What if the problem isn't your pitch, it's WHO you're pitching to?

Early on, we spent a lot of time trying to sell into a market built around long-standing vendor relationships.

When security and trust are involved, being the new company in the room is a pretty big disadvantage. Even if the product is good, getting an institution to switch is a whole different problem.

So we changed direction. Instead of selling to the institution, we started going directly to the people who would actually use the product.

It's definitely a slower path. We're building trust one person at a time instead of closing one deal that could potentially bring in thousands of users.

But at least it's something we can actually influence, rather than waiting months on a procurement process we have very little control over.

Has anyone else switched from selling to the gatekeeper to selling directly to the user? Did it work?