Self-Checkout for a $100K ACV Software Product

Here’s an interesting thought experiment for B2B companies:

(I saw this in a post by Chris Walker the other day)

Pretend your buyers could go to your website and self-checkout your $100K enterprise software product.

Put in their credit card info, and buy.

Like how it works in B2C: You go to an online store, decide which t-shirt you want, read the product description, put in your credit card information, and buy.

Could your buyers do that for you B2B business?

If not, why not?

The answer is that it’s an information problem. There is a lot of information and open questions that your buyers need before they’re able to spend $100K on your product.

They need to understand your solution and all the nuances about it: How it works? How it integrates with their existing tools? What are the features? How does implementation work? What’s the support?

And secondly, they need to trust you: Are you actually legitimate? Do you know what you are doing? Have you done this before? Who are the people I will be working with? Do you have Case Studies where you successfully implemented your software in other businesses similar to ours?

That’s why purchasing takes so much time in B2B.

Your buyers need to unearth, discuss, debate, and understand all this information with your salespeople, which takes multiple calls.

So when you think about what it would take for someone to put in their credit card information to buy your $100K software product, you think about what information you need to make public on your website, socials, and email newsletter.

This is a thought experiment. You will never fully get there. No one will spend this much money on your product without ever speaking to a real person.

But maybe, instead of getting 10% of the information from your website and the other 90% from your salesperson 1:1, you can get to the point where your prospects can get 50-60% of the information from your website and only the remaining 40-50% from your salesperson.

You’ll need fewer salespeople, each salesperson needs to spend less time with each prospect, and your deals cycles will be shorter.

It’s is a useful thought experiment for B2B companies to figure out how they can get closer to B2C companies where people can self-checkout on their websites.