Building lasting relationships with Salesforce Consultants

In today's episode, James welcomes Dieter Härle from Mirage Computer Systems, a recent addition to the Unaric portfolio. Mirage specializes in providing advanced Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) solutions tailored specifically for Salesforce. During the episode, Dieter shares insights into Mirage's two decade journey within the Salesforce ecosystem, including how he established strong relationships with Salesforce consulting partners to drive  over 50% of their revenue.

🚀 Key Highlights:

• Mirage's initiation outside the Salesforce ecosystem, starting with a generic CTI application.
• The inception of Mirage's Salesforce integration in 2004, pre-dating the AppExchange era.
• Challenges faced and strategic decisions made during the evolution of Mirage's CTI products.
• The pivotal role of Salesforce consulting partners in driving over 50% of Mirage's revenue.
• Marketing strategies, including working with Salesforce account executives, system engineers, and AppExchange listings.

💡 Lessons Learned:

• The importance of belief in both the product and oneself during entrepreneurial highs and lows.
• The challenge of predicting market demands for future product development.
• The significance of building relationships early with consulting partners and developers.
• Dieter's advice on securing investors who provide value beyond financial support.

🔮 Envisioning the Future:

• Navigating Salesforce's rapid changes and adopting new technologies at the right time.
• Preparing for the impact of AI on Salesforce apps and staying agile in response to market shifts.

Tune in to gain practical strategies, firsthand experiences, and actionable advice from Dieter's journey within the Salesforce ecosystem.

You can discover more about Mirage's flagship CTI Data Connector on the AppExchange: https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N30000004g5sgEAA 

If you are a Salesforce ISV founder with an interesting story to tell, we'd love to hear from you. Send us an email to podcast@unaric.com and we'll be in touch.

Transcript

James Gasteen (00:01.058)
Hello and welcome to today's scale to sale podcast where I'm joined by Dieter from Mirage. Dieter and Mirage recently joined the United portfolio back in November. So Dieter, very excited to have you on the show. Welcome.

Dieter Härle (00:14.801)
Yeah, thank you James for the invitation.

James Gasteen (00:18.686)
And just to kick things off, I think it'd be great to hear the story behind the inception of Mirage and I think also how you kind of got into the Salesforce world, I think every founder's got a quite a peculiar story of how they ended up working in the Salesforce ecosystem.

Dieter Härle (00:36.901)
Yeah, so indeed we started outside the Salesforce ecosystem with a generic CTI application, which works with call identification using SQL database and Microsoft access. And we sold that application as an OEM version to ERP and CRM vendors. So that's how we started. And then around 2002, we used Salesforce internally and.

James Gasteen (00:51.627)
Mm-hmm.

James Gasteen (00:58.466)
Mm-hmm.

Dieter Härle (01:04.909)
it was logic that we thought about the CTI integration in Salesforce. At that time, Salesforce had no CTI toolkit. And we launched the first Salesforce integration in 2004. Yeah, very, very long time. And at that time we even exported the account and contacts in a database. And sometimes later, Salesforce launched the CTI

James Gasteen (01:14.431)
Right.

James Gasteen (01:19.885)
Wow.

James Gasteen (01:29.91)
Hmm.

Dieter Härle (01:34.953)
toolkit, which was also our first managed package. And unfortunately for us, Salesforce discontinued the CTI toolkit and launched OpenCTI, where we then had our first listing on AppExchange, which was in 2011. So technically, we developed the product three times. And yeah, and in the meantime,

James Gasteen (01:39.82)
Mm-hmm.

James Gasteen (01:55.692)
Mmm.

James Gasteen (02:00.966)
I'm going to go.

Dieter Härle (02:04.889)
Another CTI product, it's the Mirage Connector for Service Cloud Voice, which also brings over 100 phone system and Microsoft Teams to Service Cloud. Yeah, so in the end, four times development of a CTI application for Salesforce.

James Gasteen (02:10.431)
Mm-hmm.

James Gasteen (02:25.322)
Wow. So for those Salesforce historians of you who might be listening to this podcast, 2004 is before the AppExchange. That's even before Salesforce thought about opening up their ecosystem. So I think Dita must have been one of the very, very early ones in there. I mean, I didn't even see Salesforce myself until 2010. So again, you know, if you've been using in 2002, that's a very different era almost. So that's great to you.

Dieter Härle (02:40.623)
Yeah!

