How come so many American websites use Zopim?

Most Software as a service vendors generally don't book annual deals except in highly specialized cases. Most customers prefer to be able to cancel/change anytime they choose. Also, deals done "offline" end up actually often being more trouble than they are worth to administrate especially for a $2988 ticket. Generally, companies don't view prepaying for SaaS products a year in advance as a "convenience" (to them) so if the debate is internal (not customer driven), I'd set this debate aside until it's requested by the customer. Most customers will request a discount to pre-pay annual service. Happy to talk this through with you in a call, to work through the specifics of your situation in more detail.

The idea of an MVP is 'minimum, viable' ... If you feel you need a "good amount" of funding, I would challenge if you are minimum enough. Obviously, without knowing the details of your product, your ideal customer, or what need you will solve, it is hard to help expose what is necessary in an MVP and what is a Phase II or Phase III feature. I am happy to help you work through this, or answer specific questions, to get you rolling. Just book a call with some times that will work for you. Regardless, I would love to know more about it and how it goes after launch. To your success, -Shaun

Because the startup costs to get a lot of their customers actually set up on their platform are too high, so free trials for say, 14 days, are out of the question. For example, take a look at http://www.curalate.com/ which uses some really amazing technology to track a customer's brand imagery across (almost) the entire web. Naturally, most of these types of services are usually $300++/month, so again, it's all just about mitigating setup costs for the provider. Hope this helps :)

You are facing a classic chicken and egg problem. You want premium projects but cannot get them because you haven't done any yet. To solve this, you need to think from your target customers standpoint. Why would a customer buy from you? What do you offer that others don't have? Once you define that, the second thing you need to understand is how companies acquire their services. The buying process in a company is different from consumer buying cycle. So you need to figure out how you will play this dance. Lastly, to acquire customers, you will need to do some marketing and network. LinkedIn would be a good starting point. Another option would be to start out small and bid for projects on oDesk, Guru or other similar sites All the best.... Happy to talk if you have more questions.

In my experience, the longer sales cycle requires more attention. The metrics will be unique to your business, but you can't go wrong with these: Marketing & Sales Metrics Look at metrics that will help you scale and project growth, and then accelerate opportunity to close velocity #s and conversion rates of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) #s, time, and conversion rates of MQLs to sales qualified leads (SQLs) #s, time, and conversion rates of SQLs to opportunities #s, time, and conversion rates of opportunities to sales Customer Success Metrics An ARR SaaS business may have a guaranteed 12 month customer lifespan, but that doesn't guarantee the customer actually uses the product and won't churn at renewal time. Measuring product usage will help you discover patterns that cause churn, increase the perceived value of the product, and improve the customer experience. Financial Metrics Each Reporting Period (I'd recommend monthly) look at Values & Rate of Change Customer Acquisition Cost Average Value of a Customer look at Values, % of total, & Rate of Change Revenue from New Subscriptions Revenue from Renewal Subscriptions At the early stage, businesses will see new Subscriptions significantly outpace renewals. As the business matures, the % of total ARR from New Subscriptions will begin to decline, assuming churn rates are good.