New Relic: Death of the Salesmen?

In Silicon Valley, where everyone says he’s out to disrupt the status quo, the sales force is a surprisingly resilient institution, especially in enterprise software. Every two to four years, companies such as IBM and Oracle produce new versions of their flagship applications, then send out armies of salespeople to persuade customers to upgrade.

Lewis Cirne, an entrepreneur who sold his business software company, Wily Technology, for $375 million in 2006, has become one of the most vocal advocates for a new type of leaner, faster business software maker. His latest company, New Relic, relies on just seven salespeople to serve more than 10,000 customers, who use its software to track the performance of websites. Cirne aims to sell his products to clients without doing much actual selling, in part by building software that is intuitive enough for a customer to install, test, and use without a salesperson’s help. Cirne claims it’s a better model for customers, who get to judge a product rather than a sales pitch, and it boosts profits. “At Wily, we were always chasing the break-even point because we had salespeople flying all over the place,” he says.