
The brutal truth about marketing your software product - admp
http://successfulsoftware.net/2013/03/19/the-brutal-truth-about-marketing-your-software-product/
======
foxylad
_I learnt lots from working closely with sales people (_ I didn’t like them
very much _, but that’s a different matter)_

That right there tells me you'll fail running your own business.

I'm not a sales person, but I respect them (well, the good ones) enormously.
Not liking sales people means not understanding how important they are to your
business, and probably means you subconsciously believe that people will flock
to your door if you build the perfect mousetrap.

The perfect mousetrap myth is very seductive to introverts, and it's probably
the cause of most startup failures. Without a good salesperson pushing your
product, you could be peddling a cure for cancer and still fail miserably.

I'd recommend anyone who hates salespeople actually does their job for a
month. You'll quickly come to realise they have this thick skin that you
don't; that when they get someone swear at them for cold calling, they just
pick up the phone and do it again. You meanwhile, will feel awful for the rest
of the day, and do everything possible to avoid the phone for the rest the
day.

By the end of the month you'll realise that just as your introversion makes
you a great developer, whatever they have that lets them do this is incredibly
valuable - you'll respect them. And like them.

And your business now stands a chance.

~~~
obviouslygreen
You seem to be conflating "like" with "respect." I've worked with a lot of
extremely effective salespeople; I've liked some and disliked others, but
liking someone has absolutely nothing to do with their effectiveness. Many
that I've disliked have earned that specifically because they were so
effective, which leads to another issue with your suggestion, which is that
you don't seem to separate good/ethical sales from hard, manipulative sells.
Someone who can manage the latter is almost always VASTLY more effective, but
deserves neither your respect nor your friendship.

Yes, a good salesperson is a massive asset. No, "effective" does not imply
"good," though your requirements on that point may vary. No, "respect" does
not require or imply "like," and no, this is not such a black and white issue.

~~~
foxylad
Good points. I felt that his comment implied he didn't like the salespeople
_because_ they were salespeople, which does say something about how much he
respects sales as a profession. However, on re-reading the original I see that
he might have meant just that he didn't like those particular salespeople.

I think my point still stands though. If you have a secret contempt for
salespeople, don't start a business.

------
mindcrime
That was some good stuff. I wish we had more of this kind of content on HN.
:-)

That said, I've gotten a lot of mileage out of studying materials from Chet
Holmes (RIP), the author of _The Ultimate Sales Machine_. I got hold of a set
of videos he did in conjunction with Anthony Robbins, where he talks about
marketing and sales at great length. We[1] are currently working to implement
his "Dream 100 / Best Buyer" strategy[2] now. How well it will work remains to
be seen, of course, but the idea strikes me as pretty solid.

This marketing stuff turns out to be pretty fascinating. I've also learned a
ton about market research in the past year or so, and am thinking about doing
a talk on "Market Research for Startups" sometime soon, here in the RTP area.

[1]: <http://www.fogbeam.com>

[2]: [http://www.resourcenation.com/article/marketing-tiny-
shoestr...](http://www.resourcenation.com/article/marketing-tiny-shoestring-
budget-0/)

~~~
orangethirty
To be honest, the reason such content is rare, is because nobody wants to
share it. I make more money from using my skills for myself, than from
consulting or writing books. I was publishing stuff little by little, but time
constraints made me stop.

Another point is that everybody wants to learn what works, but few people ever
put it to practice. The only person I have ever helped that _has actually paid
attention_ is Dan Shipper. And it was mostly helping him with the Firefly
landing page.

~~~
charleshaanel
I think it has little to do with "nobody wants to share it". The issue is that
there seems to be some silent sentiment in this community that sales is...I
don't know....less intellectual, a little "dirty" mayhap? And perhaps if you
have to resort to (gasp) selling your product then it isn't good enough to
sell itself. People hold on to the "build a wonderful product and they will
come" mythology.....

~~~
orangethirty
Well, people who discover ways to make money don't really want to share it.
Its a natural reaction and instinct to not do so. I do agree that sales,
marketing, and or any type of business development subject is not very
welcomed in this community. Reasons are various, but your guess is spot on.
Business is seen as less intellectual, when it is actually way harder than
writing code. But it requires one thing that few people here want to do:
Communicate with others.

And yes, you are right. A great product does not sell itself.

------
joonix
Tech guys need to stop scoffing at non-tech "business" guys looking for co-
founder arrangements. Yes, there are a lot of "startup groupies" out there who
don't add any value, but someone with solid marketing abilities and/or
"hustle" could help out a lot in OP's situation.

