About Me

Who am I?

Hi! I’m Ton Dobbe. I was born in The Netherlands, one of the flattest countries in Europe – and the son of a tulip farmer. But tulips weren’t my destiny. The B2B software industry was. I started locally in the Netherlands in Sales, then marketing, and for the last 15 years of my corporate career, I headed up global product marketing & product strategy.

Ton Dobbe, Founder of Value Inspiration and author of The Remarkable Effect

In 2017 I decided it was time to start my own company. I didn’t want to work for a large company anymore. I wanted to share my expertise, experience, and energy to help as many as possible, inspiring startups and scale-ups out there to make a remarkable difference.

Why? I just couldn’t believe the research that 90% of all startups fail. That’s bad… But what’s worse? +75% of SaaS Scaleups seem to fail as well – companies that are supposed to have product-market-fit. 

So it became my mission to help change this. 

Over the past years, I’ve developed my own methodology – The Remarkable Effect. This inspired me to write a book with the same name. The book then sparked the idea behind a weekly mastermind program for Sales-led SaaS CEOs.

Beyond that, I have helped dozens of startups and scaleups around the world to stand out in heavily competitive markets, 2x their growth rates and 40+% their average deal size – even in a downturn. How? By crystalizing what makes them remarkable. Identify who’s prepared to pay a premium for that (and why) – and align their teams to create a remarkable collective impact that people keep talking about.

 

 

A story that changed everything for me.

It was Tuesday, 11 October 2005. I sat in my glass cubicle on the fourth floor at the Dutch HQ of Unit4, near Rotterdam. The situation was tense; People were running around, stressed out, and I sat there with a knot in my stomach…

I’d just hung up on a call with PJ, a US technology analyst that I trusted. I thought the call had gone well, but then he shocked me:

“There’s something that truly differentiates your solution, Ton. You just have a very odd way of communicating it, and that doesn’t help anybody.”

The story we were telling wasn’t clear. It was littered with words and details that mattered to us but didn’t have any meaning to him or to our customers.

I was taken aback. 

Was it that bad? No one had ever challenged me on this.

Here’s the thing:

We were not well-known and this didn’t help to receive more invitations to participate in the right deals. And on the deals where we did participate, we were losing too many. And we had to give away too much discount to win them. 

Everyone was telling me that this was ‘normal’ since we’re selling a commodity!

The dots started to connect … 

Had we fallen in love with our own ideas? Had we lost connection with whom we were actually doing it for?

It turns out, we’d become complacent to a hidden, but sizable problem and needed to have some difficult conversations. We needed help. We needed an unbiased and emotionally detached expert that could challenge the status quo and poke holes in all our beliefs.

What we learned was:

While many of the organizations we targeted looked alike from the outside, what they believed, cared about, wanted, and needed was radically different.

Our focus was far too wide: We could achieve far more by exceeding the expectations of the few rather than trying to please the many.

We had to cut the bullshit and home in on the difference we’d help our customers make rather than what we thought differentiated us.

We had to find a way to be remarkable.

That’s when everything started to change…

Suddenly we had meaningful and energetic conversations with decision-makers about what else could build trust with customers, taking our confidence to new levels. 

Our demos transformed from meaningless ‘feature-function’ tours to meaningful showcases of value.

Sales teams started to close four out of five deals. Sales cycles visibly shortened. Deal size increased, often far above the second vendor on the shortlist. And best of all, the word discount started to disappear. 

In fact, some competitors decided to back off when they discovered we were in the consideration set. We’d transformed from being undervalued to being The One for the right customers.

The project taught me three essential lessons:

  1. Cut to the chase
    To make a meaningful connection it’s about getting to the raw truth.
  2. Escape the echo chamber
    Get an outside-in perspective showing you what you don’t see.
  3. Purpose over profit
    Relentless focus on helping your customers make a difference will return value in volumes that outperform any budget.

The most important thing that stood out for me though was that no matter how much I love building software businesses, what I love even more is making them remarkable.

You can experience what I experienced too. I’ll be your guide to get you through the challenging situations, positioning you to come out as a software business your customers can’t stop talking about.

 

 

Press Info

The following information is provided as a cut-and-paste resource for conference organizers, media professionals, podcast hosts, and other interested parties.

