Entrepreneurship Case Analysis Essay

SCG-518 Octobe r 12 , 2016

PAUL OR LANDO

MEGAN S TRAWTHER

ANTHONY VAS SA L LO

Nanxi Liu: Finding the Keys To Sales Success at Enplug

s this your orange juice in the fridge?”

“Do we have any more trash bags? The garbage is full.”

“We should watch Jimmy Kimmel tonight when we get home. Kevin Hart is on!”

“Oh, did you get that new reseller boilerplate contract?”

Breakfast at this shared Bel Air home was rarely a place for time for quiet reflection. Per usual, the kitchen at “The Enplug House” was a flurry of activity on this particular Monday morning in early 2015, as all 12 roommates rushed to devour their morning meals before heading off to work. Nanxi Liu, CEO of digital signage company Enplug, laughed as everyone scrambled to get ready. She knew it was unusual for so many people from one company to live in one house, but considered it a helpful and distinctive part of the company’s culture.

Aside from discussing what to make for breakfast or figuring out her evening plans, Liu also had some other big decisions weighing on her mind. As Enplug continued to grow at a rapid pace, it was becoming necessary for Liu to work through the details of the company’s growth strategy. She knew whatever decisions she made would determine how effectively Enplug could scale its business model.

“Nanxi, are you ready to go?” asked her roommate, a user interface designer and two-year Enplug veteran. Liu nodded her head, grabbed her things, and followed her roommate out the front door. The throng piled into three cars and all 12 of them headed off to the Enplug

office in Culver City, California. Although the news had indicated traffic might be heavy this morning, Liu was not too worried. She knew one of the perks of living with so many coworkers was being able to ride in the carpool express lane to and from work—and have some productive meetings along the way.

As Liu sat in the passenger seat gazing out the window, she thought about her upcoming team meeting in which they would discuss the company’s pricing models, sales strategy, and newly launched reseller program. As Liu and her coworker-roommates drove south down Sepulveda Boulevard, she wondered what changes were necessary for Enplug to become the market leader in the digital signage industry.

“I

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SCG-518 Nanxi Liu: Finding the Keys to Sales Success at Enplug

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)*+,-(.-/( Nanxi Liu spent most of the first five years of her life in rural China with her uncles, aunts, and

grandparents in a home without running water. At the time, her parents were studying on scholarships in Europe that did not afford them the resources to bring their daughter along. After they each earned scholarships to Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Liu joined her parents in campus housing that the university designated for immigrant families. Shortly after arriving in Colorado, Liu began to attend her local public elementary school, where her family’s economic situation qualified her for the free lunch program.

Throughout most of her childhood, Liu’s parents would spend evenings working as servers at local restaurants to make money. To help Liu pass the time while she was home alone, her parents saved up for a $100 piano and gave it to her as a gift when she was six years old. Liu took a liking to the study of music and would spend most of her time outside of school crafting her own piano compositions. Later that year, she began entering piano competitions as a way to earn additional income for her family. “Piano taught me that practice makes me better, and when I get better, I get more opportunities,” she said. As a high school senior, Liu even competed on NBC’s “America’s Junior Miss Competition,” showcasing her skills on the piano. According to Liu, the piano helped mold some of her later viewpoints on entrepreneurship. “Soon enough, you learn the formula and how the notes fit together. It also taught me that the best way is to pave your own way.”

!"#$%&$%"%'$()*+,&($(#+ Following a successful high school experience inside and outside of the classroom, in 2008, Liu

enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. While there she studied political economy, engineering, and business administration. Liu was actively involved in extracurricular activities, serving as executive vice president of her student government and also as Miss Oakland, where she helped coordinate community outreach efforts with the Children’s Miracle Network. During what free time she had, Liu taught herself computer programming. “I’m naturally curious, and I love to teach myself how to do random things,” she said. Throughout college, she designed various applications, such as CrimeFighter, an app that allowed users to report crimes on college campuses, and Fonite, a crowd-sourced caller identification app.

