1. provide a product with a compelling, obvious, and objective advantage over the competition. (either better or cheaper, but preferably both.) You don't have to be better in every way, just obviously and objectively better in some way.
2. let people know you exist.
Seriously, this is the way to 'scale' sales. Face-to-face selling is excessively expensive, and best left to the professionals.
Personally, in person I usually end up talking up my competitors. For example, I always say I've heard good things about slicehost. Slicehost sells a directly comparable product, and my advantage over them is obvious, dramatic, and objective. Other than price, though, I haven't heard anything bad about them.
If you need to co-locate high-power boxes, or rent high CPU but low-ram boxes, I like rippleweb.com. Rippleweb charges something like $80 for each rack unit of space, no matter how much power you use. So if you have a 1u box with 2 CPUs, (likely eating more than 200w) rippleweb is cheaper than I am for co-location. (I happen to know that rippleweb has significantly lower power costs than I do. And Raphael is pretty good.)
If you do have a low-volume, high-margin product without sales skills, I'd suggest getting a hired gun. Do you think you can compete with a professional on sales? Do you think a professional salesguy could compete with you when it comes to programming after reading a few books?
I personally don't use a reseller program or commissioned sales folks, first, because I have a low margin, high volume product, so giving someone 30%, while doable, would hurt some, and secondarily, because I have very specific ideas about what I want my image to be. And personally, I like the "I'm bad at marketing" image. Besides, I'm selling out about as fast as I can put servers up, even with my nearly zero effort marketing.
Thanks @lsc!
I love you approach -how are you getting word out about your hosting business? What % are you getting actual sales from word of mouth versus SEO/online marketing versus direct face to face selling?
1. provide a product with a compelling, obvious, and objective advantage over the competition. (either better or cheaper, but preferably both.) You don't have to be better in every way, just obviously and objectively better in some way.
2. let people know you exist.
Seriously, this is the way to 'scale' sales. Face-to-face selling is excessively expensive, and best left to the professionals.
Personally, in person I usually end up talking up my competitors. For example, I always say I've heard good things about slicehost. Slicehost sells a directly comparable product, and my advantage over them is obvious, dramatic, and objective. Other than price, though, I haven't heard anything bad about them.
If you need to co-locate high-power boxes, or rent high CPU but low-ram boxes, I like rippleweb.com. Rippleweb charges something like $80 for each rack unit of space, no matter how much power you use. So if you have a 1u box with 2 CPUs, (likely eating more than 200w) rippleweb is cheaper than I am for co-location. (I happen to know that rippleweb has significantly lower power costs than I do. And Raphael is pretty good.)
If you do have a low-volume, high-margin product without sales skills, I'd suggest getting a hired gun. Do you think you can compete with a professional on sales? Do you think a professional salesguy could compete with you when it comes to programming after reading a few books?
I personally don't use a reseller program or commissioned sales folks, first, because I have a low margin, high volume product, so giving someone 30%, while doable, would hurt some, and secondarily, because I have very specific ideas about what I want my image to be. And personally, I like the "I'm bad at marketing" image. Besides, I'm selling out about as fast as I can put servers up, even with my nearly zero effort marketing.