
Help Wanted HN: Marketing and Sales for B2B Software Product - throwaway-dena
I&#x27;m struggling with marketing and sales for a B2B software product, and need your help.<p>I&#x27;ve bootstrapped a single-product business selling add-on software for a well-known software solution deployed in reputedly 25% of development firms (and growing). For sales, there is a small collection of both large and small paying customers spread around the world (fun fact: the sales cycle ranges from 1 week to 1 year). Paying customers have told me that the product solves concrete problems, but I&#x27;m still not satisfied with fit partly because telling the right story is integral to finding fit. There is a trickle of a revenue stream, juicy TAM and upside, and established competitors with inferior but lower-cost solutions (customer&#x27;s words) and primitive marketing (my assessment).<p>Despite being well-versed in software &amp; product development, I&#x27;m a marketing newbie. Pushing into marketing, especially positioning, opening sales dialog, and generally getting the message into peoples minds, I feel blind (side note: please mention &quot;syzygy&quot; in your message; this little trick helps filter for those who pay attention to details), lacking sheer know-how, and frustrated that I don&#x27;t have the additional capacity to make the time investments that those activities properly deserve. I&#x27;m way stretched - I feel like too little jam spread over too much toast. Clearly, it&#x27;s time to ask for assistance.<p>So, I&#x27;m looking to strike a long-term, productive relationship with a talented and motivated person&#x2F;people. An accomplished-but-still hungry autodidact, self motivated and disciplined. Like mercenaries or crack lieutenants, we&#x27;ll cooperate to grow the product and ourselves. And if we find our synergy is great, the future is wide open..<p>Posting as throwaway. Pls Contact me using the email address in this account&#x27;s profile.
======
danieltillett
What is your customer lifetime value[0]? This one value controls everything
you need to do.

0\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_lifetime_value](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_lifetime_value)

~~~
throwaway-dena
Appreciate your help! Not sure how to calculate this; I'll look into it,
this[0] looks like a good start. I can say there are annual payment plans
based on seats, with reduced pricing for continued patronage. ARR for each
customer is (I'm eyeballing it) roughly 700 USD for smaller customers and 4000
per year for the larger ones, and they buy 1- or sometimes 3-year licenses.

Most growth has come from customers that have just bought licenses with no or
little questions. Some I have interacted with and arrived at a sale or a
rejection that I can act on. And the rest slip through my fingers, like
sand...

0\. Referring to [https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-calculate-the-LTV-in-a-
subs...](https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-calculate-the-LTV-in-a-subscription-
SaaS-business-for-a-company-that-most-of-its-customers-
chose-a-1-6-12-24-or-36-month-plan) The article also mentions (LTV / CAC) > 3
"is good" which I've seen elsewhere, like First Round Review IIRC. Is this
what you might have in mind?

~~~
danieltillett
This is tricky. Depending on your churn you are right on the border of a
direct sales model being viable. The rough rule of thumb is you need a CLV of
$2000 for direct sales to be viable. Below this number and you need to rely on
marketing to drive inbound sales.

My best guess is you are sitting in the sales valley of death. You have two
ways to go - figure out how to increase your CLV so that direct selling (i.e.
sales people on the phone) is viable, or decreasing your true CAC so that you
can avoid the need for sales people.

There is an alternative which I suspect you don’t want to hear - stay small
and handle all the sales yourself. If you do this you can make money with a
CLV well below $1000 and still do OK (it will be a ton of work). You are not
going to be a billionaire, but you might be a millionaire.

~~~
throwaway-dena
According to scuttlebutt from other vendors on the same platform, word is that
4000$ per annum is the mode, representative of larger customers and therefore
their tendency to stay as a customer for at least a generation worth, say 3
years. That would place CLV around the 12,000$ mark. Not sure if that is
optimistic or pessimistic. There is a little churn, but lots of repeats too,
makes me feel surprised.

Given that, going back to your initial statement, is there some particular
assessment about what I need to do?

~~~
danieltillett
The rough rule of thumb of when to bring in a professional sales person is
when you have somewhere around a million dollars of ARR. It just doesn’t work
trying to get a professional before reaching that level of turn over. I didn’t
hire any sales people in my business until I have been doing more than this
for several years.

On the topic of sales people they are very good at selling themselves and
often not so good at selling your product. I have had such a bad experience
with so-called “professionals” that I now only hire people with the right
technical background and personality and train in sales instead.

If you really want someone to help I would look for someone with no sales
experience, but who has business experience in the areas you are trying to
target AND who believes 100% in your product. They might be a little rough
around the edges with the sales patter, but being a genuine believer will more
than make up for the inexperience.

------
PaulHoule
which email address?

~~~
throwaway-dena
Thanks for pointing that out! I updated the profile

endena.ppa AT yandex DOT com