The summer before her senior year of college, Liu was selected for a prestigious investment banking internship at Goldman Sachs. While Liu enjoyed her time working for the finance firm and valued the connections she made there, she realized finance was not a long-term fit for her. She noted, “I wasn’t quite as interested in investment banking as I was at building things.” With that mentality in her final year of school, Liu was eager to explore entrepreneurial projects.

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Paul Orlando, Greif Center Incubator Director and Adjunct Professor, and Megan Strawther and Anthony Vassallo, Greif Center Case Fellows, prepared this case. This case was developed from field research and published sources. Some figures in this case have been disguised or simplified. Cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion and are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management. Copyright © 2016 Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. For information about Greif Center cases, please contact us at [email protected]. This publication may not be digitized, photocopied, or otherwise reproduced, posted or transmitted without the permission of The Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

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Nanxi Liu: Finding the Keys to Sales Success at Enplug SCG-518

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Soon enough, Liu connected with Balaji Sridhar, a biochemist from Boulder. Together they co- founded Nanoly Bioscience, a biotechnology company dedicated to increasing global access to vaccines by eliminating the need to refrigerate them. “I wanted to build something that could be truly impactful to a lot of people. Transforming health through technology seemed like a way to do that,” she said. In 2012, Nanoly was awarded first place in Social Innovation at Intel’s Global Challenge, a technology entrepreneurship competition for college students.

Serendipitous Start for Enplug Right before graduation in 2012, a former colleague from Goldman Sachs suggested Liu connect

with David Zhu, a professional poker player and Massachusetts Institute of Technology dropout, about another entrepreneurial opportunity. Zhu had conceived a business concept earlier that year after a trip to China where he noticed bicyclists delivering flash drives to update display advertisement content on installed video systems. He had noted that the labor-intensive process lacked the enablement for two-way interactions. Digital display communication had traditionally only travelled one-way: from advertiser to consumer. Zhu wondered if there was a way to build a more robust social media display.

Hearing about Liu’s experiences from his friend and wanting to connect with her right away, Zhu booked a flight to Northern California to meet with Liu in person. After an hour-long discussion, Liu agreed to co-found the business with Zhu and his friend, Navdeep Reddy. “I saw this as a huge opportunity to build a major, influential tech company,” explained Liu. “If we came into the space and powered every digital display in public, that could be really extraordinary. This could be one of the fastest ways to transmit all types of information to massive amounts of people all at once.” Liu decided to veer away from biotechnology because she believed she could make a faster impact through information technology. There were fewer regulations that would affect the digital signage industry, which meant the nascent venture would be able to take products to market more quickly. It was decided that Liu would move to Los Angeles upon graduation to pursue the project. While no roles were determined at that time, the team of three felt their strengths would complement each other as they sought to get the business concept off the ground.

Friend and roommate connections led to invitations to two additional co-founders. The newly established team of five co-founders, all aged 21 to 23, began turning the concept into a viable business. The company, which they named Enplug, set out to develop a universal operating system for digital displays installed in businesses wanting to provide tailored, interactive communication with their on-site customers. “At the time, we had a very vague idea of what Enplug would be. We figured, ‘Let’s just do it and we will see what happens,’” said Liu. “But I admired the talents and skillsets of the founders and I was confident we could make it work.” They formally incorporated Enplug in September of 2012, after the group graduated from StartEngine, a 90-day startup accelerator in Los Angeles.

Going to Market Within three months of incorporating, the team took what Liu dubbed “a very alpha version of the

product” to market. “The first product idea was putting tablets on the backs of doors in restrooms,” Liu laughed. The team decided to go after any clients willing to try out their digital displays. “Restaurants and arenas became our primary targets. We assumed that was where we had the most value add.”1 Soon, Enplug powered a range of displays for companies, from standard, 32-inch television monitors to 100-foot stadium-style screens. Early customers included Amoeba Music (a legendary Hollywood

1 “Changing the Face of Digital Signage: Nanxi Liu of Enplug,” Tech Zulu. 2014

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SCG-518 Nanxi Liu: Finding the Keys to Sales Success at Enplug

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music retailer), Arco AM/PM, Rita’s Italian Ice (a chain with over 600 locations), and Porsche Beverly Hills.

