

SAAS business: Prospective Client wants to meet in person - codegeek

If you are runnning a SAAS and a prospective client wants to meet in person, what do you say to that ? This SAAS business charges $200-$400&#x2F;month and it is a platform that clients have to invest in with their time before they can get a return. The prospective client seems very serious and a big fish (they want to pay for the whole year upfront)
Have you ever encountered this ?
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ProblemFactory
Is there any reason why you don't want to meet? People meet people who they do
business with all the time.

The only issue to keep yourself aware of is whether their human contact
expectations (support, meetings, custom development) match the price they are
willing to pay.

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codegeek
Thx for your response. I totally understand the value of meeting people in
person and building relationships. But when running a SAAS with small
overheads, is this scalable enough to do it regularly ? Just wondering. Being
small, it won't matter for now but is it a wise investment of your limited
time being a small company ?

Also is this a fair expectation from clients to meet SAAS owners in person ? I
would not even think about signing up for a service where i would necessarily
want to meet. Of course, I would like to know who the team is etc.

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twunde
This isn't uncommon and does tend to happen with more enterprise-y sales.
Where I work currently I've had three external SAAS partners come into the
office within the past 6 months. It probably doesn't make sense to do this
often with smaller companies but it does make sense if you're going to charge
enterprise prices. The benefits of doing an in-person meet is that it helps
you establish a strong relationship, may help with product development ideas
and could be a potential way to upsell services

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partisan
Can you ask them to reimburse you for the trip? Explain that you run a
business on small margins so as to provide the best value for your customers.

