ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the principle of the sales learning curve and presents the sales process and its relationship with customer development. It discusses the development of a sales message to successfully hunt for prospects and describes the importance of managing customer expectations. The level of success of the innovation in the marketplace depends on the level of product value or advantage of the new product and on the adoption of the new product by the salesperson(s). The relationship between salesperson adoption of the new product and success is contingent on the level of innovativeness of the new product and the competitive situation. The start-up's customer development team should be aware of the importance of connecting the salesperson or staff to the organisation's engineering team and the mechanisms through which this integration affects the success of the innovation in the marketplace.
