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Ask HN: How to pre-sell B2B software?
We're building a B2B specifically for software companies. We are a couple months away from a beta, but we've received advice to start pre-selling our software.
What's the best way to pre-sell B2B software? We don't have a fully functioning product yet - but we have enough of a prototype ready to get a feel for how it's going to work.
Do pre-launch websites work? Should we just cold email companies? Should we wait until we are closer to an MVP to start selling?
- palidanx 13y agoJust my two cents, but if you know your core functionality, you can try to meet your stakeholders and build a relationship before the sale. For my b2b saas product, I pitched the product to local businesses just to see how it would work. They gave some valuable feedback to change the product, then I cold e-mailed prospects. As much as I don't like buying templates, the cold e-mail template from appsumo really worked well for me http://www.appsumo.com/sumo-email-templates/ http://www.appsumo.com/sumo-email-templates/
- alexdevkar 13y agoIf you are able to sell your product before it's ready, that is a great sign that you've found a customer's pain point. However, selling vapor-ware can be very hard. And you don't want to start your relationship with a customer with delays and buggy software. Instead of pre-selling, consider talking to customers about what you're working on, having them take a look at the prototype and getting their feedback. You might not get the clear signal of a buy/no buy decision, but you will get help understanding what really matters in your product. As always, depends on the particular business. Good luck!
- enricotal 13y agohttp://www.agis.co http://www.agis.co
- andydrish 13y agoVery cool. What is the product? At this point, I wouldn't put any energy into the product. I would focus all of your efforts on selling until you have 3 to 5 customers who have paid you. Here are two case studies on people pre-selling B2B based software companies before writing a line of code: Carl sold a few grand building software for physical therapist offices: http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/research-validation-profit/ http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/research-validation-profit... Josh - Sold $22K in sales with 73 customers. Selling CRM software. http://thefoundation.com/josh-story/ http://thefoundation.com/josh-story/ What other questions do you have? Here to help.
- 6thSigma 13y agoIt's a real-time employee feedback service for software companies. It's kind of like Salesforce's Work.com[1] but tailored for software development teams. We also help gauge relative productivity of employees. [1] http://work.com/ http://work.com/
- kayhi 13y agoAndy, nice seeing you on Hacker News, keep up the great work and send Dane my best.
- fbliss 13y agoHow about setting up a presentation/web conference? Then call and invite people over the phone. I think you're more likely to have success than cold email - I've got an ongoing project where we had 0 success with cold emailing, even with very personalized approaches. Hour for hour, the more you can engage someone via live exchange, the better.