Case 6. Telesian Technology

The Business Model: From Scientist to Marketer to Entrepreneur As a product manager in the computer industry, Shari Worthington was responsible for understanding and prioritizing customer needs. Her job was to work with complex computer peripheral products that measure and analyze real-time data, such as temperature, pressure, or speed, taking them from development to launch. This was a great match for Worthington as she was a trained scientist who understood the jobs and frustrations of her target customersscientists and engineers working with real-time automation systems.

Customer needs were assessed through a variety of avenues, mostly focused on one-to-one conversations and surveys. To respond to those customers needs, Worthington worked with her companys engineering and marketing teams to create a vision for new products, as well as an actionable go-to-market plan. Along the way, she had an opportunity to work with a variety of advertising and PR agencies. In Worthingtons words:

The output from the big agencies we worked with was creative and outside the box. But projects generally took longer than wed hoped as most agencies did not understand our highly technical customers and specialized products. We had to train them for each project. Even then, many of the recommendations ended up flashy business-to-consumer, B2C, theatrics instead of the data-driven, information-packed campaigns that resonated with our customers.

After 10 years in the computer industry, Worthington decided to address that problem. She launched Telesian Technology with what she called an anti-agency business model. She thought of Telesian as a full-service marketing agency with a difference. The staff are technical marketersscientists and engineers who also have marketing and/or MBA degrees. They understand strategy, research, and marketing as well as technical customers and complex technologies. This expands Telesians customer value proposition beyond that of advertising and PR agencies. The company offers end-to-end services, from business strategy and market positioning to go-to-market product launch programs to ongoing lead generation focused on customer needs. And because employees and contractors have technical backgrounds, they can be brought up to speed faster than most agencies. This allows the Telesian team to develop more compelling value propositions for their clientsdirectly addressing customer benefits and clearly differentiating their organizations and products from those of competitors.

For Telesian, Worthington extended the traditional agency business model in what was, at the time, an unusual direction that focused on selling strategy and marketing services to a niche customer segment. Telesian specializes in working with developers of complex computing technology for scientists, engineers, and manufacturers. Initially, she targeted SME manufacturers of automation equipment and related software. As her network grew, her team was brought in to work on projects in larger firms, like Intel, Apple, and Raytheon, who had the same needs as her smaller clients but on a larger scale. As the size of client projects grew, the Telesian team had to expand. In addition to the core team of employees, contractors were brought in as needed to perform such functions as strategy development, technical writing, and graphic design.

Over the years, Worthingtons strategy did not waver. For instance, during the heyday of the dotcom boom in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a number of her peers encouraged her to take the web software tools Telesian was developing and expand from selling services to selling products. Worthington knew that was a whole different business model that would require a major rework of the companys internal activities. It would also require a significant investment in their own marketing programs as they had been relying primarily on word-of-mouth referrals for growth.

While Worthington advised clients who were raising investment capital and knew the process well, she was not interested in taking that path herself. She most enjoyed working on client projects, creating new strategies and helping innovative companies grow. From the beginning, her goal was to create a small, boutique firm with little hierarchy, where she could be involved in most client projects. Now, 30 years later, shes still in the thick of it.

Questions

What were Worthingtons motivations for founding Telesian Technology? What kinds of risks was she taking?

Worthington viewed Telesian as an advertising agency when she started the company. When she was a product manager, she worked closely with advertising agencies and public relations companies. In what ways do you think she differentiated Telesian from her advertising competitors at the beginning?

How was Worthington able to identify customer segments and match them to Telesians value proposition?

Do you feel that Worthington made the right decision to stay focused on selling services and not products? If she had decided to grow the company by offering products, in what ways would that have impacted her business model? What would have been the greatest threats that she would have faced?

Why do you think Telesian has survived for 30 years? What have been the key factors internal to the firm that led to its success? Have any external factors influenced the sustainability of the firm?

View Worthingtons profile on LinkedIn. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharilee/.) Does she have a personal value proposition? Today is a very different world from the one in which Worthington started her company. What changes, if any, do you think Telesian will need to make in the future?