The screen layout concept involved allocating two-thirds of the digital display to social media content specific to the location and one-third of the display to advertising space for partners, with advertisers deploying and managing content on screens of their choosing. “We focused on revenues generated by ads because we thought that would be our main source of income,” said Liu. She and the team decided to charge clients an upfront fee for the screens and installation services. According to their projections, Enplug would make back the cost of labor for screen installations in six to seven months.

Humble Beginnings In the first several months, the team of five lived together in a one-bedroom, one-bathroom

apartment in Los Angeles’ Koreatown. As Enplug gained momentum and added headcount in the form of engineers and sales people, it relocated its “headquarters” to a six-bedroom, three-bathroom, ranch- style rental home in Bel Air, California, which the team also used as its office to save money. While engineers slept in after late nights of programming, their business counterparts rose early to attend meetings. What started as a way to save on rent and travel costs evolved into a 24/7-work culture that allowed Enplug to be “extremely efficient,” according to Liu. “It may seem unconventional, but the arrangement allowed us to share ideas and connect on a more personal level,” she said. “Also, it was really fun!” In addition to talking about work projects, staff members living in the house watched the same shows, worked out together in the garage/gym, discussed pop culture and sports, and cooked group meals. Liu also made sure the house could fit her piano so she could continue to practice whenever she had a free moment — a rarer and rarer occurrence as the new venture grew.

Staffers living in the house were paid a stipend in lieu of a traditional salary. Meanwhile, all of the co-founders decided to opt out of salaries altogether, reinvesting all of Enplug’s revenues back into company expenses, including rent and utilities. The familial aspect of Enplug helped drive salary decisions, which weighted employee compensation more heavily towards equity than salary. “It was very important to us that everyone that joined our team had a stake in the company,” explained Liu. “When the company does well, we all do well. We wanted to operate more like a family.”

Road Bumps to Roadmap For the first year and a half of the venture, most of the company’s work was dedicated to improving

the client installation system, aggregating the social network activity for clients, and getting consumer feedback from visitors to restaurants, stadiums, and other locations where Enplug displays were installed. At its core, Enplug functioned as an interactive engagement portal focused on high foot traffic locations. Up until that point, half the team had been dedicated to product development and the other half had been dedicated to selling advertisements. In order to ensure all of Enplug’s customer accounts were handled accordingly, the team hired Michael Carter as the Director of Operations in late 2013. Carter, who had a background in mechanical engineering, explained, “When I joined the company, they were still trying to figure out where exactly they fit into the digital signage landscape. I was really good at breaking down complex systems, so Nanxi had me managing the supply chain and the operational infrastructure in order to improve the customer experiences.”

There were challenges with the installation-based service model, which required Enplug to hire contractors to go to various venues to install the digital displays for clients. Installations could be complicated. Many monitors still had Internet connectivity problems after the initial process was complete. More than half of the customer support tickets were related to various clients' general Internet access issues, which distracted support representatives from servicing clients with inquiries

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Nanxi Liu: Finding the Keys to Sales Success at Enplug SCG-518

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about Enplug’s software offering. The model also required Enplug to be responsible for many of the screens purchased by clients. Depending on customers' needs, Enplug would either purchase, rent, or install monitors for its clients. “It was very painful to run the logistics of installing physical hardware because we were constantly relying on our contractors,” said Liu.

The team also had difficulty working with smaller enterprises, many of which still made system customization requests even though the scale of their orders was very small. Pursuing small businesses – despite their numbers – appeared to be an unfruitful path over the long term. Liu and her team realized after the first year that larger businesses with existing infrastructures, namely built-in screens and Internet, were preferable because Enplug would not be on the hook for the cumbersome installation process. Those customers with pre-existing displays bought an average of nine licenses, while customers without pre-installed displays bought an average of 1.2 licenses; they generally purchased monitors through Enplug, and then asked Enplug to install the hardware for them.

