5 ms·

Thanks for sharing your story. It's super interesting. I've seen the long, drawn out and high touch enterprise sales process shock a lot of product and enginee

by skewart 11y ago

Thanks for sharing your story. It's super interesting. I've seen the long, drawn out and high touch enterprise sales process shock a lot of product and engineering driven startups. It's too bad. I think this heavy sales process that enterprises usually demand slows down the pace of innovation. I mean, I get why they want account executives, and even why they feel more comfortable dealing with a seemingly "bigger" company. But there are a lot of people with game-changing ideas who can't get them off the ground because they can't build an effective sales org on a shoestring. I wonder if there's a way around this situation. I mean, maybe some kind of AEs-as-a-service thing could be helpful (if that doesn't already exist).

cglee 11y ago
There are sales-as-a-service type of companies out there, but most I've seen are a bit sleezy. Premium ones, I imagine, would cost similarly to a good salesperson. The most successful model I've seen is hiring recent college grads who are sharp and willing to learn. They are cheap and will dive into the industry they're selling. A lot of funded startups operate this way, usually led by an experienced salesperson.
sk5t 11y ago
Folks have tried "AEs-as-a-service" but there is no happy balancing point between the very high cost of good AEs, customers of the service having effectively no way to monitor or control the AEs' behavior, extremely long time to payoff, and the natural awkwardness of trying to represent a company of which one is not a true member.