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It depends on your field. If you're a services company (as in, consulting and subcontracting) you're dead in the water unless you have a sales team day 0, even

by hguant 5y ago

It depends on your field. If you're a services company (as in, consulting and subcontracting) you're dead in the water unless you have a sales team day 0, even if that sales team is just the founder working over time. Those places live and die by their contracts. There's a large number of small (<5) person companies that work entirely like that. They're not _sexy_ and they're never going to be unicorns, but they make a good amount of money for the people involved when they inevitably get purchased by some larger group.

mooreds 5y ago
That is a good point. I would say that this post is not aimed at consulting companies, which typically don't have a community strategy (unless they are a participant in another organizations community as a way of driving business). I know a couple of consulting companies that are doing just fine, but I agree, they'll need a sales team. Will they need an enterprise sales team? Probably not, it'll be the founders and once they get to a certain size a sales team. But not the kind of sales team that Snowflake has.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  I've worked for a few sales driven companies in the past and usually there were two sales forces. There was an internal group focussed on telephone sales (they would probably be more email now). They were really just a step up from administration, accepting orders, sending out quotes, possibly generating leads. Then there would be the real sales team who were out visiting customers and supported by the internal team. A lot of their work is keeping existing customers happy. My gut feeling is you wouldn't have much success selling consulting via an internal team. Because of the nature of the work it is always going to be closer to the second group, more like enterprise sales. What I find interesting now is how big some companies can get on the back of the first example. Google seems to be built on that.

by hguant 5y ago

mooreds 5y ago

That is a good point. I would say that this post is not aimed at consulting companies, which typically don't have a community strategy (unless they are a participant in another organizations community as a way of driving business). I know a couple of consulting companies that are doing just fine, but I agree, they'll need a sales team. Will they need an enterprise sales team? Probably not, it'll be the founders and once they get to a certain size a sales team. But not the kind of sales team that Snowflake has.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
I've worked for a few sales driven companies in the past and usually there were two sales forces. There was an internal group focussed on telephone sales (they would probably be more email now). They were really just a step up from administration, accepting orders, sending out quotes, possibly generating leads. Then there would be the real sales team who were out visiting customers and supported by the internal team. A lot of their work is keeping existing customers happy. My gut feeling is you wouldn't have much success selling consulting via an internal team. Because of the nature of the work it is always going to be closer to the second group, more like enterprise sales. What I find interesting now is how big some companies can get on the back of the first example. Google seems to be built on that.