> can be put trying to convince prospective partners
This is so true. Early on, I tried to sell our product through a system integrator channel. I hoped they would "do the sales for us." The systems integrator was super focused on sales, they talked to our target customer all the time, and they seemed super excited to sell our product.
But, it was a total flop. They didn't really seem to understand our product, and they would say anything to close a deal. Sometimes we did a lot of work, then got cut from the deal late in the game. More often, we ended up in the deal, but then had to deal with promises to the customer that didn't make any sense. It was like "the integrator said it would do what?"
I agree that you have to be really careful about selling through partners. Interestingly, the integrator channel was primarily for another, much larger software company. I told the CEO how excited we were to partner with the integrators. He looked at me and said "oh, we wish we could get rid of the integrators, but its too late because they control access to the customers." Luckily, we were small enough that walking away from the integrators worked for us.
If I were you, I would focus on identifying a few verticals where your product works well (say, car dealerships), then try to figure out how to sell to them. What are their concerns? What drives their decisions? How can you contact the right person to pitch your product? etc. If you can build a system around a vertical, you will feel so much better about sales. And once you build a system around one vertical, you can start looking for additional verticals to target.