After reading Eric Sink's work, my eyes were opened to his ideas on the Tenants of Transparency. In a very small nutshell: it is possible to run a small software business without a salesman by allowing the customer to come to you. This can be achieved by achieving transparency with the customer.
ie. The more the customer works with and knows about the company the greater the comfort factor and the more willing they are to purchase from said company.
When Directory Wizards started we had a similar vision. To this day we do not have (nor ever will) a salesman. All contact with the customer is initiated shortly before the end of the software evaluation period. If we don't hear back, that's it: no cold calls or emails. This has actually worked very well today, but I think we can take transparency further by following some of Eric's ideas.
Two of these tenants have now been put into operation: