Services-First Foot-in-the-Door
Sell enterprises a service they already know how to buy, then migrate them to the product.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 88%
A go-to-market entry strategy where you initially sell a service (powered by your technology on the back end) because services are the easiest, most familiar thing enterprises buy, then guide the buyer toward the scalable product once trust is built. Use it to break into enterprises with immature understanding of a problem or no history of buying technology for it.
Origin
Abel inverts the usual 'don't do manual services, build a scalable product' advice, noting services are enterprises' largest and most consistent budget item, and pointing to the forward-deployed-engineer model (Palantir, and reportedly OpenAI coaching CTOs) as proof the service is the wedge.
Core principles
- 01Services are what enterprises know how to buy — their largest, most consistent budget item.
- 02The technology can power the service invisibly on the back end.
- 03Once the foot is in the door and trust is built, migrate them to the product.
- 04Rename the wedge to be different — don't copy 'forward deployed engineer' verbatim.
How to run it
- 1
Lead with the service they already buy
For a buyer with immature understanding or no tech-buying history for the problem, sell the outcome as a service rather than a product.
Pro tip Decide first whether a laggard buyer is even someone you want to work with.
- 2
Deliver the outcome with software behind the curtain
Use your technology to power the service, whether or not the buyer knows software is doing the work.
Pro tip The reveal — 'we're literally doing this with our technology' — can be the magic moment.
- 3
Migrate spend toward the product
Once trust exists, point out how much they're spending on the service and offer to move them onto the tool that powered it, making technology serve them instead of humans.
Pro tip Frame it as cost savings and scale: 'you could just do this yourself for less.'
In the wild
Palantir-style forward-deployed engineers sit in the client's office solving problems, learning what software to build; Abel reports OpenAI reps coached CTOs on AI strategy to get a foot in the door and build trust before adoption.
→ The service relationship becomes the on-ramp to product adoption and trust.
Common mistakes
Betting on channel partners to sell for you
Consultancies like Accenture won't vision-cast on your behalf — there are a hundred of you on their list, so expecting them to disseminate you to their clients isn't a workable strategy.
Refusing services on principle
Insisting on a pure scalable product from day one forgoes the fastest, most familiar way for enterprises to say yes.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders breaking into enterprises that have never bought technology for the problem or don't yet understand it.
Not ideal for
Products with strong self-serve PLG adoption where a services layer would slow the motion and misprice the account.
From the transcript
“enterprises, the number one thing they buy services.”
“selling them as service even though the technology is powering it on the back end is the fastest way to get your foot in the…”
“they don't even need to know at first that software is doing it. That could be the magic part”
From the episode
"Sell the alpha, not the feature": The enterprise sales playbook for $1M to $10M ARR
Jen Abel