

Four Steps to the Epiphany: Sell before delivery - andrewtbham
http://seriouslackofdirection.blogspot.com/2011/03/four-step-to-epiphany.html
I recently read The Four Steps to the Epiphany and I have summarized my thoughts. Especially with regards to selling a product before it's completed, and I'm curious about your war stories and thoughts related to selling before you deliver.
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aik
I'm in a startup with a B2B product where we have found a few "visionary
customers" and have had them on board for a year or so already. They have been
essential in the development of a number of essential features of our product.
What we're struggling with now is determining the right moment to hit the
mainstream with our product.

In one sense we're still building out some features that may very well be
essential for some customers, however we know there are a good amount out
there that our current benefit/feature-set would be very beneficial for.

In short -- how do you determine when a product is detrimental to future
growth (making a bad name for yourself by selling an incomplete product) and
when it is ready?

~~~
andrewtbham
Is your product a new product, an existing product, or a re-segmented product
(a mix of new and existing)?

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aik
It's a new product in a fairly untapped technophobic market for businesses
with already tight margins. The businesses currently mostly only have paper
solutions or crap homegrown access solutions. The key is that our product,
although it has a cost, will lead to a good ROI.

~~~
andrewtbham
-Regarding your product.... On the whole I think mainstream customers expect a whole product.

-Regarding how to move to mainstream customers... one thing that often happens is that influential users start spreading the word and it blows up... At the first consulting firm where I worked, they had a huge win with one of their early customers that gave them lots of momentum. So you might focus on getting good referrals...

-With regards to your situation... What is the reason customers give for not buying? You say margins are tight. Have you considered lowering your prices? You call the customers technophobic. Are the people using the current paper/homegrown solutions putting up resistance? Is there anyway you can disarm them? Maybe a free lunch for a demo/training session?

~~~
aik
Thanks for the response. I don't think the reason customers aren't buying
isn't because our prices are too high (we somewhat have competition and
they're all more expensive), I think it's more of a case where they don't see
a need for the technology, or really understand the benefits, or currently
have the money (or are able to forecast what money they will have).

About it spreading -- yeah we're realizing more and more how massive that is.
We have clients that have people who want to sell our product to others. We're
starting to work with them on it now so it will be interesting to see how that
turns out.

Disarming them is what we need to do. May just need to improve on our method
:).

