How to Sell if Your User is not the Buyer

Summary

I recently wrote about how your ideal customer is one who values your product the most”. And then quickly, in one of my private communities, I had this question pop up:But how you would talk to your ideal customer if they are not the ones who try the product?In my case -- I totally agree. CTOs / Director of Engineering are probably the ones who make decisions. But it is developers who try the product first.In the article you talk about messaging. I get it. But how practically you can reach out to decision makers?Let’s dissect this question here and get to the root of this question here, right now.This is the "the user is not the buyer" problem.Sure, it's a tough one, and I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all solution. Here’s the key… it depends on one thing: → Who actually has the power?(and hint, it’s not always the person with the credit card)Let me explain…Your product is used and bought by smaller companies, they have CTOs/directors, but it's pretty flat, and they are in build mode. These are likely early stage or smaller companies still trying to figure out their market fit or value proposition.The user (developer) might have the power. Here’s why…The CTO's incentive is to reduce time to market/iterate. The faster they are to market and iterate, the faster they learn, the faster they find PMF, the more likely everyone keeps their jobs (and maybe they get a big payout win 3-10 years from now, or at least that's the promise from the CEO).The user/dev has the power because of the time constraint. They're likely to come to the organization with knowledge - it's why they were hired. So, their suggestion on what to bring to the table in terms of dev tooling will be massively important. They might even setup a free account to use before anyone notices, "just to get things done". Eventually they have to level up to a paid tier and voila, the company has just been trojan-horsed.The CTO/directors/leadership are the ones who have the power because there’s different co...