Building Business Development/Sales Pipeline

Hey all! Happy weekend wherever you may be!

Wanting to get some advice and insight into a couple areas as mentioned in the title. Background is the following:

My Partner and I started our company about in 2021. When we kicked off we were building a control and camera vision system for automating and optimizing indoor vertical farms. We got to early mvp but market was not as big and barrier to entry was high. So we pivoted early 2023 to utilize components of our technology in a wildfire detection and risk analysis platform. Happy to say we are once again at MVP but need to get PMF and pipeline going both with revenue generating clients and pilots/demos.

Through this period we’ve kept the lights on by running a consulting service and digital agency. We’ve also pushed out a couple of AI tools to market.

Effectively I need to build out a strong pipeline for each vertical and associated sales team. Right now spread too thin trying to conduct sales and business dev on each front.

Challenges: Wildfire: Business to Gov relationships so need to build for that. Additionally early stage technology so imo relationships are critical. Additionally need to take advantage of grant funding. Target Markets: Canada, USA, Mediterranean, Northern Europe/Scandavian Countries.

Consulting and Agency: Things feel dry… we have a recurring client list but we want to grow this channel exponentially, focusing on RFP’s and med to large company profiles rather then the current SMB. Our current activités are mediocre imo for outreach and connection.

AI Tools: I believe these are great opportunities. TLDR 1)sales based assistant as well as 2)central AI aggregation with prompt repository. Business Dev Energy into this is basically focused on digital means. In the process of generating video content to push via ads and online social platforms. Challenge: low engagement right now users signing up but no commitments to purchase. Need to evaluate value offer and feedback on PMF.

From the sales team side, effectively need to generate the sales so I can expand the team and grow accordingly. I’m a huge proponent of commission based compensation. Also open to a base salary. However anyone I onboard at this moment would have to be commission cause cash-flow.

On that front, what are current commissions structures looking like for people? What’s engaging what’s worth taking a risk what is just a huge no?

On the challenges for the product lines any feedback questions and even poking holes is appreciated!

Thanks!