
How sales complexity impacts startup viability - brk
http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-complexity/
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patio11
This is one of the main reasons I sell to teachers as opposed to selling to
school districts: I just could not possibly keep ahead of the sales cycle for
educational purchasing, with pushing the sale through multiple layers of
bureaucracy, getting the PO, and then chasing down payment, all while
otherwise occupied with everything else I have to do.

I'm hoping to be in the 37Signals-y sweet spot for my next product: zero
marginal effort for the typical sale _but_ sufficient value to have lifetime
customer values in the $X00 range rather than $29.95.

~~~
DenisM
What is your next product? More importantly, how did you arrive at it?

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tkiley
Great article -- there's nothing groundbreaking here, but it's a good
exploration of a topic that is often non-intuitive to engineers.

High sales complexity isn't necessarily the kiss of death for a startup; it
just means that you need strong sales talent early on (preferably in one or
more of the founders). Sure, you do everything you can to shift your product
as far toward self-service sales as possible, but at the end of the day, if
you can't sell it without being out in the field, that means most other
companies can't do it, either. Presto, barrier to entry.

My startup is definitely on the high complexity end of the spectrum; our sales
cycle is anywhere from 3 months to 3 years. Right now, we have no direct
competitors; this is probably at least partly due to the complexity of the
sales process.

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jasonlotito
My start up was founded by 3 core people, myself and 2 sales guys. People
always remarked that I was the brains, but I gave them lots of credit. They
went out to the shows, met the people, worked the sales. They brought in the
people to use the technology I spent time building. I loved that i didn't have
to handle the day to day business stuff or run out after people.

They loved that they could leave the tech stuff in my hands. It also helped
that they could put me in front of potential clients and I could actually sell
the product as well. And, as the tech guy, a lot of the prospects assumed I
wasn't gonna try to sell them. I never lied, but damn, I was able to soothe
any tech concerns with relative ease.

