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Tips for ASP's

I've been doing a lot of consulting work lately researching content- and web-service providers, and it's amazing how differently companies respond to inquiry. As a result, I've pulled together a few (sarcastically obvious) tips for the budding web-services entrepreneurs out there:

  1. Make it easy to contact whomever is responsible for business development. Auto-responders aren't necessary, but be sure to get back to the person inquiring promptly. A business development manager is the first line of exposure into a company, and the experience interacting with this person goes a long way in setting the tone for future relations.
  2. If your service costs thousands per month, have some marketing materials. This should include a presentation on your product/service; its features; and your approach to pricing. It should be a non-issue to email this to anyone who inquires about your service. (If you don't have materials on your offering, that sends a message that you haven't really thought about selling it.)
  3. If your service is used via Web APIs, have some samples and documentation on-hand to send to anyone evaluating the service. Remember, the person on the other end is trying to figure out how hard it will be to integrate with your service. The easier you can make this person's job, the better.
  4. Follow through. This is a general good-practice, but when you say you're going to delver a document about your service, follow through. If you can't follow through up-front, you're sending a message that things are going to be very difficult in the future if there's ever a problem. (Sometimes the right business decision is to stay away from a vendor that looks shaky, no matter how good the service sounds.)
  5. Know who your competition is and don't be afraid to acknowledge them. A potential customer researching your service has probably talked to your competitors too, and you should have some ideas on how your product/service differentiates itself from theirs. Note that this includes not just the people you'd like to be compared to, but also the companies that show up in the same paragraph as you on TechCrunch.
  6. Don't introduce NDA's too early. Remember, it's your execution that's valuable, not the ideas.
  7. Learn from the experience. Don't be afraid to follow-up with someone even if your company was not selected as the final service provider. Doing a little win/loss analysis will help you prepare for next time (and maintaining the relationship may pay off down the line.)
  8. Don't forget that the person asking about your service may have done their homework—and you can use that information. They very well may have researched your leadership team; read their blogs; looked at their LinkedIn profiles; talked to your VCs; and searched for mailing list posts from your engineers. They may know a great deal about how your company looks from the outside, and there's no reason not to ask their opinion.