We're still developing - A competitor has launched - what to do?
sganesh: Things learned from building a best of class enterprise product and trying to beat out the competitors. We were the last entrant in the market.(i) List all completed features. - Guarantee these will work now & compare & contrast with your current competitors. Preferably give them a testing environment after the demo.(ii) List all features currently being developed. - Estimate when they will become available. Make sure you fudge enough, so that you don't shoot yourself in the foot.Share this road map during the sales cycle.(iii) Request your clients for any features that are important to their business, that you have overlooked.(iv) Make a list all future features including the ones from the above list - Request your clients to prioritize these and give them a date by which you'll have the estimates done and have built a product roadmap. Share the roadmap.(v) Be in constant communication with the clients. Keep them aware of any changes that is happening to the roadmap.With all this we got beaten up on pricing as the clients were comparing apples to oranges.So we hired sales people with expensive hobbies, and watched them work the magic.