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we aren't exactly a startup because we've been in business for 4 years, developing products for telco companies in my country. What I insisted in last 2,5 years is that we sponsor development of one big product we have with few smaller jobs.

Now we are in position to place this product on global market and benefit from it. Product is direct competition to one known big software backed up by Cisco and similar, but with more features and cheaper. Product is already used in some telco companies in my country so it already passed few iterations of what customer wants and doesn't want.

Question is how do we place this product on global market? I've reviewed prices of our scarce competition and product should make at least 7k $ per customer. Do google ads even make sense here? I was thinking maybe going country by country and trying to find some local companies that would be willing to offer our product to local internet providers/banks/insurance companies etc.

Every experience and advice is welcome..

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Since it's a specific, high-priced product, I don't think you'll be able to get there with Google Ads. You have to go direct to relevant people who either are your potential customers or have influence/contact with them.

I'll try to keep my answer specific to networking products, given the relevance to your question.

Local companies

I think a good example of how this can be put into action is Zentyal (formerly eBox Platform). They have a partners program that allows them to distribute the product to SMBs around the world with relevant margins to the partner, which does all the support and deployment of the product with them. Make a (smaller) profit on each sale, but much more sales.

Potential partners

Your best bet: look for relevant potential partners - people who either work at or with ISPs (large networks) and try to get in touch. Take care not to spam them! Be open, honest about what you want and why you chose them - make it personal.

Some good places to look for partners would be:

  • LinkedIn searches (by country and networking, groups, etc)
  • Conferences: check the list of sponsors and attendees of the relevant conferences, by country or otherwise
  • social networks: search for topics like networking, competing products, etc. Seek out to them and see if you can help them. Check @Beaker, @reillyusa and others like them; influential people known for their skills and respect for the community.

I'll say it again, because this strategy is based on trust: don't spam! Make due diligence and research if they'd potentially be interested before approaching them.

Hope that helps.

Tomé Duarte

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I suspected I'd gain nothing from google ads for this specific product. I like the idea of trying to find relevant partners through linkedin. I don't think it's spam if I approach system integrator in foreign country and try to offer some short and long term earnings for both of our companies. For them to offer direct support to client after some training and for us to provide licences for new networking/server equipment. Anyways thanks for good answer, I'll leave subject open for a while if anyone else thinks of some good idea for product distribution – damir Jul 23 '11 at 18:37
No problem. :) What I mean is: sometimes you'll find someone who you really wish would adopt your product. Best thing may be to send your sales pitch to the sales team there, and then send him/her an email saying: "Hey, I sent a sales pitch about my product to your team, but I was hoping you could give me some feedback (which I'd really appreciate) on how it may or may be not useful to your company given your experience with X, Y and Z." – tomeduarte Jul 23 '11 at 18:55

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