F*** Aperol, Let’s Make A Paper Airplane & Building a Strategic Vendor-Client Relationship
Issue No. 11 - June 30, 2023
In today’s issue we explore the cocktail behind the Paper Plane, and most importantly NOT use Aperol. We also dig into how software businesses and their clients should together go about building meaningful relationships - maybe we can even call them partnerships. I look forward to your comments and thoughts. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy! Cheers!
This Week’s Cocktail: The Paper Airplane
“Fuck Aperol!” is a running gag between me and my mixology friends. Typically when I exclaim my disdain for Aperol, it kicks off a hilarious rebuttal that ends with, “But, what about the Paper Plane!” - a modern classic cocktail that contains Aperol.
I think it all started quite a few years ago when we were mixing up some drinks at my friend's house and he suggested we use Aperol. I can’t remember what we were mixing, we were drinking after all - and drinking explains the fuzzy provenance of most cocktails - but I was quick dismiss his idea with “Fuck Aperol!” and reached for the Campari instead.
The argument that ensued was both spirited (pun intended) and ridiculous, but my basic premise was that Aperol is too mild and weak. As an Amaro, as a bitter, and as a movement.
Aperol has literally taken over the world, typically in the proverbial Aperol Spritz. I should technically be happy, since it may be introducing many to the world of amari - even if they don’t realize it. Its slight bitterness could serve as an entry point to the bold and wondrous world of amari and vermouths, but most will never move on beyond a spritz.
My case is in fact born out by the history behind Aperol. Aperol was created in 1919 by a couple of industrious brothers, Luigi and Silvio Barbieri, who had inherited their father’s liqueur business in Padua, Italy. What they created is both far less bitter and considerably lower in alcohol (between 11% and 15% ABV depending on where it is sold) than Campari or other Italian red bitters - which is what this family of amari is called, and not to be confused with “cocktail bitters”. They even marketed Aperol as “apertivo poco alcolico” - a “lightly alcoholic aperitif”.
And as for spritzes, funny enough this class of cocktail dates back to when Austro-Hungarian soldiers stationed in Italy’s northeast - who were accustomed to beer - began watering down the strong wine in the region with water. That caught on with farmers in the region who started doing the same with local amari and vermouths. One of the most popular concoctions that emerged was the Spritz Veneziano - Venetian Spritz - which used an Italian red bitter called Select. Select is very similar to Campari, though ever so slightly less bitter.
At some point near the end of the Twentieth Century bars along the Venetian Riviera began serving the Aperol Spritz and it took off in the hot, humid climate. And when Campari acquired Aperol in 2003, they put their marketing prowess to full use and made the Aperol Spritz into the quintessential summer Italian drink. Now you can find it everywhere!
But let’s get back to the argument… “What about the Paper Plane!”
The Paper Plane cocktail is indeed a modern classic. First taking over Chicago, then Toronto, and then all of the civilized world in the mid-twenty-teens (I have no idea if that is how the AP stylebook calls for me to spell that out, and I don’t actually care). Some would argue that the Paper Plane cocktail explains who you can find Amaro Nonino in every bar in the western world.
The Paper Plane cocktail emerged from the legendary Chicago bar The Violet Hour, which I have already mentioned before in the newsletter. The spec for the Paper Plane is built off the same framework as a Last Word - which we also covered before - and is equal parts bourbon, Amaro Nonino Quintessentia, Aperol, and fresh lemon juice. If you are making one at home, ¾ of an ounce each will do, and it is easy to scale up and make a batch for all your family and friends.
But the story behind this cocktail is a bit more cloudy, because Aperol was not the first Italian red bitter in this drink, it was CAMPARI! In 2008, Toby Maloney, who helped open The Violet Hour, asked bartender Sam Ross, with whom he had worked at Milk & Honey in New York, to create an original cocktail for the Chicago bar. Ross created the drink and named it after the M.I.A song “Paper Planes”. Apparently when a slightly buzzed Ross left a voicemail with the spec on Maloney’s phone, his voice was garbled and it sounded like he said, “The Paper Airplane” - and had equal parts bourbon, Amaro Nonino Quintessentia, CAMPARI, and fresh lemon juice.
