2023 W45 - "Sell me this pen!"
Every week I post about one thing that happened at Rows. We're building in public!
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Last week I was traveling, and had a dinner with other tech people from the Industry.
Because we launched our pricing plans recently, a co-founder pushed me to sell a custom plan on the spot (an enterprise deal). We have been getting organic upgrades of new accounts to our plus plan, which is ~$800-1k per year for the whole team, that is, without member limits. But larger deals are a great way to move the revenue meter up faster, and to validate the upper market.
"You can't sell" he provoked. He pulled a guy next to me who is a senior tech person from the community, working at a company with hundreds of people. It was late, I was tired, and at first I didn't like the spotlight. As the conversation went along, it became interesting, and duh revenue! (Spoiler: no sale yet, let's see over the next conversation!).
In a nutshell, this is how it went:
Me: "Rows is a spreadsheet."
"The reason why thousands of people join Rows every week is that Rows offers modern skills to its users. The value is convenience. We have the easiest way to import data, analyze it, and the best way to share spreadsheets." I highlighted a few of the use cases that make people stick and pay:
"Some users love our OpenAI Integration, which is the only way to effortlessly use data from your cells to generate product info, summarize or classify feedback, translate products, run sentiment analysis, generate ad copy, format addresses etc."
"Some users love our Integrations with Notion, Google Analytics, Hubspot, BigQuery etc (Postgres, MySQL..)."
"Others stick with us for the ability to Embed slick Charts in any tool, for example Embedding charts of Notion data back to Notion!"
"Sure", he said, "but that's not why this guy will pay you 1k per month or 12k+ per year".
Then I followed up by describing Rows unique features, and the other guy described his problems with data.
We landed at one particular cut of data that is important to him, because it helps him keep track of his ongoing client projects. He described how ugly the process to get that data in is, and that he needs it on a spreadsheet to keep it close to him, manipulate it, etc. What he wants is, actually, something unique we can solve with Rows.
This is the pattern I've seen in other discussions we're starting to have with big businesses:
The data already exists. Larger companies have it somewhere, including on some dashboard.
But this data isn't easy to consume, so it's not appealing to their teams and clients. (Unused Data is the same as nothing!) They export it to some takeout tool or data visualization layer, but few open it or act on it.
This is where we get it. We can onboard their custom data jobs and make them extra friendly... through custom Integrations, APIs, and personalization! And, ofc, the base spreadsheet software!
My takeaways are:
It doesn't matter if you're tired. If you're with other tech people, sell!
Talk to larger customers about which of their data is locked - either from their internal teams or their clients. Sell them on the most loved data interface of all times - the spreadsheet!
Let's go!
- Humberto
