I worked in a startup that was expanding to the US. For that purpose we hired two sales people with really good connections to the largest potential customer company in the US.
We had this product on our price list. It was a small and relatively inexpensive product (in the order of a few €100, while most of our other products had four to six figure prices). This product was stuck in development hell. We had a half-functioning prototype with the wrong chip in there, and it would need a full rework. It was a terrible product and far from usable.
So that new sales guy calls up my boss, the CEO, who’s a notorious lier and proud of that fact and asks him if that device is ready to be sold. The sales guy says they don’t have any customers asking for this and it’s totally ok if it’s not ready to be sold, he just wants to know whether it’s ready.
With no need and no pressure at all, the CEO says “Oh, it’s completely finished. You can sell that with no issues at all.”
The sales guy believes it, and tries to sell this to that one biggest potential customer. The customer likes the idea and asks for a demo. Of course, we cannot provide one.
That was it. That customer blacklisted us and never bought anything at all from us. It burned the two sales people, they never managed to get any of our products sold in worthwhile quantities and a year later we shut down the US division.
I worked in a startup that was expanding to the US. For that purpose we hired two sales people with really good connections to the largest potential customer company in the US.
We had this product on our price list. It was a small and relatively inexpensive product (in the order of a few €100, while most of our other products had four to six figure prices). This product was stuck in development hell. We had a half-functioning prototype with the wrong chip in there, and it would need a full rework. It was a terrible product and far from usable.
So that new sales guy calls up my boss, the CEO, who’s a notorious lier and proud of that fact and asks him if that device is ready to be sold. The sales guy says they don’t have any customers asking for this and it’s totally ok if it’s not ready to be sold, he just wants to know whether it’s ready.
With no need and no pressure at all, the CEO says “Oh, it’s completely finished. You can sell that with no issues at all.”
The sales guy believes it, and tries to sell this to that one biggest potential customer. The customer likes the idea and asks for a demo. Of course, we cannot provide one.
That was it. That customer blacklisted us and never bought anything at all from us. It burned the two sales people, they never managed to get any of our products sold in worthwhile quantities and a year later we shut down the US division.