The team also received frequent comments from larger business clients stating they only wanted to purchase Enplug displays that did not include third-party advertisements, a component that Enplug had originally built into the display software. Liu and her co-founders had started the company around the advertising network because they had anticipated that ads would be their primary source of revenue. Requests regarding ad-free features from these clients posed another hurdle for Liu and her team.

Making Decisions When it came time to decide how to address the challenges brought on by installation requests, the

team turned to Liu. She asked, what do we do really well? They all agreed that the cost of installing custom displays for each client detracted from the company’s core competency, which the co-founders felt was the ability to a build beautiful, interactive software for display. “There was nothing unique about hiring contractors to install these displays,” said Liu. “We weren’t passionate about installing monitors – we were passionate about building great products. We had this light bulb moment: what if we just develop and sell the software?”

At the time, Enplug’s major revenue stream was the advertisements that appeared on the installed digital displays. The company had been deemed an “adtech” company since its infancy, but was it time for a different approach? Some members of the team worried that focusing on the software could distract Enplug from its main stream to date: advertisements for partners that were included on the displays. But Liu, who had been appointed the official CEO of Enplug about three months into the venture, and the co-founders fervently believed that their software had great value potential. Developing a high-quality, modern digital display software became Liu and the team’s primary focus.

The New Software Over the course of the next several months, the engineers began building a more robust and

functional software. “We wanted to create displays that operated like an iPhone – something that was more interactive and intuitive,” Liu explained. They also sought to create a universal operating system that could function on any monitor or display. At the time, most digital signs featured displays that were customized just for that specific brand of monitor. Many companies were even using simple PowerPoint slideshows. Liu hoped Enplug could fill that gap by making interactive signs much more accessible and making the authoring of site-specific content more seamless.

The transition from being an installation-based service to a company offering downloadable software was a boost for team morale. “There was always this sort of negative connotation internally to being an adtech company,” said Liu. “By focusing on building a product versus being an advertising business, we became much more competitive in the industry because there were no real substitutes to

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SCG-518 Nanxi Liu: Finding the Keys to Sales Success at Enplug

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what we had to offer.” Enplug’s new operating system allowed businesses to run dedicated displays with whatever featured applications they wished to use. From information about the weather, to the news, to live social media feeds, to menus, companies could engage their customers with Enplug’s easy-to-use dashboard. Any business with a television connected to the Internet could run the Enplug software.

In early 2014, when the software was about to go to market, Liu decided the most appropriate pricing for the software was to charge a monthly fee to Enplug customers based on the number of screens they had. Displays cost $99 per month with outside advertising feeds and $299 per month without them. Enplug often offered discounts to testimonial customers and negotiated with larger businesses that agreed to purchase more licenses.

The Enplug engineers also developed an application marketplace that allowed third-party developers to build and sell applications on the “Enplug App Market.” The Enplug App Market would be the first marketplace dedicated for display applications where third-party developers could participate. The platform enabled users to flexibly customize their displays via Enplug and third-party applications. This allowed the company to effectively establish an application network where third- parties could create applications for both them and the greater Enplug ecosystem. Some apps that Enplug developed to enhance the user experience included Web Page, which could display any website, and Digital Directory, which allowed for an easy-to-update building directory.

Liu and the team decided that for the time being, Enplug would not take any percentage of sales from the third-party applications purchased through the marketplace in hopes that more outside developers would be encouraged to participate. Liu felt that having more display applications to offer customers would make the Enplug’s operating system software more appealing, regardless of who profited from the sales of the apps.

Strategy and Structure By the end of 2014, Enplug had earned $1.1 million in contracts. As the team continued to grow,

they relocated office headquarters from the rental home in Bel Air to a traditional office space in Culver City. However, Liu and many staffers continued living in the rental home, which was now dubbed “The Enplug House.”

Enplug had also recently raised a $3.7 million seed round from the former co-founder of Oaktree Capital, a global asset management firm, the Executive Vice President of Interscope Records, and the CTO of AT&T to bring its digital display system to more businesses. Liu, her co-founders, and investors agreed that the most effective mechanism to penetrate these businesses and industries would be to bulk up the sales force.

