| All true. However there are also a bunch of mistakes sales people make when selling software: Selling something that hasn't been built or planned yet. This leads to disappointed customers and/or rushed delivery of half assed features. This is easy for the sales persons to do and they tend to move on anyway before the shit hits the fan. Aldo, it's technically not their problem when the shit hits the fan. Confusing what the customer says they want with what they actually need. This leads to wasted development effort building something that doesn't ultimately solve the customer's problem, that nobody else really wants. When sales people take charge of requirements, always question the rationale. Giving into a big customer's demands to land a deal and thus crippling the company doing custom development for that one customer at a huge discount and at the cost of shipping value to other paying customers. I would say this is the #1 mistake in selling SAAS software. It's literally a company killer as often the customer is unhappy anyway and then cancels the deal. I've seen multiple startups get stranded doing all sorts of crap for a customer that ultimately walks away. Listening to a customer that has not committed to paying. Before they pay, they are just haggling over details. They'll want everything you suggest and then some. After they pay, they've committed to you and then you can be reasonable about their demands. Especially in an early phase of a company everybody is interested in becoming a customer if only you were to do X, Y, And Z. You check back two weeks later they'll come up with more crap. It never ends and they may never buy something. My recommendation is to always build an MVP and try to sell the MVP. If you can't sell the MVP, it's not viable. If it takes a long time to build it, it is not minimal. If you have no MVP you have nothing to sell. An MVP is not a click demo, it needs to be a functioning thing that delivers value to paying customers. Building it should be proportional to the amount of risk you are willing to take financially and the amount of money you are going to make if successful. Of course definitely talk to potential customers as early as you can but don't promise anything you can't deliver. After the MVP stage work with roadmaps and prioritize according to what is needed, feasible, and valuable. Most stuff customers want fails at least one of these tests. Most sales people are poor judges of feasibility or necessity. |