• Customers often tell you a thing or two that you don’t know( customers are smarter than you think)
• It’s a brutal reality that people/companies are only willing to pay for must-have products
• Products that help people cut off cost, expense, operation cost and optimize on resources will excel
• Everyone should be a product manager.  Everyone should be in a customer call every month to understand customer’s pain-points and problems( this is so true, but few companies are doing it.  Many startups are very engineering-driven that there is a big disconnect between engineers and customers)
• Scott from NearbyNow shared how he solved the problems of getting the first retail customers on board with his location-aware shopping system( his lesson deserves a separate blog post from me).

Enterprise Sale

• For enterprise products, don’t give free pilot(or trial).   You force customers to consider pricing in the conversation.   It will also force higher-level management people to look at the product when it involves money transaction
• If you do give out free trial(100% discount), don’t tell any one
• Publicize the ROI if it’s met.  Case study is important
• Always ask people how it’s going(eg: proper account management, don’t just let it run on auto-pilot)
• Your first few customers may force you to change your business if you customize too much for their needs
• You should try to find out what initiative your customer is having.  Then try to attach your service to their initiative.

This was one great panel discussion.