

Ask HN: Step by step guide to landing a SME client? - notastartup

I am looking for a step by step hack from discovery to pitching and closing a sale of software&#x2F;saas solution. In particular, ERP (dime a dozen aren&#x27;t they how to stand out?) and sales tools.<p>I have the knowledge (worked at enterprise software companies in the past) of how to build and what tools to use but I just wish I had a client that would pay me to solve their business problem.<p>However, I am pretty much stumped at this point.<p>What actionable step by step did you take to discover, pitch, and close your deal with an SME (small, medium enterprises).
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chresko
Not to trivialize the process, but here's some step-by-step suggestions:

1) First and foremost, verify that you're solving a problem that's truly a
pain point for some significant number of people. Don't ask your friends,
they'll almost always say yes. If you don't have direct access to someone who
would potentially use your service, use an online survey (SurveyMonkey, for
example) to sample your audience. The most important question you should be
asking yourself right now is "Why would someone want this?" You're not your
own customer.

2) Use your network and get intros. The chances of someone responding to you
are much higher when you're connected by a mutual (and trusted) 3rd party.

3) You should have two pitch decks. The 1-2 minute pitch, and the 5-10 minute
pitch. The 1-2 minute pitch deck gets attention. The 5-10 minute pitch deck
tells what, why and how in more detail. You should also highlight yourself,
and why you're the expert in this area.

4) If you don't have something built, at the very least have very detailed and
polished wireframes. Ideally something that's interactive.

This is basically a mashup of how to raise money and how to pitch and sell
your product (since you seem to be focusing on acquiring a client who will pay
you to build this solution vs pitching to a VC in order to build a company).

If you (or you and some friends) can build an MVP, do that and give it to
someone you know to use (most startups are more willing to try out these types
of products, especially if you know the founders). If it's a good idea, and it
works, you now have 'proof' that's actionable (mainly, numbers/metrics and
user feedback).

Also, you should be able to explain how this is going to help company X. Are
you going to increase productivity by 50%? Are you going to lower costs by
25%? You should be able to explain, with fluency, what you're optimizing and
the analysis behind that (that may be in the form of P&L analysis, for
example).

Most engineers going into this get hung up on the how. Companies rarely care
how (although again, this should be in your pitch deck) you're going to build
this because they have little or no technical background. They just want to
know why your thing is better than the thing they have, or the things they
thought about using/buying.

BTW, don't say you _think_ you can help employees save the company time/money.
Say that you can definitively save the company time/money by making process X
for their employees Y times easier/cheaper. Use real numbers that show real
gain. Make a very simple to understand chart/graph.

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avenger123
The reason you are not getting too many responses is that there is no right
answer.

A lot of this is dependent on the industry, the type of business, your
location and a bunch of other things that don't lend themselves to in depth
answers.

I think you would be well served by looking at Steve Blank's materials
(steveblank.com) and even maybe buying his book.

Aside from that, the simplest answer is:

1) Based on your own experiences what are the potential problems that
businesses may be facing that you were exposed to. 2) Make a list of all the
relevant companies in your area that potentially may be targets for
investigation. 3) Find ways of connecting to these companies. Try hard to make
sure its to the right people. 4) Contact these people and setup lunches/coffee
meets etc. Your introduction should be about how you think you can solve their
problems and the ideas you have of how you can do that. Please don't just
email them and ask them what problems they have.

~~~
notastartup
I understand that this is a very broad question but I wanted it to be more of
a way to share your own experiences that we can perhaps learn from.

I think the steps you listed are extremely helpful. For example, what if I
want to sell them a SaaS that helps employees manage their vacation times, and
other paperwork, I envision these steps based on your suggestion:

1) Provide an easy way for employees to book off their time at work. Think of
pain points. Think of solutions to those pain points. Translate into software
features. Don't write any code yet, wait for validation.

2) Google or linkedin the companies. Any other ways?

3) Get contact information. Who makes purchasing decisions like this? HR? CEO?
CTO?

4) Contact people over email or phone. Which is better for first contact? What
should you write or say?

    
    
        Hi Mr. CEO
    
        I'm a local software engineer developing a tool that I 
        think can help employees book off their times easily. 
        Would you be interested in scheduling a call to hear 
        more about how your company can save a lot of paperwork?
    
        Thanks,
    
        Signed.
    
    

5) Sit down for lunch or coffee and make the pitch

    
    
        "So my SaaS solution costs $1000 a month, it would do 
        features A, B, C, D, E and X that I think would help 
        your employees book off their time easily and save you 
        time and paperwork. If you'd like to see any other    
        features I'd be happy to add them. Now if you are happy 
        with this proposition, I will be starting development 
        and communicate with you along the way until the product 
        is ready to deliver. For now, I can send you a contract 
        for you to sign and an invoice for one month ($1000) to 
        get things started and a commitment to subscribe monthly on the 
        day of launch."
    

6) Profit???

How did I do? What do you think about this approach? Is it rude to ask for
money for something you haven't built yet? How do you assure them you are not
a flip flop and that you will actually follow through with the development and
deliver it? Isn't market validation asking for the sales first for the idea
you have and getting money paid to build the thing your customer needs?

~~~
chresko
If you sent me the email you drafted in #4, I'd ignore it. If you sent it
again, I'd mark it as spam. Don't do this, it's a bad approach.

If you managed to get me to meet for lunch, didn't have anything built, but
asked me for $1000, I'd ask you to pay for lunch and get back to me when
you've built something that I could use for free for a month. Caveat - if
you're the former founder/co-founder of Dropbox, Square, Twitter, etc... this
rule doesn't apply. You want to be in the position where someone offers you
money (without you asking) because the product is so great.

~~~
notastartup
what would you like to see in #4 that would spark your interest?

~~~
chresko
Hey Steve, I was referred to you by our mutual friend John. He mentioned that
you were using X for booking off time. My startup has a similar, but better
product that just went live. We spent four weeks in beta, and saw a 25-35%
decrease in operating costs per month. We plan to launch this as a paid
monthly service, but I'd like to offer it to you for free. It takes less than
10 minutes to migrate. Can you hop on a call this week and we'll get you
started?

Thanks!

Me

------
robbiea
Take a look at these articles from Mark Suster about enterprise sales:

[http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2013/03/19/one-of-the-
big...](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2013/03/19/one-of-the-biggest-
mistakes-enterprise-startups-make/)

[http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/on-
selling/](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/on-selling/) (look at the PUCKKA
links, those are great)

