CHOOSING A ROUTE TO MARKET IS ESSENTIAL FOR EVERY SOFTWARE / SERVICES BUSINESS TO EXPAND.

HOW ARE YOU GOING TO SELL?

There are multiple routes to market and a lot will depend on your pricing and positioning of your product.

·      The Web

·      Partners (multiple types)

·      Direct sales

·      Maybe all three

For the purpose of this blog lets us focus on direct sales. Direct sales will need a number of additional resources to help make them successful.

BDR (Business Development Representative) or SDR (Sales Development Representative) to drive qualified leads, unless you’re hiring from the competition, and they already understand their territory. America is a big market, and I believe you will still need to have a BDR/SDR in place. These services can be bought commercially and especially in the startup phase of a new company will be managed better if you find the right provider. Pre-Sales support, this can be provided remotely to start especially if you are on a tight budget but obviously there are time zone and cultural issues speaking to a US audience. Admin support, pricing proposal review, SOW etc. again initially these can be provided remotely to start with.

Finally, the salespeople, initially they will need to be self-sufficient, know their prospect business and be able to relate to their pain points and ideally have prior knowledge of a solution similar to yours. Initially these salespeople may be expensive to hire but overtime as your business grows this job description may change along with costs.

In a prior role, running the US Operation for a UK company we had a SaaS product targeted at Aerospace and Defense. We found the best salespeople to be ex-military people who had used a content solution similar to our solution as part of their role while in the service. They understood the prospect's challenges and could relate the benefits of our solution. While they did not have an aggressive sales style, they were very successful at starting our business in the US marketplace.