Myself is not a very good salesman, neither my partners, since we all come from a engineering background. We can do market research, manufacture hardware and build apps, but selling our product is hard.
Any suggestions?
1. Be very careful when dealing with sales people. They will be good at selling themselves, and you do not know how to evaluate them. Do not make any promises, do not make any vague statements, esp. about equity. Also be careful regarding statements about %s of deals, ie. do they get a cut from the first 3 months of payments, or the entire lifetime of the subscription? I got burned on this one.
2. In the comments you write: "I am afraid to speak to [customers]". I will be brutally honest with you: with this sort of mindset, you will fail. If you want your startup to succeed, you will have to stretch beyond your wildest dreams. Going up and talking to your customers is the zeroth step. Keyword: stretch. Corollary: if you can't get yourself to talk to your customers, you should stop right now and get a job! (No offense!)
3. At this early stage, the process of selling is undefined, and is a sort-of engineering challenge in itself. A salesperson [that you can convince to work with you at this stage] will not figure this out for you. A salesperson will ask you who the customer is, what to tell the customer, what the pitch is, you will have to write the contract, etc. Maybe they have a few contacts, in my experience that's the most you will get out of them. Based on your description of your business, you don't need that because restaurants are everywhere, you just need to walk in and hustle.
Basically, my advice is: do _not_ look for a salesperson. Learn to do the job yourself. Once you know what the job is, what it takes to be successful, what the rates are (1 sale out of 5 pitches) then you can hire somebody and evaluate them in their first month, and hold them accountable to be at least as effective as you were.
Startups are tough! If they weren't, everybody would do it :)
How?
Riches Among the Ruins, by Robert P. Smith
High Stakes, No Prisoners, by Charles H. Ferguson
Power Schmoozing, by Terri Mandell
The Best Seller, by Forbes D. Ley
If you're selling to restaurants, read books or attend trade shows aimed at restaurant owners and managers.
Unless they have a serious track record, let any salesperson earn their way in. Don't give up equity on promises.
Checkout saastr.com http://saastr.com/2013/02/12/what-a-vp-sales-actually-does-w... http://saastr.com/2013/04/02/the-48-types-of-vp-sales-make-d... http://saastr.com/2013/11/06/if-your-vp-sales-isnt-going-to-...
P.S. I have a friend who has a restaurant-chain SaaS app and he's not enamoured with their sales setup. Speaking to him next week. Someone really needs to make a company that handles the relationship with restaurants and connects to all these related solution providers.
The biggest problem with this task is adverse selection. A salesperson who can take a product with no traction and no awareness and successfully sell it can sell any other product. The world is full of potentially but not kinetically viable products. Good salespeople have their pick of all of them. So if a salesperson is willing to talk to you... you have to wonder why you're their best option.
An approach that can work:
1. You figure out how to sell your product to some subset of its potential users.
2. You execute on that strategy until you can reliably hit some number every month.
3. You hire an inside sales person, a dial-for-dollars robot, to execute on the script that you worked out in the previous step.
Don't kid yourself about steps 1-2, or you'll just throw money away in step 3. It's important to understand the implications of this: it means you can't easily hire someone to figure out how to sell your product. You have to cross that gulf yourself.
I did this and in a few days I improved my sales skills dramatically.
Remember that selling is a proccess and a skill that can be learned, just like programming, and if you have a great teacher you can learn the basics really fast.
Too me the hardest lesson was that the more annoying and hard questions a person asks, the more interested in your product they are and the more they see how they could use the product. Not because they did not like it as I thought!
But you are right, THEY have to learn it and sell their product. Nobody can do this for them at this stage.
- Past startups that I've worked at. Unless someone has only worked at massive companies where they were completely isolated from the sales cycle, there's a pretty good chance they've had at least some interactions with sales.
- Barcamp (http://barcamp.org/w/page/402984/FrontPage) there's usually one of these in town on at least a semi-annual basis. It's not just "coders" that come out to these, people involved in all aspects of the business of software show up.