James Gasteen (02:53.246)
And how did you, when you know, when you, when you set about developing it, like, how did you identify the opportunity, uh, about, you know, connecting telephony with Salesforce? Because obviously in those days, the servers were on the West coast. It was very much an SMB product. It didn't have an ecosystem. It didn't have a platform. How do you go about, you know, identifying that opportunity? Because obviously it was a very early CRM system and the cloud was very nascent in those days.

Dieter Härle (03:23.141)
Yeah, honestly, we did not analyze the market. We already had a CTI component, and Salesforce did not have a CTI solution at that time. And then remember it was before AppExchange. So we just did the integration as we already saw the potential of Salesforce in that early days. And as we used internally Salesforce, we then also could...

James Gasteen (03:38.616)
Yep.

Dieter Härle (03:51.397)
directly test our CTI integration. So it was just a decision and betting on Salesforce that they have the potential to grow.

James Gasteen (04:03.306)
And who were your first few customers? Was it kind of sales teams who might be wanting to integrate a phone system with Salesforce or did you kind of have kind of some different use cases that you came across in the early stages?

Dieter Härle (04:18.329)
We just started with Google advertisement and the very first customer was in March 2005 where I sold 10 licenses and it was a US company and that is already very astonishing because right now we have over the time we had most of the sales in Europe.

James Gasteen (04:28.747)
I'm going to go.

Dieter Härle (04:44.497)
And so that the first customer was the US company. It was cool. And at that time, we sold a perpetual license, another subscription. So we only switched to subscriptions many, many years later, because at that time, you typically sold a perpetual license.

James Gasteen (04:48.29)
Hehehe

James Gasteen (05:07.231)
I have to ask, when was your first dream force? Did you go to one of the very early ones then, having been in the ecosystem now for almost 20 odd years?

Dieter Härle (05:15.981)
No, I would have to check, but it was around 2010, 2011 when I attended the first Dreamforce.

James Gasteen (05:23.207)
Okay.

James Gasteen (05:27.038)
Yeah, I've met founders who went to the very, very early ones when they sort of throw CD roms into a toilet because it was the end of software. So yeah, that's brilliant. And then talk to us a little bit. So you know, you bootstrapped your business, you've been in business before and been successful. What were some of those initial challenges you faced when you were bootstrapped? You know, maybe what some of the trade offs you had to make because, you know, funds and self financing.

Dieter Härle (05:37.265)
Okay.

James Gasteen (05:56.419)
had finite resources.

Dieter Härle (05:59.097)
Yeah, so when I started the company in 1995 it was more or less a one-man show with an external developer and at that time I did not have the money to finance the developer so we made an arrangement that he participated in the profit and technically I did everything on my own so I did

James Gasteen (06:08.47)
Mm-hmm.

Dieter Härle (06:23.625)
the product specifications, I did the lead follow up, I made presentations, I made support, and I also did the installation. So it was quite good for a customer. He had the contact with me in sales and I stayed as the contact for him then with installation. And from the financing part, we already had a product

James Gasteen (06:26.623)
Mm-hmm.

James Gasteen (06:30.175)
I'm gonna...

James Gasteen (06:47.126)
Mm.

Dieter Härle (06:51.561)
hobby protection solution and that financed a bit when we started with Salesforce. Right now, Salesforce is 99% of the turnover. But it was really very hard in the beginning and I remember very well when we had the first month with over 10,000 euro turnover. So that was a really milestone. Yeah. And yeah. Yeah. And after that,

James Gasteen (06:58.433)
Mm-hmm.

James Gasteen (07:13.37)
Thank you.

Wow, that's brilliant.

Dieter Härle (07:20.241)
Then the next steps came where we added developers and support and so on.

James Gasteen (07:27.522)
And I think that's quite a nice way to do a kind of a profit share with the developer. I think, you know, a lot of founders we meet and I meet are more technical founders. So again, you can bootstrap it because it's your own time, whereas I didn't come from an engineering background. So again, you have, you know, you need to have real money for that or real resources or profit or shares. So I think sometimes getting creative with engineering teams, it can be very useful. We spoke a little bit about, you know, how you acquired your first customer. You said it was back.

with Google words, Google AdWords. In terms of the following customers after that, what did you find were some of the marketing strategies that work quite well? Because obviously, back in March 2005, there was no app exchange. What did you find worked well then and maybe talk to us a little bit about what works well now some 18 years later?

Dieter Härle (08:22.797)
Yeah, so for now I can clearly identify four important strategies. The most important one for us is working with Salesforce consulting partners. We get over 50% of the revenue from recommendations through the consulting partners. They have a new customer, the customer implements Salesforce and then he says I need a product ABC. Which one can you recommend?

James Gasteen (08:29.506)
Mm-hmm.

