Sales Without Force

Why you don't always need a sales force to succeed.

By Christopher Seiwald

A profitable company that chooses to remain private is sometimes called a "lifestyle" company—supporting the comfortable lifestyle of the owners. While for a grocery store this is respected, in the world of software there is the assumption that comfort robs the company of the nerve to get aggressive and achieve something grand. But there is another route where the product enjoys the comfortable lifestyle. We'll call this a "product-style" company.

A talented motorcycling friend once told me how he got his speed: "Work on form and speed will follow. Work on speed and you'll end up in a ditch wondering what happened." A product-style company applies the former approach, modifying it to its business: work on the product and riches will follow. The question shifts from "What makes us the most money?" to "What makes the product most useful to most people?"

Ditch sales

Where does a product-style company start? Most notably, it starts without a sales force. In theory, a sales force is a powerful marketing tool, amplifying the opportunities where customer and product meet. But in practice, sales forces are driven by money. As a result, their primary goal is often not fitting products to customers, but forcing them. This is rarely in the interest of the product or the customer. Worse, a strong sales force can actually spew trouble in a second direction. It can wag the dog, obligating product developers towards feature creep and thwarting deeper functionality growth.

Excising the sales force does not eliminate the sales cycle, but rather can make it stronger. Much like a policeman who doesn't carry a gun, to achieve its goals a vendor without a sales force must rely on other abilities, ones that are present, but less valued by those who can resort to force.

First, marketing alone must create interest, as there are no sales people who, needing to meet their numbers, will take up the slack. Fortunately with a solid product, a significant portion of marketing will be word-of-mouth—which is effective, inexpensive, and self-supporting.

Next, pre-sales consulting must help fit the product to the users. This part most closely resembles the sales without the force. A complicated product (or a simple product deployed in a complicated environment), needs the vendor's expertise to demonstrate the product and to guide its evaluation. This can involve investing in a proof-of-concept implementation.

During the sales cycle, pre-sales support must impress the customer with the promise of complete satisfaction, and afterwards post-sales must deliver on that promise. For all but the most trivial programs, support is as much a part of the product as the software itself. And a product-style company—if its success is to rest on the reputation of the product—must match its quality product with quality support.

Finally, sales order administration must consummate the deal. The lack of a sales force leaves little room for negotiation, and so a product-style company must also match its quality product with a quality contract with terms that are fair and clear.

From all sides, these cooperative groups facilitate the sale, rather than achieving it by force. And without that force, these groups must be top-notch in their offering and execution. So when they are, they can offer a stronger and more consistent sales mechanism than hoping that a big gun salesman is going to bring home dinner. These groups (marketing, consulting, support, and sales administration) all connect at the same two focal points: the customer and the product. We've talked about the customer side, and now we move on to the product.

Make the product work

Not surprisingly, it is the product developers who carry the fortune of a product-style company. They must deftly steer the product to mesh the needs of the customers as they move from marketing to pre-sales support to post-sales support.

Marketing can create interest if given a single deliverable: product functionality. The product must do something patently useful. Flashy features can give a sales force a short term boost in profits, but over time users really need enduring functionality. For product developers, this is perhaps the most important lesson from the dotcom era.

Without a sales force to push it, the product must work. For pre-sales support to make the product fit without the hammering of a sales force, product developers must endow the product with simple installation and deployment. And, critically, for the sake of post-sales support, product developers must err on the side of simplicity and stability. This is at odds with the feature creep pattern of most software development today, but is entirely compatible with the maturing functionality of a well-kempt product.

The product must be continually preened to ensure that its growth does not compromise its functionality, simplicity, or stability. Such refactoring keeps marketing, pre-sales support, and post-sales support out of crisis mode. That in turn keeps the heat off of product developers and gives them important time to devote to functionality.

Not for the faint-hearted

A product-style company is not for the faint of heart: it takes a lot of faith to forego a sales force—you have no one to blame when sales dont happen. But when you move the focus from sales to product, you gain something besides a good product: you gain a following.

Externally, you have customers who are happy to have a product that is functional, simple and reliable. Internally, you have people who take pride in a product that is marketable, sellable and supportable. And that's not a bad lifestyle, for the product or the people.