~~~
RougeFemme
This was one of my reactions, too. I've seen several friends' businesses fail,
even though they had a great product, because they couldn't/wouldn't
market/sell _and_ saw no value in people who could and would, in a tech space.
No matter how great the product, most products/services really _don't_ sell
themselves - at least without a nudge. I thought the suggestion about working
on product demos and helping customers was great. I assume you would at least
improve your customer communication skills, if not your sales skills. And, for
introverts, this would be a great way to ease closer to that often _huge_ line
between development and sales - or just having a relationship with the
customer.

------
aymeric
I left a comment on the blog but I thought I might get some reactions here:

Excellent post.

I have two advices:

1\. Don’t quit your job. Why do so many people fall for the glamourous “all
in” scenario? I work three days a week as a freelancer, and the rest I spend
on working on my products (<http://weekplan.net> and <http://taskarmy.com>).
Things might not move as quickly as if I was full time, but I don’t risk to
jeopardize my family’s wellbeing and I can keep doing that forever.

2\. Outsource. Why try to do it all? Work on your business not in your
business. I currently have an accountant, a bookkeeper, a web developer, a
virtual assistant, a writer and an adwords expert working with me. They are
not all working full time, I only pay them when I need them. I strongly
suggest you train your outsourcing skills today to learn what can be
outsourced, how to express what you need, and where to find the right talent.
Get a virtual assistant today starting at $6/hour:
<http://taskarmy.com/virtual-assistance-outsourcing>

------
pedalpete
Except there are many people who can market and sell, but can't build.
Sometimes these people need to be partners, sometimes just introducing them to
the product results in them doing the marketing and the product becomes the
sales channel.

Also, when you are re-selling somebody else's product, where is your passion?
what ability do you have to differentiate?

~~~
stephengillie
How many others are reselling the product? Which product are you reselling?

Would you be more passionate about reselling Raspberry Pis than reselling
iPhone accessories?

------
halcyondaze
I think this is a great article, but I would almost say that the most
important part about marketing your software product as a one person founder
is building up your influence in at least ONE channel that your target market
hangs out. You get a few benefits from this:

1\. You get to iterate on what they say they like/hate in your beta much
better/faster...which allows you to make a product that has a really, really
solid market fit.

2\. You gain credibility and trust in your chosen community and can launch
your product with enough initial sales to be profitable more or less right off
the bat (talking smaller SaaS stuff here)

I like the suggestions in the post, but I would almost say that you should
strip it down to one channel of traffic to your market, build your
credibility, use that channel to develop a badass product that people will
shell out cash for, and then worry about the remarketing, cross selling, etc
after you're off and rolling.

------
jwwest
Is there a decent resource for learning how to sell a product? Most of us can
code and implement the technical parts of a business, but what we need is a
Codeacademy for marketing. Something that's not run by slimy "internet
marketers" or contains vague advice full of handwaving "use Google's Adwords
tool lalala~"

~~~
lesterbuck
There are a bunch of resources on marketing a product. Rob Walling's book
Start Small, Stay Small, is mostly about marketing and picking a market. The
Micropreneur Academy (micropreneur.com) is a collection of material that
greatly expands on the book, plus a private forum. They host Microconf yearly
(already sold out this year). Dane Maxwell teaches similar skills in
TheFoundation.io. Mixergy interviews are filled with case studies, and Mixergy
Premium has dozens of courses on marketing and selling for tech startups.

~~~
jwwest
Rob's book and the Micropreneur Academy is exactly what I was thinking of when
I mentioned "hand waving" I've read the book twice, and subscribed for several
months.

I found that their advice consisted of two things:

1) Find a niche using Google Adwords.

2) Rank #1 with SEO.

And that's about it. It's incredibly vague and frustrating, especially when
most niches are oversaturated these days. I reached out to Rob about this, and
he replied "yeah, it's hard to find an untapped niche". The entire premise of
building a product in his materials is based around finding a nice that's
underserved and that you can rank easily in Google for. Anytime someone tells
me to solve marketing issues with "just use SEO", they're immediately
discredited in my mind.

That being said, the rest of the book was solid. The problem I have is that
there is very little actionable information on selling a product outside of
Magic SEO-land, which everyone knows is a myth.

