Selling to Developers vs. Selling to CFOs

In the beginning, our only B2B offering was API access to our models (what we now call ElevenAPI). Developers found us through our site and docs, usually with a use case in mind and a need for text to speech or speech to text. The pitch didn't need to change from one use case to the next: we have the best models (here are the benchmarks, or test them yourself for free), and we can scale reliably at high concurrency, as we've done for many global organizations.

Developer tools are ideal for this kind of sale, which is why so many of the fastest-growing companies have a PLG dev tool motion. Developers are always looking for new tools, prefer to figure things out themselves through docs or agents, often have real influence in procurement, and are so allergic to meetings that if they take a call, they're motivated.

In late 2024, we introduced ElevenAgents. We had a new product that could help many departments across an organization, and we'd built a GTM team of several hundred people with the capacity to start outbounding proactively. At the same time, CFOs began expecting ROI on token spend.

The question was no longer "ElevenAgents or [competitor]?" It became "ElevenAgents or continuing with the status quo?" To win that, we need to show we can move the metrics the buyer cares about.

Those metrics vary widely. An e-commerce CX team wants to cut the time spent on WISMO ("where is my order") queries, while a strategy team at a telco wants to grow revenue per subscriber through new products.

Here's what's working so far:

1. Hire industry-specific experts into the marketing team.
2. Learn from our forward deployed teams. They've led hundreds of deployments and see firsthand where AI delivers the most value.