One of the new additions included Chief Strategy Officer Jessie Kim, a former sales specialist from McKesson and the Discovery Channel. “I am tenacious when it comes to business growth, and Nanxi felt I could lead the sales team in the right direction,” Kim explained. “When I stepped in, there was no marketing team, and no processes or infrastructure for sales. It was my job to give the sales team a vision and facilitate communication channels with operations, product development, and marketing to get everyone on the same page.”

Kim set up the foundation to execute a marketing strategy, a training program for new sales hires, a sales portal for order processing, and insisted on better communication between the sales and product development teams so that Enplug built new product features based on market feedback. “Breaking down a lot of those communication barriers and vision-setting helped. It took time, but I think encouraging everyone to make decisions based on data, testing first, then sharing results is key to avoid overspending,” she explained. “Also taking the time to truly understand and gather feedback from our

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Nanxi Liu: Finding the Keys to Sales Success at Enplug SCG-518

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market segments to be constantly iterating our offering over time was pivotal to our survival and key to our growth.” By the end of the year, Enplug had 30 employees, of which about half were dedicated to sales and customer support.

Customer retention was also a big priority for Enplug. To retain customers, the company benchmarked:

• Percentage of customers upgrading

• Percentage of revenue from upgrades

• Customer churn rate (which in 2014 revealed that 97% of clients remained subscribers after 12 months)

To ensure Enplug was not concentrated in any one particular industry, the sales team made sure no sector accounted for more than 20% of sales. The industries it targeted included restaurants, hotels, gyms, entertainment, hospitality, and corporate office buildings. Liu and her team realized that it was easier to deal with certain industries that had IT support on staff at all times, so that Enplug would not have to deal with certain customer support issues.

After a period of experimenting with how to organize its sales team, Enplug shifted away from dividing territories by the location, revenue, and employee count of potential customers to an organization divided by “specialties” and industry verticals. Kim noted, “Each vertical requires a very different skill set to sell because it’s an inside sale. Addressing the needs of a corporate office is much different than addressing the needs of a restaurant.”

Reseller Opportunities When the company discussed its expansion strategies, Liu had generally favored not pursuing

international customers and instead focusing on domestic companies. However, after Enplug had improved its downloadable software that made it easier for companies to test it out, many companies abroad began inquiring about its product. Not selling in international markets started looking more and more like a missed opportunity, especially when Enplug sharpened its focus on the software and eliminated the installation service.

To bypass the obstacles that came with working with international customers, such as language compatibility and technical support, one team member made a suggestion to utilize international resellers at a weekly staff meeting in the summer of 2014. Many employees dissented because of the possible friction and stress that could result from executing a reseller strategy. This group maintained that complications such as serving resellers across different time zones and cultures could distract the customer support staff from its primary responsibility of serving its domestic clients. But Liu felt it was a channel worth exploring — and a risk worth taking.

For the first few months, the reseller program was “a little casual,” according to Liu. The team simply sold its software to resellers that requested Enplug’s software and provided them with basic marketing collateral to help the companies sell the product. Problems with managing reseller expectations quickly emerged. For example, certain regional markets used different social media outlets while others did not use social media at all. Some resellers even requested software localization in the way of supporting languages outside of English, and the company fielded many unsolicited recommendations on its product roadmap and user experience.

The company also experienced difficulties in simultaneously managing resellers across the globe. “The program was very hard to manage because it was very ambiguous,” said Carter. “There was a lot of interest, but no real direction. And some of the resellers were really difficult to work with because

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SCG-518 Nanxi Liu: Finding the Keys to Sales Success at Enplug

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they were very demanding.” By the end of 2014, Enplug had grown the initiative to include 20 resellers. Nearly every company that had requested to partner with Enplug was permitted to resell the company’s software (please see Exhibit 1 for sample reseller data). The arrangement entailed local resellers and Enplug splitting revenues 60/40.

