
Ask HN: How do you pre-sell B2B software? - memn0nis
Hi all,<p>I&#x27;m building a freemium SaaS product that instantly lets PMs identify and contact their users in-app to conduct user interviews. We&#x27;re currently about a month away from a functional MVP that I would feel comfortable that customers would be happy with &#x2F; see value from.<p>Everyone I&#x27;ve talked to says to pre-sell the software to 5-10 customers to ensure there is really demand for our product. I&#x27;ve never sold anything in my life, so wanted to ask whether anyone has any advice for selling a product that is a few weeks away for being real? What would you say in emails to potential customers, and if you get them on the phone, how do you ask them to put down a credit card number for something that they&#x27;re not sure will actually exist?<p>What we&#x27;ve tried:<p>1. Cold email campaigns to our website<p>2. Creating a sales pitch deck to walk through with people on the phone: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;presentation&#x2F;d&#x2F;1S_3q78ZR3FY8D1L6Dmv6X7yiZXgfD8rIJsbHDE6buvU&#x2F;edit?usp=sharing<p>3. Creating a demo in one of our other products to show potential customers how we personally use the product<p>I&#x27;m not sure where to go from here, so any advice is appreciated!
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GRBurst
I am not sure whether I have enough information to answer your question, but:

Do you know his the day to day business for a PM looks like, so did you
completely understand the business and the problem? If not I suggest to reach
out to PMs in your network like in your family, your friends or just through
LinkedIn or sth (LinkedIn worked for me here). Ask them whether they help you
validating a business idea. Make a (video) call with them and ask them
questions to identify where and in what situation your MVP would be helpful. I
guess you have some hypotheses that you should verify. That helps you with the
first step: Validating that there is a real problem.

Then you can go on with the next step and reach out to (new) PMs (again:
LinkedIn may be useful here). You are now in a situation where you should know
about their daily business such that you can ask questions that lead to the
problem. Once this becomes clear to them, say you are building a solution. Ask
them whether that would pay for that or better about how much they are willing
to pay. You can even try different prices and ask them whether they would pay
the price.

I am not sure if you have to be able to sell a product before MVP stage. If it
is really only a month to go, I would build it and then go back to the PMs you
talked to earlier. If they all changed their minds suddenly, then your
solution is not the answer to the problem or the problem is not frequent /
real / big enough, but you only lost 1 month. But maybe they are happy and are
willing to help you.

Best wishes from my side; and don't give up yet ;-)

