Anyone else at a startup with a good product no one understands?

This is just to vent.


My Outbound game has been on fire, like the best stuff I have written in my life. Can't connect on cold calls to save my life, Linkedin is hit and miss.


With a ton of industry knowledge I know the tool is awesome and solving a huge problem (whoopie). Seeing a complete lack of traction, and struggling to find the right way to put our product description in a box people will understand.


Has me feeling like everyone but me is stupid. Also, maybe I'm stupid and everyone else knows something I don't.


Just me?

๐Ÿ”Ž Prospecting
๐Ÿ™ Mental Wellness
โœŒ๏ธ Growing Pains
24
Fribbles
Notable Contributor
5
Sales doosh
Whats the product?
Incognito
WR Officer
4
Master of Disaster
Welcome to construction insurance.

โ€what do you mean I have no coverage?!?!? I got certs from all my subs! Says clearly what their limits are and it totally matches my obligations!!! How was I supposed to know they canceled their policy???? There isnโ€™t any word like โ€œhammer clauseโ€ - I would totally remember that!!! Whatโ€™s this action over thing??? The employee already got workers comp and now they can sue me anyway??? AND NOW I HAVE TO PAY SEVEN FIGURES TO FIX IT AND FINISHย MY JOBS FUCK YOU! I DONT CARE THAT I TOLD YOU TO MAKE IT CHEAP!!!!โ€ย 
Incognito
WR Officer
2
Master of Disaster
Also, people only care about money and saving them time and effort. Everything else is just blah blah blah
ColdCall
Valued Contributor
4
Account Executive
I've worked in SaaS Start Ups for the last 10 years, all with a great product but new to the market. A few things I've noticed:ย 

1) Its easy to be 'smart' and miss out on sales.ย 

People can be lazy and asking them to think or work differently can be counter productive. Often your tool can make their job better, but they may see it as their job is threatened. Selling features of a product will lose to solving their issue!ย 

2) The power of champions/case studiesย 

Often times I let my customers speak to prospects. This helps them see a social proof the product works, also removes you from sales person and more 'trusted advisor'. Get a prospect to close for you, and build a better relationship.ย 

3) Discovery is key

If you can clearly understand a customers pain and reasons for change- you can pull back on this through out the process and link everything back to a company goal.ย 


It's very hard as a challenger, especially when you don't have a huge footprint, but each deal is rewarding!ย 
HyperGrowth
Opinionated
3
Account Executive
If this solves a huge problem, I would first identify who is your ideal customer - both role and industry. Then instead of focusing on the product description focus on the problem. What does the problem lead to for that prospect? What happens if it doesnโ€™t get solved? Then, mention how youโ€™re working with similar people at similar companies to solve X by doing Y. Keep it simple. You can get complex on the demo.
Diablo
Politicker
2
Sr. AE
Hey dude, first of stop getting bogged down, happens to many.

Are you the only sales guy or you have a team? If you have a team, what are they doing to be successful.

Also, find your value prop - what is that core thing your product solves and how company is the best to do it.ย 
ChumpChange
Politicker
2
Channel Manager
I always fall back to what a mentor told me which has helped me SIGNIFICANTLY.ย  Don't tell me... show me.ย  Paint the picture that I am not seeing.ย  Let me (the buyer) figure everything else out.ย ย 
SadnessEngine
Fire Starter
1
Account Executive
Everyone who's asking what I'm selling, I'm one out of four AEs, and the most effective on outbound right now.ย 

It's a data management platform, some might call it automation.ย 

It's complex space, crowded with a lot of people doing things the wrong way.ย 

Not saying you guys can't give me some guidance, I'm just also pretty clear that we are early to market in some ways.ย 
PhlipOut
Politicker
0
Account Executive
maybe you are early, so lots of your outbound will have to be focused on educating buyers on the problem.ย 
maybe they are unaware they have it, or changing is too much of a hassle until the house is on fire.

having said that, great points on refocusing on your ICPs and hitting up the right personas.

I have worked in a small startup. our product was new and better than most legacy ones but people were not yet ready to trust machine learning so lots of education was needed. Also implementation was a bitch (6-9 months) so whenever you are in a "replacement" consider people will resist big changes for as long as they can
JustGonnaSendIt
Politicker
1
Burn Towns, Get Money
I was at an early-stage startup and rode it until Unicorn status earlier in my career. When we first started, nobody could clearly articulate what we did and what our value was without a 1 hour conversation.

The better we got at crystallizing this message, the better our pipeline got, and the better our win-rate got.

However, we had to 'try on' several different approaches to the messaging over the years to finally land on what works. Now that I've left, they have continued to refine the message (I keep tabs on them for... equity reasons).

What you really need is an ELI5 messaging approach. I think the quote from Einstein is "If you can't explain it simply, you don't know it well enough."

This pisses off founders and R&D teams, but it's a reality. Most people at startups are so passionate and deep into what you're working on that they fail to step back and recognize that the vast majority of prospects aren't on that level.

The number 1 thing that helped us crystallize an effective and efficient message was working with outside prospecting firms that demanded a simple message to execute on, as well as working with industry analysts (e.g. Gartner, Forrester) to help us determine what industry categories / jargon were most applicable to what we do.

Honestly, I think this is the hardest thing about startups. Ideas are great and innovation is great, but if you can't very simply give someone else a mental map of why you're awesome, all that effort is wasted.

You're not stupid. You're an important part of relaying feedback from the GTM strategy to the folks that are developing both messaging and products. This is totally accurate feedback that is important to communicate... tactfully.ย 

Remember, this product is your Founder's baby. Don't slap the baby.
Temp
Good Citizen
0
SDR
What personas are you reaching out to and what problem does your company solve?
cw95
Politicker
0
Sales Development Lead
Nah I feel you - very frustrating. The market will slowly learn when more companies similar to you appear - annoyingly it reduces your market too!ย 
homeschooled
Opinionated
0
Executive Client Partner
Go read New Sales Simplified, the chapters on developing a sales story. Then happy to jump on a call to talk through your approach and what your company is doing.
SadnessEngine
Fire Starter
1
Account Executive
This is quality advise, I'm going to check it out and let you know if it was helpful. Thank you!
Upper_Class_SaaS
Politicker
0
Account Executive
No but that would be tough lol... sorry mane
MyAnonymousName
Opinionated
0
Sales Leader
As another poster said, with Outbound to be effective you need to have a good story.

Paint a picture of their current situation, and then show them where you have taken other similar companies, how you do it is not important at first.

Once you get buy in that they want the future state, then go through a more traditional sales cycle.

This has been around forever, but I still think is a great concrete example (too many slides is my only issue) of how to do it effectively

https://www.slideshare.net/ryangum/zuora-sales-deck
TheEnglishMajor
Opinionated
0
Account Executive
In the same boat here! The thing to note is that why the product might not be known, the problem it's solving is. Focus on the problem, get people talking about it.. I just read SPIN selling and theres a fieldbook I found on amazon for the book that has some extremely helpful exercises around thisย 
SadnessEngine
Fire Starter
0
Account Executive
I just want to let everyone know, your prayers to the sales gods worked, I had 3 meetings book this week, and a blue bird inbound fell in my lap. Corp bless us, everyone.ย 
pizzasavage
Contributor
0
Account Executive, Partner/Client Success
Not atย  one at the moment, but interviewing at a few and have not a clue what the heck they are selling. I thought it was just me lol. If it takes longer than 20 mins to discover what you selling, Houston we have a problem. I believe in the 3rd grade policy-sell it to me like I am in 3rd grade....mannnnyyyy can not do this...
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