Apparently, a few days later, Ross was having second thoughts and thought his new drink may be too bitter for the (weak!) patrons of Chicago. Ross subbed in Aperol and that’s what went on the menu - The Paper Airplane - under the whiskey section of the first The Violet Hour menu. I guess even the best make mistakes! Maloney has been quoted as saying he liked the Campari version better. (I rest my case!)
And just as the Last Word inspired a hundred riffs, the Paper Plane has spawned its share of equal-parts sours, including the Amen Corner (bourbon, Aperol, Amaro Nonino and mint) and, perhaps most famously, the Naked and Famous (mezcal, yellow Chartreuse, Aperol and lime juice), which has gone on to become a modern classic cocktail in its own right.
Those are all great drinks, but they would be better without Aperol!
My case is closed, FUCK APEROL!
;)
Article Resources:
I would like to call out two great resources I used in the research for this article:
The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails. Oxford University Press, 2022
How the Paper Plane Became a Modern Classic. Robert Simonson, Punch, 2020
Paper Airplane spec, serves one:
.75 oz (~25 ml) - Bourbon (Elijah Craig or Buffalo Trace recommended)
.75 oz (~25 ml) - Amaro Nonino Quintessentia
.75 oz (~25 ml) - Campari
.75 oz (~25 ml) - fresh lemon juice
No garnish
The process:
Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker, add ice. Shake until well chilled. Strain into a cold coupe cocktail glass.
Notes:
I recommend Elijah Craig or Buffalo Trace bourbon here. Both are good, solid, mid-priced bourbons you can easily find. Save the really ‘good stuff’ for sipping, your flask, or Old Fashioned’s where the quality and the character of the bourbon will stand out.
Analysis: Building a Meaningful and Strategic Vendor-Client Relationship
This spring and early summer I have been on the road a bunch - Los Angeles, London, New York, Amsterdam, Las Vegas, and places I don’t even remember now, but have the receipts for. In the process I have had a chance to meet with many, many enterprise software customers. A few of them really stood out to me. How they approached the meetings and conversations offered a window into how both the vendors and customers can better approach their relationships to drive mutual benefit and develop a more strategic relationship.
Building a meaningful and strong, strategic relationship between a software vendor and an enterprise or mid-market client isn't a walk in the park. In fact, sometimes it feels more like an obstacle course. Getting through it, well, it requires teamwork. It’s a two way road.
A key problem, the relationship is set up to be confrontational from the start.
There are multiple ways a customer may pick a vendor, but the most common is still going to be a vendor selection process that will rely on a request-for-proposal (RFP). An RFP - and the selection process as a whole - will focus on the “feature/function” of the software. That RFP is typically overloaded with every conceivable capability a customer could want, and in a sense represents an aspirational wishlist, because it will often be beyond what they can actually use.
The process is designed to create a bake off between vendors based on all the capabilities they have, attempting to score them on the “balanced scorecard”. This process is purposefully designed to take humans out of the process, and ward off the charms of a particularly charismatic salesperson or any bias that can enter the process. And of course, a negotiation is often treated as a confrontation - someone will win, and the other will lose - though the most experienced salespeople and customers know it does not have to be this way.
The selection process is designed to take the people out of it, but often it is the people that make the difference.
The problem is that this process often fails to take into account both the people and the communication needed to maximize the benefits from a customer’s enterprise software vendor.
I have seen this time and time again over the years. And yes, it is ironic - since the bake-off process to select a vendor will often reward the vendors with the most capabilities. The same is true of the analyst reports (like Gartner MQs and Forrester Waves), which are often used by customers to create the short lists of vendors that are included in the RFP process in the first place.
Yet, what you will hear from customers when they talk about their best software vendors often has little to do with the technology. They will say something to the effect of, “We just love the people. They are there to help and are always very responsive.”