Please feel free to use anything here as-is without checking with me first. If you have additional questions, you can email me directly.

 

Sample Questions for Ton

  1. What’s stopping B2B SaaS companies from growing traction?
  2. How to design a SaaS business so it creates predictable traction?
  3. What defines those SaaS companies that people start talking about and keep talking about?
  4. What are the critical segmentation mistakes SaaS companies make?
  5. What are the often overlooked strategies to optimally position your SaaS business?
  6. How to create predictable traction in a new SaaS category?
  7. What can SaaS companies do differently to become the obvious choice in their category?
  8. What can SaaS companies do differently to maintain the strongest product market fit?
  9. How to avoid losing your edge in today’s B2B SaaS market?
  10. What can SaaS CEOs do differently to avoid getting caught in a vicious cycle of desperately chasing funding?

 

Facts about Ton

  • I was born in The Netherlands, one of the flattest countries in Europe
  • I am the son of a tulip farmer.
  • I live in Spain together with my wife Jolanda, and my two sons, Dion and Pascal
  • I am a big fan of Big Wave surfing (just don’t dare to do it myself)
  • According to Sally Hoggshead’s Fascinate assessment, my Archetype is: The Intrigue
  • My Game-changer Index scores: 9 (Creates the future), Strategist: 8 (Maps the future), and Polisher: 8 (Creates a future to be proud of).
  • And oh yeah – we have 4 dogs (just in case you ever come visit me here in beautiful Javea)

 

More words from Ton

 

Some Recognition

 

Interviews & Podcast and on-stage appearances

Kind words about Ton

Value Inspiration Client - Michiel Schipperus, CEO Sana Commerce

Whether you’re a start-up or a well-established business, working with Ton has the power to change your business for good and for the better, not by 10%, but by 10x.

– Michiel Schipperus, CEO Sana Commerce
Value Inspiration Client – Cindy Gordon, CEO SalesChoice

Ton is a force you can count on to awaken your leadership potential. His collaborative DNA helps you inspire you to do more,  reach higher, and constantly challenges you to think harder and harder. Guiding you to where you are and where you need to be.

– Cindy Gordon, CEO SalesChoice

This quote from Rosabeth Kanter sums up what Ton does: “Leaders must wake people out of inertia. They must get people excited about something they’ve never seen before, something that does not yet exist.”

– David Griffiths, CEO Fiscal Technologies
Caroline

We’re trying to figure out the best way to go forward on our Startup journey.  I’ve been following Ton for a very long time and find a lot of his posts very useful, especially because it’s so B2B and SaaS oriented. There are just not many resources out there that are so specific to B2B SaaS. Sadly, it’s rare.

– Caroline Johnová, CEO Wagmi Guide
Value Inspiration Client – Stefan Maritz, CMO RoomRaccoon

This man is a wealth of knowledge and experience and has an incredible way of pulling groups of professionals together to create a safe space for discussing obstacles and business problems in a way that encourages the group to help find solutions to assist each other.

A great mentor and wonderful personality.

– Stefan Maritz, CMO RoomRaccoon

Ton is one of the brightest professionals I have worked with in my professional career

– Juan Antonio Fernández, CEO Ekon

Ton is a quality individual who is both expert in his knowledge and engaging in his personality.

– Peter O'Rourke - Vice President Sales - EMEA & Enterprise at Deltek

Ton knows the storyteller’s secret – that’s for sure. Since the first time I saw him on stage, I was captivated by his ability to turn product features and implementation details into relevant, exciting stories that matter to people. And backstage, I was amazed by the depth of his knowledge and the sheer endless enthusiasm he puts into his work. I consider myself very fortunate, having worked alongside Ton, having been inspired by him, and having seen him pushing the boundaries over and over again. Ton lives technology evangelism, and in a world of digital noise, it’s definitely needed.

– Christian Weichelt, CMO Cyncly

Too many to list them all here… read more »

 

Social Media

 

Linkedin  –  Thinkers360  –  Twitter

 

Physical Location

 

Parcent, Alicante, Spain

 

Photo

Ton Dobbe, Founder of Value Inspiration and author of The Remarkable Effect

Click here to download full size image

 

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