I'm not quite sure why you're skeptical on my understanding of marketing. Before I worked for myself, I worked for marketing firms, I'm not concerned that there is some base confusion there, I'm just saying

a) I don't have a working budget for design work, branding, or sales staff

b) Some folks around here have been there before too, and found a way over the bootstrapping hump, I'm curious how.

My question is poorly-worded. It was written at a moment when I was frustrated, but I was hoping for a good story from someone about how they got past the stage where you don't have the capital to commit to scaling the business up but you have good tools ready.

If the market is such as it is, then I'd say that the bootstrapping way is to become the sales staff yourself (as everything, it can be learned/improved), the growth way is to get outside funding for sales staff, and there likely isn't a third way.

And the marketing question was because it looked like that you say that the marketing part actually is okay, the product and message fits the market, but your direct sales activities (i.e., the actual closing the deals/"make them sign on the dotted line finally" activity which is probably the only part of customer relations that's not usually called marketing) are lagging.

I see, thanks for clarifying. My direct sales activities haven't ramped up yet for this product. I've been working with my client who has told me endless stories of the vendors who charge ridiculous money for really poor results. I'm frustrated in general with companies who do great not because of quality products, but because of sales & marketing.