I have heard something like this over and over again over my career, and ironically the vendors themselves often also downplay it - since everyone wants their software to be perceived as self-service, easy to use, and not requiring a lot of help.
And in the end the customer will use a fraction of the solutions they buy and implement.
I recently had the opportunity to meet with a very sophisticated marketing-solution client. They are held up in their market as being very advanced and ahead, and believe that of themselves too. As a vendor it is excruciating when a top customer refuses to be included in your list of customers, won’t let you put their logo on your site, and will not jump on stage and talk about what they are doing, but this is one of those customers.
Over dinner (and of course cocktails!) I asked open-ended questions about how they were using the software and their business processes. They seemed reluctant to share much at first - in a sense, guarded - but as I asked questions I learned that they had not really fully adopted the tools they had bought. They were very happy with the software, but were not getting the full value. We ordered up a health-check and capability workshop for desert (served weeks later) to dig in and I encouraged the customer to share as much with the team as they could - it would of course all be confidential anyhow. I am expecting the customer is going to want to implement and adopt more of the solution as a result. Done right, this is a win-win, not a zero sum game.
Why were they guarded at first? Maybe they did not want to be sold to (which I do not do anyhow) but I suspect it was also because they were embarrassed. Everyone expects them to be the best. But the best customers are those that are going to be open about their business and how it works, and invite vendors in to help them improve it - not wall it off and see vendors’ ideas as suspect.
But the reality is that most customers a fraction of these platforms and solutions they buy, and often they do not move beyond what they first implement. It begs questions about the typical selection process and its merits.
The next day I had what can only be described as the opposite experience.
A day after that dinner I went - together with a small team - to talk to another sophisticated client. What they did was progressive and enlightened, and the opposite of a guarded approach. They have multiple business units, each with somewhat different business models and needs, and each in different phases of rolling out the software. They had each unit present where they are at, what they are accomplishing now, where they want to go next, and any help they needed.
This naturally opened up a conversation about what training and enablement would be useful, what help our services and support teams can provide to get them where they want to go, where third-party partners or solutions may be of help, and a few roadmap items for our product team to take away and work on.
It took preparation and a level of transparency from the customer that you do not often see, and as a vendor, we had to show up and be ready to engage in a productive conversation about how we can help the customer adopt the software and reach the objectives they have.
And then a few weeks later, at a different client, a CEO dropped into a meet-and-greet.
A few weeks later, one of our most seasoned AMs set up a call with an existing customer so we could get to know the new leader of e-commerce there to some of our leadership team. To our surprise, the CEO of this client - an enterprise omnichannel retailer - joined the meeting. She shared her goals - benchmark her team, improve efficiency, understand opportunities for innovation, save money, and drive growth in the e-commerce business while complimenting her other channels. She shared that they were now an organization committed to a culture of getting better at everything, and the only way to do that was to be sober about where they were at and where the opportunities were to do that.
What she did next was both smart and something not many CEOs do. She asked how they can be a better customer - or to be clear, to become a strategic customer.
She asked if they were taking full advantage of our solutions, what they should be doing to do so, what they were not doing that they should be, and if there were ways we could save them money. We proposed a health-check and review of performance and benchmarking - a task that requires some effort, but fortunately our team was well prepared to jump in and update work that had been prepared before the recent leadership change at the client, delivering that a week later.
The CEO also of course brought to the table what she wanted to see from her technology vendors - in other words, what she wanted in return. She understands that by being a better customer her organization should expect a different level of engagement from her vendors - more insights, more innovation, more impact on the roadmap, more access to leadership. I found the approach refreshing, turning the conversation into how the customer and vendor can be better together.
And I am confident that her business will go from one of many reliable customers, to a strategic one with her vendors as a result.
The recipe for a better enterprise-vendor relationship is both simple, and hard to do.
