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Recently me and two of my friends from college started a software company. We are developing web-applications using GWT-Spring-Hibernate and other helper frameworks. In a couple of months, we managed to set up a stable back-end and produced some demo programs for CRM solutions. Our area of interest is CRM where we can combine the flexibility of our back-end with the slick looking GWT based GUIs.

Unfortunately we live in a third world country (well, kind of two and a half :) and no one here gives our work enough credit, or really cares about the advantages of web-apps. We are stuck at the moment because our current clients do not want to pay that much money for just "putting their local app on the web".

Since we can not find satisfying work here, we have decided to work online/international. Do you guys know a good freelance kind of sites where we can throw ourselves into the market?

Also a question from frustration, to those who are in the field or knowledgeable/interested about web based CRM, how much would you ask/pay for lets say a web app which will keep track of all the patients of a multi-branch clinic also allowing the patients to access to view their own records? Including tiered authorization, logging etc..

+2  A: 

While I guess I cannot really point you to platforms to promote your product (except XING), I'd like to point out something you may have missed: customer support.

  1. Customer support generates money. A lot. Often more than licences and it represents a constant source of income. Ff you can't sell the licence, sell the support. Companies like MySQL live from support exclusively. Installation, maintainance, customization, training, certification, updates ...
  2. Customer support is a basic prequisite for b2b software sales. If you want to sell a software to a company for a sizeable amount of money, it is not so much the money they actually care about. They want to be convinced that the software provides high reliability (a point I will discuss just below), and they want to be certain, they are covered beyond that reliability. If the system fails, they want to be able to call in someone to get it back online.

When distributing software, there is a blunt truth: trust is a must. When it comes to b2b sales, building up this trust is very difficult and time consuming. If you have no customers and thus no references, noone wants to have your solutions, which in turn makes it impossible for you to get references.
Also, it'll be very difficult for you to sell software abroad, if you have no name. From the perspective of a potential customer, you are a noname company from a "distant" country, thus it seems a very high risk to switch all CRM tasks to your product. The quality of your product can hardly be determined beforehand, and legally, there are virtually no guarantees, because you can simply withdraw from the jurisdiction of that country (unless you have other customers to lose in that country, you can simply cease business there).

When selling b2b, you have to be very pragmatic and cynical to get a lot of money out of it. For example, take SAP. Two friends of mine actually work in companies providing services for SAP customers. Neither of these two, or their companies or their customers really like SAP. But SAP is established and while many aren't happy about how it works, it is known for certain, that it does work. In a hospital, it is more tollerable to have high maintanence cost for a CRM, than to have a CRM that has downtimes, data corruption/loss and other things. Tools like theirs are not the sexiest on the market, but they have the nimbus of reliability.

All I can personally suggest is, that you revise your monetarization strategies and your licence model. Provide multiple licences (not necessarily because it makes sense, but because people are likelier to purchase the cheaper of two versions, than to purchase the only version there is). Scale licences (cost per client, cost per server etc.). Consider SaaS. Provide support contracts. Maybe even offer a free version. Satisfied customers may upgrade it or pay for support.
You need a community. Every good software needs a community, because it provides testing, bug reports, feature requests, references/recommandations/testimonies and spreads the name.

Also: consider cooperation. Try finding partners in the markets you want to get into. There are many companies that focus on support activities. Convince them to offer and promote your product. That way you bridge the distance between you and far away customers.

So anyway, I wish you luck on your ambitious endeavor.

back2dos
Thank you for your answer, Roger. The advices you give in this post are much worth to follow and keep in mind at all times, especially in the start-up phase.
rpr