From market disruptor to successful exit, the Sennen Tech story

About Sennen

Sennen is a fast growing UK technology business providing specialised software for renewable energy developers and operators. Founded in 2017, Sennen saw early success with deployment on a single Offshore Wind Farm.

How did the project come about?

After a chance meeting in January 2020, discussions kicked off in earnest. The co-founders recognised they had an opportunity to become an industry disruptor.

There was much to do. The early positioning had classic signs of being developed in the moment; technically focused, caught up in the details with a complex value proposition. It was all wrapped up with a tone of voice of being a small startup trying to play with the big utilities.

What has been the approach?

The early work focused on BD fundamentals. Out went technical lists of what the product does and in came high impact messaging laying out who Sennen can help, how it can achieve that and proof that it works. (There’s a time and a place for technical product specs, they can come later). We worked on pitching, delivery cadence and tone – along with the all important mindset of going into prospect meetings peer to peer.

We then built out a simple content marketing plan to support sales outreach that was both realistic and measurable.

Those early sessions were undertaken via face to face workshops, described as ‘intense’ at the time but put us on the right path for the long term.

How did this translate into early wins?

We made sure the BD back office was in good shape. What was across spreadsheets, folders and ‘lodged in brains’, got pulled together, streamlined and pushed up into a simple CRM.

This enabled informed decision making about the total addressable market, highlighting who was known to us and who wasn’t. The gaps became high priority outreach.

We were able to run actions in parallel. Both cleaning up the data and spotting opportunities and going after them.

Presenting and de-risking the proposition

Our knowledge of the renewable sector told us that while the word innovation is rarely far from a pitch deck, the large utilities who operate in the space are wary of being first mover. Early adopter, yes, but being first, that’s a hard sell. To overcome this looming objection we crafted the story to make the most of the existing customer successes. Propose a solution that was already adopted in the market.

Creating momentum

A BD mantra when dealing with large contract value and limited sales and marketing resources, is ‘be the fly fisher, not the trawler.’ We wanted to make sure our energy was being spent engaging with a select group of people who could influence upcoming software purchases.

With the ground work in place, we are able to slice and dice industry data sets and rapidly build out target lists. Outreach ramped up. Tactics ranged from direct approaches, seeking out people at conferences, taking an exhibition stand around European trade shows, speaking on industry accelerator ‘pitch n brew’ sessions, to making sure we were correctly registered on every project procurement portal globally.

We used our budget wisely. We created our own content and ran our own online thought leadership discussions. We trialed loom videos to demonstrate key product features and benefits. All the while we were building a valuable data set which we owned and could leverage for further outreach.

The sales pipeline grew and over time the client wins came in. Sennen began to rise up in the market. Each win made the BD flywheel spin that little bit more smoothly.

As Sennen grew, more hands joined the effort. Sennen made key hires in Marketing and our own role evolved to fit what the business required.

Has it worked?

Sennen has gone from being a startup to scale up. Throughout the process having the Make the Break team embedded has taken pressure off the co-founders and freed them up to concentrate on other key tasks. Not only has the business been able to rapidly grow both turnover and market share, but having the BD fundamentals in place has helped when building business plans, making hires and courting investors.

Today Sennen’s technology is running across many GW of clean energy around the world and the cohort of clients include the likes of Orsted, Octopus Energy, EDFR and Alpha Real Capital.

Sennen has gone on to be successfully acquired and is now part of Kraken Technologies.

“Working with Stu has been both enjoyable and hugely valuable. It’s been like having an extension of the team. Always on hand with well thought out advice, not afraid to challenge thinking and completely dependable in the heat of the moment – thank you Stu!”

Alexandra Allen, COO, Sennen