“Before starting, ask yourself three questions in the following order. What am I selling? (In other words, what customer pain am I solving?). Who am I selling to? (In other words, who will end up using my product and who will end up buying my product – sometimes these are different people), only then comes the third question – How do I sell it? Once you answer those, you can understand what the right sales model is for you.” — Amnon Drori, Octopai Different sales strategies for startups Self Service Inside Sales Field Sales • Simple Products • Complex Products • Highly Complex Products • Low Price < $1.000 • Medium Price < $20.000 • High Price > $50.000 • High Volume • Medium Volume • Low Volume • Short Sales Cycles • Sales Cycles < 3 months • Long Sales Cycles • Highly Profitable • Profitable • High Sales Cost • Difficult to build • Fairly easy to build • Easy to build • Easy to scale • Scale through sellers • Difficult to scale Sources: Stefan Groschupf, Automation Hero For simple, low-priced products, a sales team is cost prohibitive. Therefore, make it easy for customers to buy directly through self-service on your or partner websites (such as online marketplaces), and focus your time on driving demand through marketing and advertising campaigns. This model allows you to sell globally without a sales force, but your product must truly address a large market to succeed. 14