Dieter Härle (08:51.345)
So that's very important. The next important part is to work with Salesforce account executive and system engineers. If you don't contact them, you are never recommended and it's very hard. You have to get meetings with them and introduce your product so that they know even that you exist, yeah. But that's an important part also.

James Gasteen (08:52.078)
Mm-hmm.

Dieter Härle (09:21.401)
And then another strategy or important part is to go to all Salesforce events. Ideally, you have an own booth, but it's also important to be just there as a visitor and meet the partners and Salesforce account executive. So I really can recommend to do that. And the last one is of course, now the AB exchange listing. And here you have to check that you get.

a lot of reviews and good reviews. Mirage with the CTI connector has a 4.94 rating and over 120 reviews. So that's also important because now customers check the ABX change.

James Gasteen (10:03.964)
Mm.

James Gasteen (10:10.318)
And just going there, I think the first point is really interesting. You said, you know, Salesforce, SIs, the system integrators, you know, their recommendations bring over 50% of business, which is obviously, I think, what a lot of other ISP finance would love to like just on that bit, like talk to us about how you built up to that, because obviously I imagine that takes a bit of time to get to, and I'd imagine a lot of founders would, would love to have half of their ARR recommended by, by the SI partners.

Dieter Härle (10:39.081)
Yeah, that's indeed because I'm working a lot of over 20 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. So if you go to all the events, then you know all the important consulting partners and they know you. And of course, you get a recommendation only if your product is good. And if you also really treat every lead.

James Gasteen (10:50.378)
Yeah.

Dieter Härle (11:07.549)
then important and connect with the partner and inform him. But it's in the end a very hard work over a lot of years.

James Gasteen (11:19.19)
Yeah, exactly. I think I don't know if there's any shortcuts, but I think you have to play it back. I think what I found is that the successful ISV founders are very visible, right? Like going to events or being present speaking blogs, MVP, obviously having a good product. I think you made a good, you know, a great point there at the end, which is really kind of keeping the partner up to date. So again, if they've introduced you to their client, they want to know how it went. They don't want to chase you for an update. So again, I think that's a great tip for some kind of founders to

who are listening to think about. And then if you think about, you know, we spoke a little bit about the kind of marketing side of things. If you look at the kind of the wider journey over the last 20 odd years, what have been some of the kind of unexpected hurdles or challenges you faced and what lessons did you learn?

Dieter Härle (12:08.389)
Yeah, that's a good question. So if you are an entrepreneur, and that also means that you have often highs and lows. And it's important that you believe in the product, but also in yourself. Otherwise, there is no chance that you survive it if you have a low for a lot of months. And yeah, you need to believe in the product and yourself and not give up.

James Gasteen (12:10.764)
I'm gonna go.

James Gasteen (12:18.51)
Mm-hmm.

Dieter Härle (12:37.577)
And when you start, it takes a lot of time until you can sell a product. So if you start really from scratch, then it's a year or more until you can sell it. And then you sell it, and the first customer has new feature requests. And then you need to decide, OK, do I implement that? Or is that uninteresting?

for other customers. So for a software company, in the end, one of the big challenges is to know what the market will demand in one or two years because you have so long time to develop new features or integrate in new systems. And of course, I also made decisions where we developed the product and nobody had interest.

James Gasteen (13:25.758)
Mm-hmm.

Dieter Härle (13:36.837)
in it. Yeah. So that's for sure one of the big challenges to make the right decisions from the product side. Yeah. And for example, when with Teams, which is now our main feature, we started four years ago where Teams was used for telephony.

James Gasteen (13:36.876)
Yep.

Dieter Härle (14:03.649)
Not at all. Teams was used for meetings, for chat, but nearly nobody used Teams to make landline calls. And yeah, we've been lucky to make the decision a long time ago because it took two years for development where we are right now. And it was the right decision because now everybody is switching to Teams and landline calling.

James Gasteen (14:08.706)
Mm-hmm.

James Gasteen (14:32.13)
Yeah, no, I think you make a great point that I think as an entrepreneur, you have to you have the kind of the gut feel and you have the objective side. And sometimes you need to take bets, right. So again, teams exploded during the pandemic, everyone moved to teams, a lot of industries, for example, public sector in the UK mandated teams because of the security concerns of zoom. And then obviously, you know, that then rolled down to becoming a fully fledged telephony solution versus just like a meeting solution. So yeah.

I think that's a great point there about having to take certain bets and also the timelines really to develop new features and new products for the market. And really I think related to that question, looking back, is there anything you might have done differently in the early stages of your startup?

