DirtyMoney

Founding BDR at 🤪

Setting Unrealistic Expectations/Borderline Lying

Noticed a deal exactly like pictured above over the past few months. It was an all-around mess post-proposal agreement. Granted, it was a very tailored solution that required a lot of out-of-the-box thinking in the big data industry. Sad part is, it's becoming a regular occurrence. The deals are qualified and followed through with because our company needs every penny of revenue that comes near us.

Curious if anyone else has gone through this. Specifically in SUPER early software startups.

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BmajoR

Arsonist

Account Executive

I think it’s more common than it should be but depends on how your company handles it. Is it a build/improve the product on the fly kind of response? If so I think it’s beneficial for developing the product to be competitive.

Founding BDR

That’s the part where it’s dicey. It’s not improvements on the core product we offer, it’s something else completely different but used leveraging the in house AI that was built up.

saaskicker

Tycoon

Enterprise AE

until you find PMF you're going to have to go outside your comfortzone to land customers. or you're stretching yourself beyond what you can do so far that the product team is going to get distracted/bogged down building the wrong thing. solve one problem really well and expand from there.

Founding BDR

Valid points. Our founder thinks we have achieved pmf but there isn’t any evidence of it. Those concerns fall on deaf ears time and time again

oldcloser

Arsonist

💀

That kind of disconnect defies logic. “We’ve established PMF because I said so.”

Filth

Tycoon

Live Filthy or Die Clean

This happens to me at my org today. There are better processes in place now to avoid it but it's the risk you run with assumptions and not having a client advocate in place at each point and a success team working directly with the client.

Founding BDR

Curious how big your org is?

jefe

Arsonist

🍁

I found this comic quite amusing, and far too applicable in many situations.
I think there's way too often 1) a disconnect between teams and 2) a desire to say what people/prospects want to hear.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

People pleasers

CEO

I think a defining moment in a company's maturation can occur when it says "no" and walks away. If you're still in the $0-1M range, your management team could convince itself that the learning will be valuable, even if the engagement might not be one you could afford to replicate in the future. But if you're >$1M but <$50M in revenue and trying to be all things to everyone coming through the funnel, you are likely going to hit a scalability wall.

Founding BDR

Still in the $0-1M range so I get where you’re coming from on that point. Reason why it’s such a clusterf**k is the fact that we’re spreading our team THIN since it’s not our expertise.

CEO

You rcompany might be too young to have CSMs, but you might find support from whomever is going to onboard/support the customer over the life of the contract. CSMs can become good quality control for deals that do not align to strong use cases. The trick is getting that QA function inserted into the funnel- before the sales order or quote is generated.

JustGonnaSendIt

Politicker

Burn Towns, Get Money

After over a decade in Tech sales, I can tell you almost everything underpinning the foundation of most IT teams is made up of bubble gum, duct tape, and a few paperclips left over from the 90's.

Beans

Big Shot

Enterprise Account Executive

If you're honest about timelines and can still solve a pain NOW I don't see an issue with selling the dream/roadmap.
If you're straight up lying, that's greasy.

Chep

WR Officer

Bitcoin Adoption Specialist

Lmao I am stealing this meme so good

Justatitle

Big Shot

Account Executive

It shouldn’t be like this because then you earn a reputation fast and people will look elsewhere, also erodes your credibility and mental stature