Introduction and Explanations

We work every day with Sales and Marketing teams from Technical Product Companies, which we define as companies with hardware, software, XaaS, and technical services offerings. They all share one consistent problem, especially at their early stages. They just don’t have the documents they need, documents they are proud of, or documents that do a great job enabling them to sell.

You probably wouldn’t be surprised how many times we hear one (or all) of the following:

• “We get asked for [case studies/videos/white papers] all the time, and we just don’t have anything we’re really proud of.”

• “We just don't have things in Marketing and Sales documented well.”

• “Our website isn’t great and doesn’t serve us well, but we’re working on it.”

• “This would be a whole lot easier if we had some standard documents and standard operating procedures that we all agreed on”.

Why is this? It’s not because the people are lazy or unable to create the right documents. It’s usually because every one of them is running flat out doing their best with the time and people they have. They all have to make tough decisions about where to put limited resources. This is especially true at early companies where the people filling those Sales, Marketing, and similar are also running every other function at the company.

This triage often leads to “important” but not “urgent” things being postponed. We have seen this happen over and over in the case of creating solid documents for the Marketing, Sales, Support, and Customer Success teams.

We can tell you from over 60 years of combined experience in these roles at cybersecurity, SaaS, networking, cloud, and other tech companies: Creating these documents is hard work. We can also say that an investment in good documents will pay off.

It’s hard, because it takes time and effort. You have to carve off whole days (sometimes a week) to do nothing but write, review, and edit, if you want to make a great document. In the early stages of a company, those cycles seem most scarce.

You don’t have to do everything at once, but you should make it a priority and budget time for all these documents as a critical resource that you need. We can tell you from experience that your teams will move faster and more confidently, your customers will be able to self-educate, and you will be better prepared to scale if you do spend the time and invest in these documents.

What You’ll Find in This List

In the list below, we’ve done much of the hard work for you. We’ve identified the Marketing, Sales, Support, and Customer Success documents you’ll need in a Technical Product Company, what jobs those documents do, who should own them, who the audience is, and when you’ll likely need them.

These are documents that a Technical Product Company should have in order to define their market, market to prospects, sell to early customers, scale their sales, and do a good job of supporting customer success.

Some of these will be internal documents, some will be PDFs that will be available for emailing and downloading, some will be presentations that you will present to others, and some will be videos.

You will also find information about who should own a given document, and at what stage of development your business will need it, designated as “Early”, “Mid”, and “Later”.

How to Get Help

We hope this list is valuable to you as you prioritize what documents to work on first. Solutional helps startups, restarts, and business units in large companies to research, write, and publish these documents. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you are looking for guidance or help.

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