
Make Buyers Want to Pay - gk1
https://www.gkogan.co/blog/buyers/
======
avitzurel
Enterprise or no, I see a lot of developers (and entrepreneurs) take the
approach of "If you build it, they will come".

That is just not true in most cases.

We all know these products with elaborate dashboards, too much reporting, too
many data points. Those are created simply to appeal for the decision makers.

You sell to developers by a better UX/UI and workflow, you sell to decision
makers by telling them how they will get a better view of things and manage
teams better.

You have to build both ends, and you have to sell the decision making end much
better and much more aggressively.

Edit: typos

~~~
avitzurel
You also have to know your audience.

storytime:

We had a demo scheduled with a company. We were shopping for a security
auditing system for dependencies across all GitHub repositories.

The person going through the demo did an absolutely terrible job at reading
the room and understanding who they sell to (right now). Focused a lot on
reporting, compliance while we cared more about the mechanics.

~~~
XiZhao
Kevin from [http://fossa.io](http://fossa.io) here. Did this happen to be us?

If so, I’d love to hear you feedback on our demo, if not I’d love to offer you
a demo.

kevin@fossa.io

~~~
mistrial9
funny how Kevin's nick is XiZhao

~~~
bostonpete
Not really that funny -- a lot of people with Chinese (I think?) names also
adopt an American name to make it easier for people to spell, pronounce, etc.

~~~
XiZhao
Yeah, my name is Kevin (Xi Zhao) Wang.

But the funny thing is that a slightly different pronunciation of "Xi Zhao"
changes the meaning from (roughly) "western prosperity" to "morning bath".

~~~
catherd
Can confirm. I have basic Mandarin and I would have definitely thought of you
as the guy named "take a shower" if you never explained.

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chadash
I'll spare you the need to click through to this article. Basically, there are
enterprise users and enterprise purchase decision makers. The article says you
can't fail to market your product to the latter in addition to the former.
There are no recommendations as to how to do so.

~~~
gk1
(Author)

My struggle with writing is I start out wanting to share an idea, but then I
get caught up in the details and before long I'm writing and editing--or,
realistically, procrastinating--a 2,000-word article that overshadows the main
point.

Lately I've challenged myself to say just enough to express the idea, and
nothing else. Maybe I'll write about the execution details later, but for now
I just hope to get people thinking.

~~~
siscia
I can agree with your point and share the struggle however this article was
quite too shallow

~~~
gk1
Noted. More to come!

~~~
siscia
Great!

I am struggling as well with a similar problems and the more I am educated
about it the better!

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avitzurel
One thing that I find to be ridiculous with companies (especially at an early
stage) is that they have tactics but no strategy.

They try something for a week, it doesn't work, and they move on.

OP here, for example, has an article about selling through Quora. It might not
be up your alley, that's fine; If you decide to do it in your company, have
someone actively work on it on a weekly basis, develop a strategy for the
point you are trying to get across and nail down the message. Don't answer a
single question and look at your Google analytics trying to see how much
traffic you got from it. Do it consistently until you either figure out it
works (or not, of course).

If you decide to sell to decision makes, this should be your strategy, you
can't decide today you are selling to X and tomorrow you are selling to Y.

When you make a decision like this, inform the product managers, they now need
to build different things. Be honest and be vigilant about it.

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corpMaverick
We have a big problem with these in my org. High execs buy software that sucks
(From HP, Microfocus, CA, Oracle). They literally have to force people to use
it. A lot of money is thrown so people use it. Even after everybody realizes
it is bad software. Because somebody high up has to save face.

Meanwhile other software just is being organically, underground until
everybody uses it and it cannot hidden anymore. As an example, Git took years
and years to be accepted. Now everybody wants to get on board.

The bigger cost is not to buy shitty software. The bigger cost is failing to
acknowledge it and move on.

------
earino
I like this advice, it resonates with my lived experience. I've thought about
this some, and the organizational design of enterprise companies is often so
different from the leaner designs of startups that the dynamic of needing to
have language for buyers can be a org blind spot. On the buying side, I've
experienced frustration more than once because it wasn't obvious how I
connected the people who could buy me tools with the company who wanted to
sell it.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Enterprise has been a constant frustration for me. I never really wanted to
sell my software to big customers but you can't put a sign out front saying go
away if you are big and bureaucratic.

Over the years I've had a regular stream of people who want me to agree to 30
pages of conditions or offer credit terms for a $99 sale. The reality is you
can't afford to engage with Big Co's purchasing department with sub $10K price
points.

~~~
sokoloff
Joel Spolsky has a good article on this point:
[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-
rubber-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-
duckies/)

(search for "option one" if you want to skip right to the relevant part,
though the whole article is worth reading, IMO.)

------
rrggrr
My company pays for MixMax, Zapier, Slack, Mailchimp, AWS, RingCentral,
Gsuite, and more. Our purchase decision-maker (me) evaluates and buys the
product, while our users are along for the ride, reserving their judgment
until the merits of the software are felt. As I continue to evaluate new
software, and as I watch our SAAS overhead rise, I am looking for software to
cut. I'm not a Salesforce shop, but expect this is a serious issue for those
purchase decision-makers... paying for many SAAS add-ons in addition to the
platform itself.

So, I would advise SAAS providers to keep a close an eye on their existing
users. We are looking to control our expenses and will leave for higher
impact, lower priced alternatives. I recognize this is tough to do when growth
and other acquisition/IPO metrics are pressed by your investors.

My overwhelming sense: if you're not marketing, enhancing and listening to
your existing users, your falloff risk is mounting. Surveys and polls aren't
enough. Pay attention to your superusers. Add a client or two to your board.

Keep new users close, but your existing users closer.

~~~
avitzurel
I find "What is the value we are getting?" to be the absolute most crucial
question.

We were paying a few K$ a month for DataDog. The value we were getting from it
was quantified. We evaluated how long it will take to build the features we
are using from DD ourselves. It took about a month and we cut them off
completely from our stack.

If you take the AWS approach, you have to keep providing value and you have to
keep getting your users to buy-in.

I don't know if there's a very good way to actually communicate with all of
your users, emails you get seem to mechanical and artificial. "What can we do
better?" type of emails don't really work.

On your "manage the saas", did you see
[https://toriihq.com/](https://toriihq.com/) ?

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commandlinefan
It does bug me when I'm expected (and in some cases, nearly forced) to use
licensed software for work that they won't buy licenses for.

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beamatronic
I’ve always thought software should try and delight the user. The first
software that made me feel that way and rush to happily pay for it was Beyond
Compare by Scooter Software. I have been 100% pleased with it. Other software
I was happy to pay for includes Sublime Text, TextPad and even Windows 7
Professional.

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joelhooks
I very specifically stopped targeting “buyers” in favor of individuals. The
buyers want us to develop “whips & dashboards”

Lucrative! Not what we want to build.

That’s one of my favorite aspects of being self-funded and profitable.

