Hustling is not a scalable activity for your company. You should ask yourself why you have to hustle your way to the right people. Is it because the decision makers that buy the kinds of products you sell are hard to get a hold of, or is it because they just don’t want your product? The latter is a far more common reason for failure than not marketing “enough”. If your product is truly something they need and want, then you will find a sales model by iterating – but only if that’s the case, otherwise, you should spend your time iterating the product – and not scaling customer acquisition efforts until you have a model that is profitable.Check out these readings:
- Steve Blank. “The Startup Owners Manual”. Also available as a lecture series on Udacity.
- Eric Ries. “The Lean Startup”.
- http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html (numbers 3 and 10 might be especially relevant, and I suspect 16 answers your original question specifically)
- http://www.paulgraham.com/13sentences.html (numbers 4 and 5 might be especially relevant)
ceeK|13 years ago
In reply to your first point, I am speaking to the right people at the moment. However, I am not sure about how to proceed after. Closing the deal so to speak. I have been winging it so far, but some solid advice would be ideal.
Secondly, I suppose, there are actual users. Paul Graham's point of not wanting to get your hands dirty is probably my downfall here. In the most ideal situation someone would come along and love doing all the marketing, copy, emailing clients and maintaining PR. Is the real solution to simply 'brute force' the matter? Spread the word where ever possible? How do I not come across as spammy in such a scenario?