Positive Outcomes One of the more successful resellers was a company owned by the former regional president of an

international delivery company based in London. The owner invested his own money to staff his United Kingdom sales team, and eventually the company became a full-time reseller of Enplug’s software. Another successful reseller in Japan provided digital signs for a network of clubs in the Japanese entertainment industry.

Despite the trials and tribulations of managing resellers, the program forced Enplug to create and improve the quality of its marketing materials. The program also accelerated additional processes (such as logs of customer service problems), help center management, and support practices. For instance, the company developed repeatable operational procedures to handle incoming support tickets. Kim explained another positive effect of working with resellers: “Having eyes in other places, resellers can end up being resources. For instance, our UK reseller helped develop apps for our Enplug App Marketplace that were relevant to the UK region.” For example, one of those apps, called Name Day, displayed relevant UK names and themes that were being celebrated on a particular day. The reseller program had encouraged Enplug to improve its operations and expand its footprint outside of North America, while also signaling to Liu that her team needed more refined sales processes and marketing materials.

Liu in the Lead As Enplug entered its third year in business in 2015, Liu realized there were decisions she had to

make as the CEO that would undoubtedly affect the company’s trajectory. Enplug’s considerable growth caused Liu to carefully consider what the company’s priorities truly were moving forward.

Pricing Reconfigurations By 2015, Enplug had acquired more than 350 clients. The sales team focused on helping the

customers best utilize the software and often conducted site visits to ensure customer satisfaction. Enplug’s software had seen demand spike up in a number of industries. The surge in growth led to issues related to the pricing model, which according to Kim, had been somewhat haphazardly designed. “When we started licensing the software, we didn’t really know how to price our product. There wasn’t a ton of market research that went into it,” she said. Kim and Liu considered shifting from regularly negotiating prices to using a hard, nearly non-negotiable, tiered pricing model. “Negotiations with enterprise deals were messy,” said Kim. “As we grew, they got even messier” (please see Exhibit 2 for the average discounted price by number of displays).

Some sales employees specifically disliked the idea of a tiered “package” model for its strict thresholds, while others simply feared any type of pricing change that would have altered their day-to- day approaches. The sales team had nurtured many of these client relationships since the company’s infancy, and often offered these clients special rates and discounts for being loyal customers. Would creating a strict pricing model jeopardize those relationships? Others worried that creating package pricing — where customers would be rewarded for the scale of their orders and receive lower rates for additional licenses — would result in significant losses in revenue for companies already paying $99 per display.

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Nanxi Liu: Finding the Keys to Sales Success at Enplug SCG-518

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Liu wanted to ensure Enplug was optimizing its opportunity to profit from its product without endangering existing relationships with clients. “Would we be charging too much or too little? If we want to incorporate tiers, we would need to optimize how many tiers we have along with their ranges,” she said. Liu was also concerned that a number of the sales force were skeptical of the tiered approach. “If we change our pricing model, it needs to work from the beginning so that our salespeople see that it’s effective.”

There was also concern among staffers about the revenue generated from the Enplug App Market. As it currently stood, Enplug did not share any revenues with third-party developers. Was this still a valuable strategy for Enplug, or was the company missing out on a potentially worthwhile revenue stream?

Sales and Customer Support Strategy Ever since Enplug’s transition from an “adtech company” to a “digital signage software provider,”

Liu and fellow senior staff had maintained that the quality of the product was Enplug’s main focus. Concurrently, they had continued to invest a majority of the company’s resources into the sales and support staff. “As you add more customers, you have to hire more people to service the customers. But is that sustainable if you want to scale?” pondered Liu. While it was common for startups to bring on large numbers of employees when the company started doing well, Liu wondered if it would be more advantageous for Enplug to make its team leaner.

After learning how to automate certain processes through the reseller program, the team wondered if an even higher-level automation would make Enplug better equipped to handle the higher volume of its own clients. Would Enplug miss out on opportunities to tap into industries, companies, and decision makers that preferred more personal service? Liu was not so sure. She also grappled with the idea of having to let go of staffers on the sales and support team that worked on teams and had formed friendships with her fellow roommates. While the 24/7-work culture had allowed members of the Enplug staff to share all aspects of their professional and personal lives with one another, it made the dismissal of team members that much more difficult.

