A long time ago, I was the Product manager at Computer Associates and charged with launching their newly minted Windows based Firewall s/w ; we did all the usu

A long time ago, I was the Product manager at Computer Associates and charged with launching their newly minted Windows based Firewall s/w ; we did all the usual things -- channel promotions, VAR training and we did not make any impact. Checkpoint continued to rule and our sales were a rounding error. Then we tried a different track : CA already had a well regarded Anti-Virus product in the market -- we rebranded our s/w as a "Network Security Option" and we atleast managed to convert out existing customers to grab a decent marketshare and achieve profitability. I bring up this anecdotal evidence as you mentioned "status-quo" as your competition. We had better results when we leveraged status quo as our "ally and partner" and used it to succeed. In this case status quo was a sister product. In your case, status quo implies that people are doing something already which could be done better/faster/cheaper with your product. Find out what they are doing now, which product they use now and try and build a partnership with that product. Nothing flatters a product manager more that having Business Development guy from a new company calling up and seeking ways to partner. If your product can be integrated with sa Microsoft Sharepoint or Biztalk -- get a developer license and build an integration widget with those. Can it be integrated with IBM or Salesforce or whatever bigger company -- find the best fit for your case, build a solution that profitable to both and increases the mind-share for the big dog and have them take you with them to the prospective CIO office. Just my $0.02. I also am struggling with positioning for my product which is a B2C and goes up against Youtube. I would love to hear your thoughts on that.