Using marketplaces to scale “We have over 500+ downloads of KenSci Clinical Analytics through Microsoft AppSource from customers and partners across US, Canada, Denmark, Singapore, and New Zealand, where we have no field sales coverage. For a small company, the value of this scale is incredible – it gives us an opportunity to address and prioritize product investments over customer acquisition investments, which in turn helps us deliver more value.” — Sunny Neogi, Chief Growth Officer, KenSci Startups with products that have a global appeal can successfully grow quickly and scale early leads by showcasing their products on online mar- ketplaces, such as Microsoft AppSource or Azure Marketplace. This enables them to be easily found, downloaded, evaluated, and bought by customers, without needing to employ a salesforce. While this primarily works for less complex solutions, it can also help the buying process for enterprise soft- ware by making it simple for corporates to test or trial your product without needing extensive support from your engineering team. “We are a small company with just over 30 employees in two countries. Yet we have tens of thousands of customers in over 200 countries, all secured through AppSource. That was achieved without a single salesperson on our staff.” — Mathias Bjorkholm, CEO, Pickit If your product is more complex, but still has a relatively short sales cycle, the likelihood of prospects wanting to physically meet your sales team is low. Therefore, you should focus on creating an inside sales team, operating by telephone/email. 15