How to enable resellers to maximise sales in a "Land and Expand" sales model

I've gone down similar paths in the past. Here are your options: 1) Provisional Patent. if an implementation of their system to his new market would be patentable (i.e. using machine X to make donuts instead of jewelry), then you could file a provisional patent on the idea. Provisional patents are very informal and cheap. They can essentially be written on the back of a napkin, and filed for ~$100. They last for only a year, after which you have to convert them into a 'real patent', otherwise your idea will become open to the public to use. 2) An NDA. You could have them sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), which would have wording in it that basically says, "I'm going to tell you something, and unless you have existing proof that you already had thought of that idea, then you're not allowed to use my idea without my consent". Sometimes the company will not want to sign an NDA because they may have discussed a lot of ideas without writing them down, and by signing your NDA, they'd legally lose the right to use one of those non-written-down ideas. But it's worth a shot. 3) Rely on trust. The way to make this more likely to work is if you are good friends with a big investor in their company, or something like that. Some situation in which, if they steal your idea, they'd be ruining their reputation with someone they care about (they probably don't care about pissing you yourself off). If you don't have such a connection, maybe you can form one (linkedin, etc.). If you'd like to discuss your options in more detail, incorporating actual experiences of mine, let me know, all the best, Lee

I very much disagree with Mark's assessment. You shouldn't compensate this person for the COO role until they are confirmed into this role and working full-time in this capacity. If they are a part time medical advisor, they should have a very small amount of equity to begin with. It would depend mostly on how much (if any) you've raised to date, but it would be unusual for an advisor to have more than 1% of the Company. Happy to talk to you about the details of your situation to come up with a fair offer that doesn't hurt your chances of raising capital in the future.

Organisationally, the resellers would have to match the potential volume. The organisation needed to support Software and Services are different that resellers of SaaS. With a target of 250k annually in volume, would only leave room for a few employees, depending on where you are in the world, so I would think that the head count of resellers would be high. But I would consider one of the following, when approaching your question "How best could an organisation support resellers to reach their targets (min 250k annually) with such small margins?": 1. "Land and Expand" is apparently not a unified approach. See this link about strategy - think about product strategy first. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/land-expand-sales-strategy-mike-pilcher 2. Make it easy for the resellers. Have some infrastructure ready, f.eks. Suggested templates for website design, scripts for calling, marketing material, etc. Make it as easy as possible for them to execute. 3. This also goes for monitoring how the sales are going, which would also be of your interest. Build something unified in salesforce.com or develop your own platform. Build in benchmarking of the resellers - either for an overview for you, or for informing them how they are doing compared to their peers. Noting motivates sales people as knowing their position compared to others. 4. Build a feedback loop to you - have the resellers feed back, what works and what doesn't in the dialogue, and change the material accordingly. 5. You could also build a lead generation infrastructure somewhere, where costs are lower, if a generic sales approach to your product would work. This could be an offshore callcenter, or lead generation from your website. That also depends on whether the resellers should visit the customers physically or not. But anything to avoid the resellers to cold call - that destroys their motivation. 6. Create a sense of community among the resellers, and do anything to keep motivation up. Help them share best practise across the resellers, give them new products or sales approaches to work with. Give prizes to those, who share best practise. 7. Give them a portfolio commission. That would signal that you trust them and you want to partner with them in the long haul. They could also take part in portfolio maintenance work down the road, if they get customer "ownership" - f.ex. Through service visits, retention calls or similar activities. You could also consider giving them all customer facing contact, so you don't have any direct contact with anybody other than the resellers. That may be a little risky, but it would signal, that you trust them, and want to share your success with them. 8. Develop added services, that are integrated with the end customers usage of your product. So your SaaS would only be part of what the reseller was offering to the client. This could be information products about your software, best practice, consulting opportunities or similar. Anything, that can make your value proposition to the reseller more attractive. This was some of the characteristics, that I have thought of with regards to making it attractive for the resellers to work for you. Feel free to schedule a call, where we can discuss the ideas, and develop some more, so you create an approach, that will be successful. Good luck with your distribution. Best regards Kenneth Wolstrup

I've been a commercial real estate broker for 5 years now and have ventured into a handful of business partnerships - some have worked and some have nearly ruined me. What I find, on a surface level, is that you must absolutely share the same VALUES and MISSION as your potential partner. Having even stake in the game also helps, as it avoids one partner eventually grabbing "the upper hand". If you are not bringing cash or equity to the table, be prepared to demonstrate how your hard work can be translated into $ value. If you have more detailed scenarios or questions, feel free to bounce them off me at anytime. Cheers! -S.

There are several factors to consider: 1. Profit share does not have to equal equity. As an example, two people can agree to split net profits 50/50 even though the percentage of equity is split 60/40. Just get it in writing. So find out their expectations for long term income and equity. Are they expecting a share of net profits or just the ability to recoup their investment when you sell the business? 2. What value do they bring to your business? Are they funding? Are they bringing significant contacts or the ability to secure contracts? Are they helping with infrastructure or product development? What would you pay someone in salary with no equity to do the same exact thing? 3. Are the short term or long term? In other words, once they help you launch, do they continue to have value in building the company? Or, are they no longer needed? There is no right answer to how you compensate them for helping you get started. But, try to look at all the value variables. Maybe that will help you identify what they are ultimately worth and what a fair, win-win offer would be. It sounds like they are very reasonable and you have a good opportunity to get their help for a reasonable compensation package. Good luck. If you would like to talk more about this at no charge, I offer a one time free call to new callers. Just use this link to schedule a call. https://clarity.fm/kevinmccarthy/FreeConsult