It probably goes without saying that first and foremost the vendor has to be providing a level of performance, uptime, and capability that the customer expects for any of this to work. Pricing has to be fair and predictable, and a basic level of responsive service clearly has to be met. But beyond that what it takes to develop strategic relationship is both simple and hard to do - and of course is widely applicable:
Clear and Transparent Communication: Maintaining open, honest, and frequent communication between the vendor and client is critical. That needs to extend beyond the functional relationship with the functional leads in the client organization and an AM at the vendor - and extend into product, sales leadership, strategy, and operational leadership at the vendor. It needs to extend into the senior leadership on the customers’ side across the business and technology organizations as well. Both sides should be clear and well-informed about updates, changes, goals, objectives, or any potential issues they may need to navigate - together.
Prioritize Trust and Integrity: All successful relationships are built on a foundation of trust and integrity. Honor your commitments, be transparent about your pricing and terms, how your business works, your strategic objectives and ambitions, and admit when you make mistakes and act with urgency when you do. Over time, this will help you build a reputation on both sides of the equation as trustworthy and reliable - and lead to benefits to each. For the vendor that will include great customer references, long term revenue growth, best in class retention and net-revenue retention metrics, and clients who want to lean in and help develop solutions and BETA test and trial new features and innovations. For the customer this means a vendor that understands your business, can help identify opportunities for efficiency, a better ability to steer the vendor’s roadmap, and early access to innovation and help in adopting it.
Understanding Each Other’s Needs: Understanding needs, challenges, and goals should be a top priority in any strategic relationship, and will help each be better. Each should strive to fully comprehend each other's business model, market, and the problems they're trying to solve for. What is their ambition? What are their goals? Save cost? Drive growth? Position for a sale? Differentiate? Showcase innovation? The more real each side can be the better - as this will guide the creation of tailored solutions that address their unique needs and foster a strong, consultative relationship.
For the vendor, the business outcomes are tangible
Vendors invest a lot in acquiring new customers. Marketing and selling enterprise software is expensive, with cost of customer acquisition (CAC) typically in the many thousands of dollars per new customer added. With that in mind, why don’t more vendors focus on ensuring the new customers they are signing are both a good fit and are set up from the very start to be lasting customers? Of course, one key reason is the pressure to close deals on a quarterly cadence, and another is pressure to drive overall growth rates with new sales. Investors and analysts reward growth.
It’s a shame that more businesses are not more focused on the long-term view, especially when it is literally baked into the SaaS software model. Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is the crucial metric for SaaS software businesses to provide insight into the overall health and growth potential of the company. Essentially, NRR measures the change in recurring revenue from existing customers over a given period of time, taking into account upsells, cross-sells, downgrades, and churn (lost customers). NRR provides the clearest picture of how well a company is monetizing its existing customer base - and of course serves as a key engine for growth, boosting the value of new customers and growing the business akin to compound interest.
By developing programs and capabilities that engage customers and support adoption, vendors will see the NRR improve and build an engine that will drive long-term growth at higher margin (due to lower CAC ratios) while also capitalizing on every new customer added over the long haul.
As simple as it sounds, not many are doing it well.
Vote for Pedro! I’m running for the Executive Board of the MACH Alliance. Voting may be closed by the time you receive this, but if I got your vote, thank you!
Join me and meet at these upcoming events:
Events and conferences are entering the summer hiatus, but there is one more important one to have on your radar:
Bloomreach Edge Summit - Napa Valley - August 24-25, 2023. Join us in beautiful Napa Valley, CA to explore the impact Generative-AI will have on digital commerce and marketing. Get educated, discover key use-cases, and have a POV on the impact on your business and clients. If you can’t make the physical event, join us for the digital livestream.
Thank you for reading Cocktails, Commerce & Conversion. If you think others would benefit from the cocktail or the analysis (or both!) - please share. I very much appreciate it.
If you are looking for me online, you can find me here, here, and here.
Be well, be safe, and here is to good business! Cheers! - Brian
Had to substitute Averana..still delicious...most importantly, the "typical processes" such as an RFP, sets both up for failure if you can't set the meetings you describe. How many leaders will admit they're not making the most 9f the software they insisted they needed, especially in front of the CEO.
Thanks for writing and sharing