What is the best way to grow your company? Looking at the world through your customer’s eyes will reveal opportunities you’d never expect. Jorn Lyseggen, CEO of Meltwater Group Inc., discusses how his company invests in relevant research and what he has learned along the way.
Jorn Lyseggen, CEO of Meltwater, has spent his life studying media and technology. He’s seen companies go up and come down. And he’s written a book that shows you what it takes to be successful in today’s world. I will give you some lessons from outside insight on making your company thrive for years to come.
1. The best way to scale your business is to ‘think like a startup.’
Meltwater is known for its highly disruptive and innovative work culture. Now, this may surprise you coming from the CEO of an established company with over 1,000 employees. But if you explore behind the scenes at Meltwater, it has all the makings of a startup.
Meltwater is full of people with ideas who are not afraid to test them out. If the idea doesn’t work, it’s okay because they have another one right behind it! And they are all encouraged to bring these great ideas to life without asking permission from their managers. They go ahead and do it!
And the results speak for themselves! This company has a culture of innovation that I want you to take notice of.
2. Never stop innovating, even if you succeed.
In 2001, Meltwater had its first profitable year. Jorn tells us this was a major milestone in company history, but they never rested on their laurels! Instead, they continued with their mission to make media and technology accessible to companies of all sizes.
By 2002, they added a self-service model for smaller customers and acquired another company called Enpocket. Finally, in 2003 they created Meltwater Buzz as a social media monitoring tool (and as an attempt to stay ahead of the competition).
So after Meltwater found success with their initial product, they didn’t just stay still and look back! Instead, they continued to improve upon what was already working. And this is a lesson we all need to learn in the world of business:
Don’t stop when you’ve achieved your original goal. Always keep pushing forward!
3. Get help from your customers.
Customer feedback is vital for any company looking to grow and stay successful. But how much should you rely on customer feedback? After all, they need solutions now, not tomorrow!
Meltwater’s answer: as much as possible! The customer is always right, after all. And what does Meltwater do with that invaluable insight? They invest it back into the product to make it even better for you!
Meltwater knows that getting customer feedback can feel like a full-time job. Not just because there are so many people with different opinions but also because it’s difficult to quantify which insights will have the most significant impact on your business. So they decided to take the matter into their own hands.
The trick is to set aside a certain amount of time each week to review customer feedback and then prioritize it based on its impact on your business. This way, you’re always using what customers say to move your company forward in a tangible way!
4. Find the gap in the market and fill it.
Meltwater has a whole division of researchers dedicated to learning about the media industry and what makes it tick. And if you didn’t know Meltwater is strictly focused on B2B (business-to-business) companies, then now you know!
But if that’s not enough, they’ve taken customer feedback one step further by finding the gap in the market and filling it.
Meltwater’s big insight was that there were all kinds of people, some with the media contacts companies needed, others who had the means to buy their products. But they didn’t necessarily know each other! So Meltwater created a technology platform that connected these two groups and made it easy to do business with one another. And in the process, they’ve created a whole new industry: research outsourcing.
5. Know when to pause your growth.
“We had grown too fast,” Jorn tells us when we asked about the recent downturn in Meltwater’s revenue (yes, even billion-dollar companies have trouble with money sometimes).
But how much is too fast? Well, the answer depends on your business model. For Meltwater, it was when they hit 300 employees. Since its inception in 2001, the company had risen 100% annually, but this rapid expansion had begun to affect profits.
What did they do to stop the bleeding? They paused their growth. Meltwater needed to shift gears and focus on what they already had rather than expanding further.
This was a tough decision, but looking back, Jorn is glad they made it.
“We were able to sit down with ourselves and say, ‘Okay, now we have time to fix things,'” he says.
And that’s exactly what they did! Today, Meltwater is a private company again and operates with a slim staff of just 200 people. They’ve refined their business model to meet the needs of smaller customers and have even been able to double down on their research outsourcing efforts.
6. Make sure your employees feel excited about your company.
Do you know what makes a great CEO? Someone who can instil excitement and passion in their employees! And that’s exactly how Jorn Lyseggen has built his reputation – as a passionate leader who truly loves his employees and the company he created.
One example of Meltwater’s amazing work culture is that employees are encouraged to take a sabbatical every eight years. They call it a ‘leave’ instead of a paid vacation, and employees can use these paid leaves however they want.
Why? Because Jorn knows that if his employees have been with the company for 8+ years, they’re probably passionate about their work! And Meltwater is jumping at the opportunity to win more employees like that by letting them experience something new outside of work.
7. Be open with your customers and always explain.
It’s never fun to hear your customers complain, but if you’re doing things right then, you’ll inevitably hear some feedback that makes you look inward (and not because people are complimenting you).
For Meltwater, that moment came when Apple introduced the iPad. As one of the first media monitoring companies to market, their product was often compared to Apple’s new device by customers who didn’t realize Meltwater offered so much more than just email notifications.
As Jorn explains in his book Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing, “When we dug into the issue, we realized that our customers were less than satisfied with what we had delivered to them. It was hard for us because Apple was doing such a great job in this area. But it didn’t change the fact that we had to fix it.”
When you’re feeling overwhelmed by customer complaints, remember to take a step back and make sure you understand the problem. Then figure out what you can do to fix it – because your customers will always expect you to respond!
8. Embrace new technologies early on.
In 2009 Meltwater took a very controversial move when they purchased their first Twitter monitoring company, IceRocket.
The idea of using Twitter as a marketing tool had only just started to become popular. As a result, many people at Meltwater questioned Jorn’s decision, but he explains how it was the right choice for him: “I felt that if I didn’t make a move, our competitors would.”
He knew this acquisition would be risky, but that’s exactly why he jumped in. Nowadays, Twitter is one of the most potent sources for Meltwater to identify breaking news stories and hot topics. And they’re still on the cutting edge, with Jorn recently investing in a company called Quotable to help track sentiment using artificial intelligence.
9. Don’t be afraid to hire people more intelligent than you.
One of the hardest things about growing a business is finding the right employees. Of course, you want all your team members to have excellent industry knowledge, but that’s just the beginning – you also need them to have strong business acumen and leadership skills! Plus, they have to fit your company culture perfectly!
In Beyond Buzz, Jorn tells the story of hiring his first salesperson. He describes her as “not only knowledgeable about technology, but also extremely driven and ambitious.” Jorn knew right away that not only did he have an intelligent person on the team, but she was going to help him grow!
You may have more experience than your employees, but that doesn’t mean you have all the knowledge. So don’t be afraid to hire someone who knows more than you – it will help your company reach new heights!