Handling the Reseller Program Liu and Carter also had to decide how to handle the reseller program, which accounted for

approximately 10% of the company’s total revenue. While the customer support for resellers took up a lot of staff hours, was this another process that could be automated, or would that decrease Enplug’s chances of finding viable partners? Customer support staff complained that the resellers were distracting and difficult to work with. Carter insisted to Liu that the reseller program was not a valuable investment of Enplug’s precious resources and time. He argued, “The program might make more sense further down the line once our company is more developed. We would be stretching ourselves too thin if we continued pursuing international markets.”

There was also the issue of quality control. While the reseller model gave partners autonomy and creativity to market the system software as they pleased, was Enplug at risk of having its brand tarnished? Would certain criteria need to be set in place to move forward with this program, and if so, what would be the main parameters Enplug should judge? As it currently stood, the reseller program was strictly for international companies. Was Enplug also missing out on opportunities to include domestic resellers, or would that put its own sales force at risk?

Appealing to Investors Liu also had to consider the verticalization of the Enplug App Marketplace. “What is our next major

move to appeal to certain industries? Do we build an app that’s going to be great for shopping malls, or

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SCG-518 Nanxi Liu: Finding the Keys to Sales Success at Enplug

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do we build one that’s going to be great for commercial real estate?” she inquired. Several of the company’s largest investors wanted the company to focus on one or two verticals to see if Enplug’s true identity resided in one of those markets. Most employees, however, wanted to grow a business with high potential that would not subject itself to a less fruitful niche.

Liu had to consider the investors' concerns about Enplug’s target market. Was it smart to sell to a large number of very diverse industries, or would it be better in the long-term to focus on certain verticals? While Liu felt Enplug was fully capable of serving a general market and did not want to limit her company’s possibilities to tap into different sectors, was it more strategic to specialize in a niche market that Enplug could more easily dominate? Liu had a lot to contemplate. And considering how fast Enplug was growing its customer base, she had to make certain decisions very soon.

The Art of Composition Liu arrived home at “The Enplug House” late one evening in March of 2015, exhausted after having

spent a full day at the office working with engineers on a new display application they were developing for the Enplug App Marketplace. While her coworker-roommates sat on the couch watching “The Walking Dead” on Netflix, Liu felt she should use what little time she had to go practice on the piano in her room. Liu had recently agreed to participate in the “LA Tech’s Got Talent” competition and had yet to compose a piece to perform. Perhaps tonight she could check that off her list of to do’s.

As Liu tapped the piano keys, figuring out which notes fit together, her mind wandered off to how pieces of the puzzle at Enplug could also fit together. How should Liu and her team approach the pricing model, their sales strategy, and the reseller program? Lost in her thoughts of imagining the possibilities for Enplug, she suddenly happened upon a string of notes that created just the melody she was looking for. She felt this particular group of judges would be looking for a composition with plenty of excitement and entertainment value, and Liu believed she was ready to deliver.

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Nanxi Liu: Finding the Keys to Sales Success at Enplug SCG-518

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Exhibit 1: Sample Reseller Data

Name # mos. working together

Price paid per license

Number licenses sold

Hours of support per

month Background

Alexander Agency

4 $37 10 3 Media agency

Arctic Tech 4 $37 30 3 Tech reseller

AZ Trade 5 $25 503 35

CEO was previously CEO of a major corporation. Now selling Enplug full- time

Blue Media 3 $30 135 6 Media agency

Carousel 5 $37 42 6 Tech reseller

Chris Ivan 6 $37 87 3 Individual manages social media for companies

Daisy Social 4 $37 56 3 Social media agency

Digital King 5 $37 89 8 Media agency

Double Cubed

3 $37 14 3 Tech consultancy

Get It Media 6 $37 36 6 Media agency

Source: Enplug

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SCG-518 Nanxi Liu: Finding the Keys to Sales Success at Enplug

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