Hot answers tagged b2b
9
I'm in the launch early and iterate camp.
That being said, looks are waaaay more important than features in my experience. If it looks terrible, most people won't bother to learn the features. However, if it looks good but lacks features, they will beg for you to add the features they want.
So, I would say: launch with less features, but make everything ...
9
We already spent years of engineering work and price was the last issue we thought about.
Yikes! Well, we made the same mistake in my first startup, and I hope yours goes better than that did.
You need to figure out what it's worth to your customers, and price it accordingly. And as a marketer once told us in that startup (and we were damn fools not to ...
8
Let me offer some insight as someone who was "brought up" in the information marketing industry.
Ultimately, as the others have said, you're going to need to test (never stop!). However, let me offer some guidelines you might consider, so you can shortcut your path to success.
On the topic of multi-page versus one long page, the long page almost always ...
8
Great question. In my experience being upfront with pricing is always better, both on low-end and high-end products, even with 6- or 7-figure enterprise deals.
Here's a detailed argument for why.
The outline is:
It makes price "negotiation" trivial (you don't negotiate)
It's honest, which help the relationship
It's consistent with a confident ...
8
It's hard to give a good answer from the vague info you've posted, but I will share one piece of advice when selling anything...
Once you set your price it should be something that you are proud of and can defend easily and without resrorting to crazy examples. If you can clearly demonstrate that your software proves $2500/mo in value, then charge $2000/mo ...
8
Congratulations on asking such a fundamental question to jumpstarting your B2B sales -- you are on the right track. Mapping clearly the steps of the sales and ongoing customer service/support/sales process is fundamental to success.
For every client (and myself) for whom I engage in this essential exercise the uniqueness of the process for distinct target ...
8
For a US B2B site, I'd focus on sign-in with LinkedIn, Salesforce, Google Apps, and Plaxo first. Then Facebook later on, if at all, and probably never "open" OpenID. Not sure how, or if the UK changes that.
Another way to think about this is in terms of cost to deploy: LinkedIn and Plaxo are both OAuth 1 (Salesforce also has an older OAuth1 approach), ...
7
International vs US Domestic markets are fundamentally of different magnitude.
Not sure who your target audience is and whether they face the same issues your Software addresses.
The following may be some reaons:
Target Audience : Are they facing same issues you are trying to solve?
Visibility : Do you have some kind of advertisement/marketing in other ...
7
Look for people who are asking
questions about the kind of problems
your software solves. LinkedIn
Answers, for instance.
Ask for referrals from existing clients; ask people you know who say their company doesn't need your solution if they know any who do.
Do competitive research. Identify your competitors (or companies that provide a solution targeting the ...
6
You should do both face-to-face questioning and surveys. The face-to-face (which you should do first) will help you get very rich, subjective, qualitative data (that a couple of people like feature X, because it will help them do Y instead of Z). If you're new to this I'd recommend a semi-structured interview - write down a list of all the points you want to ...
6
In my experience (selling millions of $ in B2B), it's all about solving the pain.
"Pain" can be thought of in various ways:
What keeps this person up at night?
How could this person lose their job, and can you prevent that?
What obviously (that's key) takes a ton of time that you can eliminate?
What jobs completely suck for someone?
In B2B the sale is ...
6
Not making pricing information available is usually a tactic of very high end products. This is usually for one of the following reasons:
1) Pricing is so complicated, that it's hard to describe.
2) Most deals involve some human negotiation.
Generally, I favor having clear, simple, transparent pricing. Even in B2B markets, this is become expected of ...
5
I can sum up my reservations in one word: resistance.
I don't know your market, or your likely competition, but reading your site for 5 minutes I'm not really clear what problems it's solving. You do mention it as open source and downloadable for free and it seems has been so for some time.
If you're adding a layer to something you're giving away for free ...
5
Well, first of all I think you're short-changing the B2B marketing benefits. It's quite common for companies to discount Facebook for their B2B marketing because people don't want to see that kind of content on their walls. But done well, it can generate better results than you'd expect - especially internationally.
But I think another aspect that maybe you ...
