SAAS business: Prospective Client wants to meet in person | Hacker News Reader

SAAS business: Prospective Client wants to meet in person

3 pointscodegeek4 comments

If you are runnning a SAAS and a prospective client wants to meet in person, what do you say to that ? This SAAS business charges $200-$400/month and it is a platform that clients have to invest in with their time before they can get a return. The prospective client seems very serious and a big fish (they want to pay for the whole year upfront) Have you ever encountered this ?

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Is there any reason why you don't want to meet? People meet people who they do business with all the time.

The only issue to keep yourself aware of is whether their human contact expectations (support, meetings, custom development) match the price they are willing to pay.

Thx for your response. I totally understand the value of meeting people in person and building relationships. But when running a SAAS with small overheads, is this scalable enough to do it regularly ? Just wondering. Being small, it won't matter for now but is it a wise investment of your limited time being a small company ?

Also is this a fair expectation from clients to meet SAAS owners in person ? I would not even think about signing up for a service where i would necessarily want to meet. Of course, I would like to know who the team is etc.

This isn't uncommon and does tend to happen with more enterprise-y sales. Where I work currently I've had three external SAAS partners come into the office within the past 6 months. It probably doesn't make sense to do this often with smaller companies but it does make sense if you're going to charge enterprise prices. The benefits of doing an in-person meet is that it helps you establish a strong relationship, may help with product development ideas and could be a potential way to upsell services

Can you ask them to reimburse you for the trip? Explain that you run a business on small margins so as to provide the best value for your customers.

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