- Past clients. While doing freelance work, most of my clients were people who ran businesses, had a little to no tech background, and had an idea for a tech project that they thought could improve their business.
- Other "coders" in my network who have struck out on their own. Even if none of the above applies to you, there's a pretty good chance that there's only 2 degrees of separation between you and someone who could help.
I found the sales guy through another engineer, all it took was me asking a lot of people if they knew any sales persons willing to help me.
Sales is not about selling stuff and moving on. But it is about helping your customers success in their own business.
Then once you can show some kind of product market fit (eg your customers love it, and would be really disappointed if you pulled plug), and you're ready to begin scaling, THEN hire first sales person.
You'll have an idea of who likes your product and why, and that can give sales person a lot of confidence and focus.
To underscore what others have said, if you want to have any success, you have to sell this yourself.
Now, to answer your question, if you cannot get to your customer yourself maybe you should have not entered this market to begin with. Even if you hire a "co-founder" or an independent contractor to "sell" for you this may still not work out. For one thing, it seems you have not tested out your idea with customers. So, you may or may not have a product that solves a pain point. Although, you may get lucky to find a partner who is effectively able to communicate back customer feedback to help you in product development.
This stuff will take time. Just don't give up. And I'd suggest if you really believe in your idea you should go talk to your customers yourself. If this idea doesn't work out, next time may be build something for yourself or your friends so you don't have as much anxiety when it comes to talking to your users.
1) If nothing else, people who already sell to restaurants understand the market and can introduce you to other owners you can speak with, and
2) You probably want a salesperson with industry expertise and existing relationships, rather than someone with App / SaaS experience. Even if they've previously sold produce or tableware or linen services, you can teach them the technical basics and they can sell it in terms that will create cutthrough in the market.
Lastly, when people Ask HN about finding a technical co-founder, the advice is nearly unanimous: try learning some of the skills yourself. The same is true of Sales and Business strategy - you may never become an expert, but forcing yourself to learn the basics will help you identify the really good operators in that space.
Good luck!
To know which kind of sale person is best for you - you have to try to do it yourself first: know your customers, know their problems and which are the values they see in your product (I assume you have done this before building the product).
Then start searching key people in the industry you're targeting and ask for help - get into that network and you'll find your person.
Avoid sales consultant. Avoid external sales company. It's too early for you. You need someone internal that will do more than just selling your product. You need someone that will listen to any comments, feedbacks, needs, feelings of your potential customers and will identify opportunities, product changes, propositions and values.
To get him/her on board pay attention to do not give out shares on day one. Setup an option pool with vesting and link i.e. salary with company performance (not personal one). I can give you some further tips on that if needed. I did that myself with a new biz dev guy.
All the best!
I looked locally and abroad for a founder, and had investors ready to continue to back me. I'm a good engineer and gave sales a go but realised I'm just not cut out for it. I put up ads and got plenty of interest (early product hunt advertiser) but never found the person making investors were willing to put their cash on the line for.
It's a tough find. Especially if you don't have a sexy as fuck product. I wish you luck!
Tl;dr without a go to market or sales co founder, chances are you're fucked.
Edit: Abysmal spelling.
To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others: Daniel H. Pink - http://www.amazon.com/To-Sell-Is-Human-Surprising/dp/1594631...
Feel free to reach out if you need some guidance or advice.
You can post an something on it saying your are looking for a CMO or a VP of sales. People on AngelList are usually really smart, get startups and are looking for opportunities like that!
Money and confidence. It's probably better than you think!
It's possible this product does something completely different, but its also possible that some of the difficulties the OP and his cofounder are having selling it are more down to it being particularly difficult and time consuming to convince the market they need it, and less down anything they're doing wrong in their sales approach.
once some product market fit is established, and you need more bodies and time to expand, you should do it.
this is what I learned this year.
If you are hungry and unable to find food, be the bread.