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0 pointsfphhotchips4y ago0 comments

Reformed salesperson here, you're 1 for 4, and Trello really should only get half a point because they've given up massive swathes of their addressable market to others (Wrike, Asana, Monday).

Word and Excel have the giant Microsoft sales team behind them. One of the largest technical enterprise sales forces in the world.

Gmail is similar. Google tried the "we'll build it, and they'll come" approach. It didn't work. Google has a long term channel based sales model, and a newer but rapidly growing direct enterprise sales team. They're constantly trying to get GApps in against the aforementioned behemoth MS team.

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kortilla4y ago

Gmail was the world leading email provider before any of the google custom domain stuff.

You’re confusing google for work or whatever it’s called now with Gmail.

fphhotchipsOP4y ago

Personally I don't count "giving it away" as the product selling itself. GSuite - Google Docs, GMail for Business, Google Drive, etc. - has had enterprise sales teams for a long time.

kcplate4y ago

When gmail was included as the email client for their paid office subscription there definitely was salespeople involved, because I heard from them weekly trying to shill it to me. I’d argue that if you take a free product and want folks to pay for it, you obviously need salespeople as Google did.

exclusiv4y ago

> Reformed salesperson here, you're 1 for 4, and Trello really should only get half a point because they've given up massive swathes of their addressable market to others (Wrike, Asana, Monday).

Trello sold itself. Explosive growth. Great product. Whether they have given up market share is irrelevant.

Gmail had explosive growth. You use it, you're sold on how good it is.

I'm not sure why some of you think having a salesperson means a product doesn't sell itself. Everyone layers on sales to capture more of the market share at some point.

exclusiv4y ago

Doesn't matter if they have salespeople or not. It matters whether those salespeople can call up and have the other side already sold on the product. Because the product sells itself...

I'll submit Craigslist and Wikipedia as other options. Also Plenty of Fish.

Communities and knowledgebases can be built without salespeople.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

kortilla4y ago

Gmail was the world leading email provider before any of the google custom domain stuff.

You’re confusing google for work or whatever it’s called now with Gmail.

fphhotchipsOP4y ago

Personally I don't count "giving it away" as the product selling itself. GSuite - Google Docs, GMail for Business, Google Drive, etc. - has had enterprise sales teams for a long time.

kcplate4y ago

exclusiv4y ago

> Reformed salesperson here, you're 1 for 4, and Trello really should only get half a point because they've given up massive swathes of their addressable market to others (Wrike, Asana, Monday).

Trello sold itself. Explosive growth. Great product. Whether they have given up market share is irrelevant.

Gmail had explosive growth. You use it, you're sold on how good it is.

I'm not sure why some of you think having a salesperson means a product doesn't sell itself. Everyone layers on sales to capture more of the market share at some point.

exclusiv4y ago

Doesn't matter if they have salespeople or not. It matters whether those salespeople can call up and have the other side already sold on the product. Because the product sells itself...

I'll submit Craigslist and Wikipedia as other options. Also Plenty of Fish.

Communities and knowledgebases can be built without salespeople.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse