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>Sales Mistake #1 - Building Before you Start Selling What if the customer wants to see a demo ? Is it better to inform them from the very start that this is a

>Sales Mistake #1 - Building Before you Start Selling What if the customer wants to see a demo ? Is it better to inform them from the very start that this is a conversation about the product that is non existent ? Isn't it better to have a MVP in place. Almost all the sales guides/people tell this. But this is also something I can't get my head around.

sdrothrock 8y ago
Sales people can sell things they don't have on hand, and doing the selling first can help verify that the proposed product is in fact, a good fit for the market (or that the market even exists).
slow_donkey 8y ago
I'm not fully qualified to answer but from my experience in building our product, sales isn't necessarily about pitching - if you're actively listening to potential users you're able to better understand what to even build. The article actually does a great job of explaining this imo.
Fergi 8y ago
(Jeff from PipelineDB / author here) Good questions! I would definitely suggest being straightforward and honest with the potential customers you're talking to. And ideally, it would be better to have a MVP you can demo than nothing, but the main point here is that talking to potential customers before building anything is a better strategy than building a product and then talking to customers. If you talk to a bunch of potential customers about a product idea and discover that there is demand for the product, then building a MVP that you can demo would be a logical next step. And if the MVP is something you can build quickly, then it probably makes sense to do this sooner than later. The trap to avoid here is building products in a vacuum, based on assumptions about what people want and will pay for. Doing the customer development (pre-sales) work to prove, or disprove, customer demand for a product before building the product is wise.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  > “If you talk to a bunch of potential customers about a product idea and discover that there is demand for the product, then building a MVP that you can demo would be a logical next step. And if the MVP is something you can build quickly, then it probably makes sense to do this sooner than later.” Sales to Engineering Managers: Alright team, we’ve talked with a lot of customers and realized there is a huge demand for this thing called a perpetual motion machine. Let’s try to get a prototype built for the client on-site next week, ok? Engineering Managers to Engineers: Alright everyone, we scoped out this perpetual motion machine into 3 Jira tickets. The first ticket is 3 unitless Fibonacci numbers of work, to create the base machine we’re talking about here. The next ticket is another 3 units to have someone mock-up the motion part, not sure exactly what they want here but maybe just put an RC car underneath of the machine from the first ticket? Finally we saw “perpetual” in the request from sales and that really sounded like a time sink so we pushed back. We’re going to time box this one and call it a 2-pointer. We’re thinking don’t spend more than a few hours on the perpetual part. Let’s do it everyone! Engineers to recruiters: The job just isn’t allowing me to fulfill the technical goals I want to pursue. Recruiters to engineers: I’ve got a hot new start-up you’d be great for. They only pay 60% of market rates but they totally need someone who can build out their entirely unvetted vision of what products to sell!
  - yread 8y ago
    You should have really spent the time it took you to type in this over-the-top response to read the article with a bit more sympathy instead. It's not necessary to solve unsolvable technical challenges to make something that helps people.
    - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
      How do you know they are solvable if you pick what problems to solve before consulting engineers about feasibility or cost?
      - slededit 8y ago
stingraycharles 8y ago
What we did was making a landing page somewhere, "sign up for limited beta access", and gauge interest that way. We collected a few email addresses, but it was mostly for validation of the idea, that there was a genuine audience.
- Fergi 8y ago
  I think this is a smart strategy, and is essentially using marketing in the same way that this post suggests using sales, to gauge customer interest in a potential product. The extent to which manual sales outreach or the kind of marketing technique described here should be used likely depends on the kind of product in question. B2B products with higher contract prices and a smaller number of total potential customers will likely require a sales strategy, where B2C products with lots of users and lower contract values may be better served with this kind of marketing tactic. Great point, though! This is an important topic to consider with marketing and sales strategy development. Thanks for the comment.
trevyn 8y ago
The fantasy product in their mind is often a more compelling product than the actual product. See: Kickstarter.
avinium 8y ago
I want to hear from people who have actually done this. I suspect they all have well-known track records and are selling to people who trust them to deliver. I still haven’t met anyone personally (myself included) who managed to presell software with nothing but a presentation. I think the more common route is “find the first customer and build v1 for them as a consultant at a steep discount”.
softwarefounder 8y ago
Your 100% right. Especially in mid to large B2B plays.
pjmlp 8y ago
Most of the time that MVP can be done with some kind of wireframe tooling. Customers just want to have a better picture how it is supposed to work, instead of looking at powerpoints.

sdrothrock 8y ago

Sales people can sell things they don't have on hand, and doing the selling first can help verify that the proposed product is in fact, a good fit for the market (or that the market even exists).

slow_donkey 8y ago

I'm not fully qualified to answer but from my experience in building our product, sales isn't necessarily about pitching - if you're actively listening to potential users you're able to better understand what to even build. The article actually does a great job of explaining this imo.