~~~
lesterbuck
Maybe we read a different book. On page 148 of Start Small, Stay Small,
traffic is broken into two quality tiers. The top shelf traffic is (1) a
mailing list, (2) a blog, podcast, or video blog, and (3) organic search.
Second tier includes a longer list including PPC, social media, etc. So the
book itself doesn't even list SEO as the first item in the top tier.

And Rob's book is a small part of the universe of startup marketing. Mixergy
has plenty of stories of businesses starting without SEO as their primary
driver. One amazing case study is Sam Ovens, who was so successful at
marketing first before building anything that he not only extracted money from
the people he had interviewed, he took the same virtual product (not yet
built) and extracted cash from new customers who hadn't been helping him
design it. Then he built it. And his niche is hardly unique; there are
obviously many more areas like that to mine. How did he choose a niche? He
didn't do keyword research. He studied the employment ads and looked into
business categories that were hiring a lot, to see if he could help them
automate with software:

<http://thefoundation.io/sam-ovens-case/>

Has anyone offered to pay for your niche product before you build it? That
would be a nice filter to see if you are building something people want.

The cruel reality is that building the product should occupy about 15% of your
effort. The sales and marketing, including idea extraction, market research,
etc., will be 85% of the work. There is an ocean of marketing tactics and
information out there, and it is a _lot_ more detailed than your two step
summary above. Sometimes marketing gurus want to reach a broad audience, and
they package up a ton of their best information into a regular book. Perry
Marshall did it with his Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords (much, much more
than an Adwords book). And you can buy the Kindle version for the low, low
price of only $3.99, which is an incredible price/performance.

------
timedoctor
Re "Create at least one lead generation channel as an affiliate for another
product"

Selling another software app as an affiliate is completely different to
selling your own application and I would argue much harder to actually make
any decent money from. Any effort you expend is building the brand of the
other company. You can't split test their landing page. You lose a lot of
traffic to people that directly type in the url.

If you can rebrand some awesome software where you own the domain, brand etc
and you sell and get 100%, this is not a terrible business model, but the
problem is that any half decent software wouldn't want to do this as they
would prefer to sell it themselves.

I guess they are saying to be an affiliate as practice. I don't really agree
however. I think you can practice on your real business.

~~~
charleshaanel
"you can't split test their landing page" \- Sure you can split test. Simply
drive the traffic to your own list first and create your own landing page (the
affiliate link on the lander is your own).

"You lose a lot of traffic to people that directly type in the url." This is
why you buy your own domain and only pay for traffic that goes to your domain.
If needed (ex. the merchant starts giving you drama, the offer doesn't
convert) - you replace it with a redirect.

You use other people's offers to test traffic sources, email sequences,
landers. Then once you get it right you build your own products. People have
been doing it for years.

------
mladenkovacevic
I'm a marketer by day and reading this makes me wish I had the time to do some
freelancing. An experienced marketer could've laid out a strategy and put it
into action, saving him a lot of time and frustration. In the end though, I am
not 100% convinced that even the best marketer/sales person would've been
able/willing to say: "This isn't going to work out for you. Here's why".

Maybe a better lesson to take out of this is not to put all your eggs in one
basket. Establish several possible sources of income and be ready to push the
pedal to the metal when one them starts getting more traction than the other
ones.

------
thenomad
This is excellent advice, and I wish I'd read it 3 years ago. Jason Fried said
something very similar a while ago, recommending learning to sell something,
anything, before starting on your dream project.

Even buying and reselling iPhones on eBay can teach you a lot of the basics -
and you want those basics in place when you're starting to actually set up
something ambitious.

------
woodchuck64
"5. Don’t try to become a sales person. You don’t have to be a sales man/woman
to sell. Some of the best sales people I’ve worked with are those that just go
out of their way to HELP the customer. They understand their niche inside out
and have the gift, not to sell, but to HELP. People that are looking to buy
something want help."

That's nicely said.

------
cageface
This is probably good advice in general but I have seen a few highly
successful solo devs that didn't do much marketing beyond building good
relationships in a very focused channel like a single forum. I think for this
to work you have to pick the right software niche and then build absolutely
kickass products though.

------
majani
Another brutal marketing truth: you're probably going to have to SPAM
prospects at some point.

------
saltzman
great read! got me through a boring lecture. definitely some good insights for
aspiring founders and bus dev people. thanks for posting!

------
goldfeld
The increased line-height bothers me quite a bit, it seems to detract from
readability.

