Ask HN: Advice on pre-selling enterprise software? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Advice on pre-selling enterprise software?

13 pointstixocloud8 comments

Hi,

On the back of our offering, we've managed to book a few demos with enterprises. Wondering if anyone has any advice on whether we can/should pre-sell to enterprise companies given that there's still quite a lot of product to be built? How will we structure the deal?

Cheers

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If you don't have any experience with Enterprise sales, you're in for a rough time with an early stage product. These customers are demanding, the sales cycles are long, and there are often many players you need to please. I would recommend finding someone experienced in Enterprise sales before chasing those customers. Otherwise, you'll probably end up wasting a lot of time and effort chasing deals that just aren't going to happen.

Thanks. Stuck in a little bit of a rut as there seems to be more interest on the enterprise side than lower down the market. They’ve been our best indication of viability so far. SMEs haven’t really responded as much.

My advice: don't pre-sell anything unless a) it's simply to get a public beta in the hands of customers that want/need to use it right away, and b) even then, have a practical and do-able timeline in place for finishing any documentation, etc. that needs to be done for the final, polished product. And, above all else, do not spend the money - just put it in an escrow account or something similar.

I've been involved as a consultant with a company that took deposit money from customers, used the money to fund development of the software, and didn't deliver. It's surprisingly easy to screw up, so don't put yourself in that position. It's extremely stressful for the principals in the company, as well as the engineers tasked with the herculean task of trying to create something lasting while under the gun.

Thanks. The challenge I have is that we don’t have enough runway for our engineers and hoping to secure funds either through a paid POC or use the deposit to raise funds.

Any thoughts?

Is there any chance that the engineers can get some "sweat equity" in the company ? It really does align the interests of the engineers with the outcome of the company, and can be a positive if it helps you get through this existential crisis (100% of zero is still zero). This is exactly what I tried, in vain, to convince the owner of the company (that I described in my original reply) to do. I also recommended that they let any non-essential personnel go and stick with the bare minimum core that they needed to actually finish the product. And yes, it will take longer to get the product done, but unless you're doing a product that is easily replicated (doubtful, if it's enterprise), then it really doesn't matter. Good enterprise software typically lasts for decades, not years.

How confident are you on delivering what you are going to sell?

I worked for a global healthcare IT company that was notoriously bad at selling "futures" - modules, functionality and even applications that didn't exist. It came back to bite them on the ass massively - even with a strong and large engineering/test/release team.

Can you phase the product and structure the deal based on that? For example:

1. Sign contract or MoU with enterprise including timelines. 2. Deliver core functionality and realise first revenue. etc.

We’re quite confident at delivering and already have a prototype going. However, most of the engineers are still part-time on this and I’d like to secure something from a prospect to be able to raise funding.

We could potentially phase the product. The other thing we were thinking of is a paid POC/trial.

Any learnings you can share from that experience? Was it overpromising or overextending to too many clients?

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