Fergi 8y ago

(Jeff from PipelineDB / author here) Good questions! I would definitely suggest being straightforward and honest with the potential customers you're talking to. And ideally, it would be better to have a MVP you can demo than nothing, but the main point here is that talking to potential customers before building anything is a better strategy than building a product and then talking to customers. If you talk to a bunch of potential customers about a product idea and discover that there is demand for the product, then building a MVP that you can demo would be a logical next step. And if the MVP is something you can build quickly, then it probably makes sense to do this sooner than later. The trap to avoid here is building products in a vacuum, based on assumptions about what people want and will pay for. Doing the customer development (pre-sales) work to prove, or disprove, customer demand for a product before building the product is wise.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
> “If you talk to a bunch of potential customers about a product idea and discover that there is demand for the product, then building a MVP that you can demo would be a logical next step. And if the MVP is something you can build quickly, then it probably makes sense to do this sooner than later.” Sales to Engineering Managers: Alright team, we’ve talked with a lot of customers and realized there is a huge demand for this thing called a perpetual motion machine. Let’s try to get a prototype built for the client on-site next week, ok? Engineering Managers to Engineers: Alright everyone, we scoped out this perpetual motion machine into 3 Jira tickets. The first ticket is 3 unitless Fibonacci numbers of work, to create the base machine we’re talking about here. The next ticket is another 3 units to have someone mock-up the motion part, not sure exactly what they want here but maybe just put an RC car underneath of the machine from the first ticket? Finally we saw “perpetual” in the request from sales and that really sounded like a time sink so we pushed back. We’re going to time box this one and call it a 2-pointer. We’re thinking don’t spend more than a few hours on the perpetual part. Let’s do it everyone! Engineers to recruiters: The job just isn’t allowing me to fulfill the technical goals I want to pursue. Recruiters to engineers: I’ve got a hot new start-up you’d be great for. They only pay 60% of market rates but they totally need someone who can build out their entirely unvetted vision of what products to sell!
- yread 8y ago
  You should have really spent the time it took you to type in this over-the-top response to read the article with a bit more sympathy instead. It's not necessary to solve unsolvable technical challenges to make something that helps people.
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    How do you know they are solvable if you pick what problems to solve before consulting engineers about feasibility or cost?
    - slededit 8y ago

stingraycharles 8y ago

What we did was making a landing page somewhere, "sign up for limited beta access", and gauge interest that way. We collected a few email addresses, but it was mostly for validation of the idea, that there was a genuine audience.

Fergi 8y ago
I think this is a smart strategy, and is essentially using marketing in the same way that this post suggests using sales, to gauge customer interest in a potential product. The extent to which manual sales outreach or the kind of marketing technique described here should be used likely depends on the kind of product in question. B2B products with higher contract prices and a smaller number of total potential customers will likely require a sales strategy, where B2C products with lots of users and lower contract values may be better served with this kind of marketing tactic. Great point, though! This is an important topic to consider with marketing and sales strategy development. Thanks for the comment.

trevyn 8y ago

The fantasy product in their mind is often a more compelling product than the actual product. See: Kickstarter.

avinium 8y ago

I want to hear from people who have actually done this. I suspect they all have well-known track records and are selling to people who trust them to deliver. I still haven’t met anyone personally (myself included) who managed to presell software with nothing but a presentation. I think the more common route is “find the first customer and build v1 for them as a consultant at a steep discount”.

softwarefounder 8y ago

Your 100% right. Especially in mid to large B2B plays.

pjmlp 8y ago

Most of the time that MVP can be done with some kind of wireframe tooling. Customers just want to have a better picture how it is supposed to work, instead of looking at powerpoints.