyers, developing accurate market segments, and creating a hyper-personalization experience for each of your customers.

Casting a wide net to secure new customers is an outdated strategy. That’s because everyone wants a personalized buying experience and a bespoke customer journey – and sales and marketing teams now understand that personalization is the future.

Adam: What are your marketing tips specific to entrepreneurs?

Etai: My advice for fellow entrepreneurs is to make sure that you have a deep understanding of your core customers. Treat each one of them like they are “one in a million” and not like “one of a million.” Being authentic and providing your customers with a personalized experience will help your brand stand out and ultimately make it more successful.

Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?

Etai: Effective leaders are authentic, humble, inspirational, optimistic, and resilient. They should work towards an optimal balance between decisiveness and inclusion of competing and differing ideas. Listening and understanding are also critical to effective leadership, because they allow you to better recognize your employees’ strengths and weaknesses.

I also highly recommend the book The Situational Leader by Paul Hersley. The author illustrates how to implement a management framework based on the theory that every person on your team has a specific role to fulfill for success. He suggests that creating classifications based on employee competence and confidence can help leaders effectively position each employee for success. This way of thinking emphasizes the importance and value of situational leadership.

Adam: What are your three best business and leadership tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives and civic leaders?

Etai: Being authentic, working to develop an understanding of each situation, and being open to new and unique ideas from differing voices. 

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Etai: The best advice I’ve received is about being resilient. There will be setbacks, and there will be challenges. But resilience is key. When we started Folloze, I met a fellow entrepreneur who said, “Out of the 100 updates you'll get every day, 99 of them will be bad. Do you have the stomach for that?” He continued, “If you have the stomach, go for it. If you don't, forget it. You're not up for it.”

It was a great piece of advice – I ran with it and never looked back. I encourage others to consider it for themselves, too.