Dieter Härle (15:18.813)
Yeah, that's a bit difficult questions because you often look at things differently in hindsight. But that does not mean that your decision was wrong at that time. For example, I started very late with building relationships to consulting partners. So only after a few years, I visited the Salesforce events and contacted

James Gasteen (15:39.681)
No.

Dieter Härle (15:45.257)
partners and also the Salesforce account executive. So for sure in hindsight, I should have started here earlier. And it's similar with the developers. We waited a long time until we added external developers and support staff in different countries.

James Gasteen (15:49.303)
Mm-hmm.

Dieter Härle (16:12.229)
Of course, in 2005, there was not the infrastructure, and also you could not do that. But that allows us now to do more product development because of the price advantage. And yeah, we started 2016 with outsourcing in other countries. And it would for sure have been helpful to do that earlier.

James Gasteen (16:12.681)
Mm-hmm.

James Gasteen (16:16.543)
Thank you.

James Gasteen (16:25.206)
Mm-hmm.

James Gasteen (16:39.242)
Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. I mean, I think we were quite lucky. We managed to start building our team in Poland early on. So we always had that. I think it was a skill advantage, but also kind of a cost advantage compared to some of the Salesforce rates going on in London. But again, it's a tricky one because then again, going back to your point there about building relationships, often the channel needs to have a proposition. So if you've only got a handful of customers,

that looks risky, whereas if you've acquired a hundred customers, that's a good story to go and tell them and makes their life easier. And if we think a little bit more now about the, you know, the future of Salesforce apps, you know, how do you envision the future of, you know, Salesforce apps and maybe how is how is Mirage preparing for some of these changes that you envision?

Dieter Härle (17:29.341)
is so Salesforce changes rapidly and launches not only new releases, they also launch a lot of new technology. And the trick is here to recognize which new technology will be important for your product. So from all the new features and technologies, you have to permanently check it, evaluate it and make an estimation. Is this interesting for my product?

James Gasteen (17:33.074)
Thank you.

James Gasteen (17:46.859)
Mm-hmm.

Dieter Härle (18:00.113)
And it's also important not to do that too early, but also not too late. So if you start with the first release from Salesforce with a new technology, very often lacks features. So it's always good to wait one or two releases. And yeah, our team is constantly monitoring that. And because we have...

James Gasteen (18:14.871)
Mm-hmm.

Dieter Härle (18:28.445)
the team structure lean, we can also make quick decisions. So when we say, OK, that looks promising, then we just do it and then make a decision.

James Gasteen (18:43.822)
Yeah, that's a great point there about, you know, the new launches from Salesforce. I remember back in 2016 when lightning came out, everyone got very excited and started rushing to build a lightning and realized that it might be only 50% in future compatibility. So then customers were switching between classic and lightning halfway through their day. So again, some of it is you've got to prepare for the new world, but also it does take a little bit of time. And I think, you know,

Obviously, everyone's talking about AI back at Dreamforce in September. But again, the reality is, you know, how do you implement it? How do you make sure it's valuable for your customers? That's going to take a little bit longer. And then finally, just to wrap up, you know, what's the one piece of advice you wish someone had given you when you, you know, started out Mirage, uh, you know, as an ISV founder.

Dieter Härle (19:32.257)
Yeah, so in the end, expect a long time before you really earn money if you do the financing by yourself like I did. So it's tough and then you just need time. But the recommendation would be go for an investor, even if you are at the very start and you have to give shares for.

James Gasteen (19:57.602)
Mm-hmm.

Dieter Härle (19:59.217)
a price which you perhaps think, okay, that's hard, but go for an investor which adds value and helps you with sales and provides connections. An investor which just gives money does not really help you because when the money is gone, yeah, you don't have more sales. So you need somebody who helps you. And that's why we made the decision for Unaric.

you add much more value like a pure financial investor and we can then participate from cross-selling, marketing together. So that would be my recommendation. It will take time until you earn money and go for an investor which helps you with connections.

James Gasteen (20:54.958)
That's a great point. I mean, in my first business, we both came from a service world. So it took a long time to replicate what we would earn doing contracting in terms of ARR. It can take years, right? So if you're earning handsomely being a contractor, you've got to sell a lot of software licenses to get anywhere near that. And again, like you said, it takes a long time and it's tricky. Dieter, it's been fantastic having the show. I think you have...

got a wealth of wisdom in the Salesforce space across Europe, I think going back to 2002. So yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for joining us.

Dieter Härle (21:31.598)
Thank you, James, and looking forward to working with you.

James Gasteen (21:38.026)
Likewise, Dita. Cheers.