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Brice Ekuka Akama

in DocMetrics· 1mo

E1 · One Customer Is Not a Market

Finding the pattern beyond my first customer. Getting my first paying customer felt like a huge milestone. And it was. But it also created a new problem. I now had one person who had decided that DocMetrics was worth paying for. The temptation was to take…

Brice Ekuka Akama

in DocMetrics· 1mo

After "Send" Comes Silence

I thought the hardest part of building a startup would be writing the code. It wasn't. The hardest part has been dealing with silence. You send the message.\ You send the followup.\ You show the product.\ Then nothing. No reply from a prospect.\ No feedback from a user.\ No update from a partner.\ No decision from an investor. Just silence. Over the last few months, I've realized that most founders don't quit because they get a clear "no." They quit because they get no signal at all. Ironically, that's one of the reasons I started building DocMetrics. I kept seeing the same problem in sales: proposals get sent, deals go quiet, and nobody knows whether the buyer lost interest, got busy, shared it internally, or is still evaluating. Sometimes the difference between giving up and following up is having one small piece of evidence that something is still happening. Still building.\ Still learning.\ Still waiting for more signals than silence.

Brice Ekuka Akama

in DocMetrics· 5d

What Happens After a Proposal Is Opened Matters More Than You Think

A proposal being opened is not always the interesting part. What happens after that can be much more useful. Someone opens it once, comes back three days later, a new person from the same company views it, the pricing section gets revisited, or nothing happens for a while.But none of these activities tells you exactly what the buyer is thinking. A quiet proposal could mean the buyer lost interest. It could also mean they are discussing it internally, waiting for someone else, dealing with timing, or simply being busy. The activity is real, but the explanation is not always visible.That is where I think sales tools need to be careful. The goal shouldnt be to tell a salesperson, “This is exactly what is happening.” It should be, “Here is what changed. Here is what it could mean. Here is one thing you could consider doing next.”Then let the salesperson decide.The salesperson knows the relationship, the previous conversations, the objections, and things a product simply cannot see. Good tools should give salespeople better evidence to make a decision. They shouldnt replace their judgment.