This advice may be good for someone selling a commodity, but for software, it doesn't make sense to me.
Basically, OP says to sell a large volume of a commodity product to many customers. Since you only convert 1% of your prospects, you'll have to do a lot of pitching. (100 * a large number = a really large number).
Sounds like you'd be selling all the time with no time left for programming.
I'd suggest exactly the opposite: Spend almost all of your time building a great product, and do one of two things with it:
1. Make it a niche product and sell it to a small number of tightly targeted customers. Your conversion rate should be much higher than 1% and you can charge much more, not needing so many customers.
2. Make it a web-based commodity and leverage technology (SEO, blogging, etc.) to reach a large audience. You don't "pitch" thousands of users, you just reach them and let your product pitch them for you.
I just don't understand how someone who can program (which is the critical path for software products) should be spending all of their time selling.
Basically, OP says to sell a large volume of a commodity product to many customers. Since you only convert 1% of your prospects, you'll have to do a lot of pitching. (100 * a large number = a really large number).
Sounds like you'd be selling all the time with no time left for programming.
I'd suggest exactly the opposite: Spend almost all of your time building a great product, and do one of two things with it:
1. Make it a niche product and sell it to a small number of tightly targeted customers. Your conversion rate should be much higher than 1% and you can charge much more, not needing so many customers.
2. Make it a web-based commodity and leverage technology (SEO, blogging, etc.) to reach a large audience. You don't "pitch" thousands of users, you just reach them and let your product pitch them for you.
I just don't understand how someone who can program (which is the critical path for software products) should be spending all of their time selling.