4
Start a blog. Start creating content that is useful to your target market. Don't be overtly commercial in your efforts. Truly try to educate the market.
Start thinking a little bit about Search Engine Optimization. What words might your customers search on if they were looking for you? Who is ranking for these terms? What kind of search volume do ...
4
Paypal has a poor international reputation as a payment scheme. I'd wager that at least some of your problem is associated with the fact that it's hard to pay you. Investigate more locally adopted payment forms, and seriously consider accepting bare credit card payments. Many corporate purchasers don't want to mess with a PO, but aren't authorized to sign up ...
4
Probably it will be best that you reach out to those international users and ask them the same question. Give them incentives to participate in your survey.
My guesses would be:
They don't see value for money.
Its too expensive for them.
Not enough payment options.
Piracy should not be an issue cuz it looks like your products targets enterprises and ...
4
I have a very different product but it's a web-based application for consumers. We just did some new user testing. We have a 60 day free trial.
People absolutely wanted to know what the pricing was before signing up for the free trial. In fact it was so compelling that we're making changes to our free sign up user flow. They did not want to spend time ...
4
What are you trying to hide?
At the risk of jumping to conclusions, just the tone of your post to me give the impression that you might be a person that naturally tends to be secretive. Are you sure you are not trying to hide info just to hide info? Remember we live in the age where information wants to be free.
Word is going to get out about your price ...
4
You might want to start networking with those who sell Merchant Accounts. Braintree merchants is in your area and has a great reputation for E-comm. They will be able to share leads with you. Other than that, get a list of local zip codes and start doing some searches in bing for shops with the zip code.
Its all about networking at this point. Spread ...
4
I also work in the B2B space. In marketing. In technology. And I want to give a big "shoutout" to the premise of your post. This is a hard issue. My clients are also not on social media, and rarely attend the conferences and trade shows. You are selling into the C-level. The decision maker. These are folks who sell marketing-- so they protect themselves from ...
4
Get on the phone, ask for 5 minutes to demo your product. If it's that good buy them lunch and demo over lunch. Ask your current customers if they know of any other contacts that you think your software might benefit, offer them a push back if they get your foot in the door to a sale either with cash in hand or a discount on a subscription.
Totally agree ...
4
Your problems are that you are unrealistic about what you can deliver and you don't even have the beginning of a marketing plan.
There is no such thing as bug free software - software by Microsoft has bugs, software by Google has bug and software by you has bugs, if you really believe you can deliver bug free software you are in the wrong business - ...
4
Jon's right. Don't write Facebook off.
I work at company that sells B2B software at a much lower price range, but Facebook is one of our primary advertising venues. We find that the majority of our customers are introduced to us through a Facebook click and then come back and purchase days, weeks, or even months down the road. Without a strong Facebook ...
3
Excellent question!
I'll start out by saying that nearly all cases are different, and the most effective way to optimize your site/page for conversions is going to be testing. I've run many of these campaigns and have found that there's no clear answer. It all depends on the user base, what you are promoting, what the call to action is, and what perceived ...
3
A very good friend works closely with the type of people you'll want to connect to (he does reserve fund studies for condominiums) ... from what I've heard most of these folks are definitely not a web savvy group. They network off-line and tend to attend conferences / industry meetings. Think old school.
The good news? There are a number of associations for ...
3
The fact that it's SaaS doesn't really change the fact that it's a B2B product, so you'd better pre-sell it to a select group of early customers. Ideally, you want to start by visiting your first 10 potential customers and telling them: "we are experts at doing X and we are going to launch Y very soon. We'd love to have you as an early user so you can ...
3
Start by reading Cusumano's The Business of Software it offers a great description of "enterprise software". It's not a go-to-market strategy. You might consider reading Sean Ellis' interview at Venture Hacks about the difference between product/market fit and go-to-market strategies.
3
Consumer targeted SaaS and Small Medium Business targeted SaaS list prices on the web and signing up for trials and demos are rather easy. Customers sign on through the web.
For higher end SaaS, some of the customers will come in through the web but you will also have to sell to customers off the web, through appointments with live presentations and demos. ...
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