3. Problems selling into Telcos
Stability vs Innovation
Simpler Products vs Capabilities & Adjacencies
Risk-averse Large Enterprises vs Ship-early, Fail-fast
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4. Product Strategy Choices
Work with, not compete with the Telco
Sales channel was Indirect to enterprise, via the Telco
Platform Enablement, not Solutions
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5. Product Audiences
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Developers as a User
Telcos as a Customer and a Channel
Enterprises as the End Customer
This is NOT simple !
6. From Story à Live, some notes
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• Kanban, not Scrum
• Basic bootstrap UI, no beautiful screens
• Sold ahead of demo
• Top 3 use cases, no more
• Focused on first trial
• Spent tons of time talking instead of writing
• Multi-hat team
• Some luck
Discuss…
7. Takeaways to discuss
30+ customers (Telcos) interested, only 3 signed for trial
…free, easy-peasy integration, impediments were removed, but still
Sales cycles were longer than we thought
…strategy sale, not product
Domain expertise and cred/goodwill was necessary
…still buying people-first, not tech-first
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8. Dissect
What sounded suspect in our strategy?
Could we have picked a different sales model?
What would you have done?
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