[Orcnet] Consulting sales cycle

[Steve Wetterling]

Reply from Steve Wetterling:

>From bad experiences, I have resolved not to do business with sales &
marketing guys who don't understand how to do product development:  
If you find out that they think that they can start selling something about
as soon as they can draw a sketch for it, then run the other direction.
These are the kind of amateurs you want nothing to do with.  Not all
amateurs are like this, so check carefully.

Other than this, the longest get-ready-to-go interval took many months of
writing out specs and the shortest was a phone call at noon asking me to be
on a plane to San Diego at 4 pm, which I did.

s.w.

-----Original Message-----
From: orcnet-bounces at eeconsult.org [mailto:orcnet-bounces at eeconsult.org] On
Behalf Of Keith Lofstrom
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 9:20 AM
To: orcnet
Subject: [Orcnet] Consulting sales cycle


Gents:

I am negotiating with a startup for a few months of work.  So
far it has taken three weeks of very occasional interaction,
almost all because of delays at their end (they are starting up,
after all).  This is nothing unusual for me;  sometimes the dance
can take a year to complete, though rarely more than 20 or 30 hours
of time are involved in the setup, a fraction of the billable work.

Sometimes the dance takes less than 48 hours - one negotiation
was started on the phone Monday afternoon, completed at lunch in 
Southern California on Tuesday, and I was in Boston Wednesday
doing the work.  But it is rarely that fast.

What are other Orcnetter's experiences?  How long does a sale
take for the rest of you -- assuming a few months of well paid
custom design work are the result?  Do longer negotiations fail
more often?  Do you give up and blow off the prospect after too
much time elapses?  What is too much?

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs
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