Axiom Space Competitors, Pricing, & Other Basics
Sales Playbook Section 4
Axiom Space Competitors, Pricing & Other Basics
This section highlights:
- Our competition
- Pricing
- Country overviews
- Brain Books
- Other sales basics
The logos to the left represent key players for our commercial space market share.
Dive into each of their websites, follow their socials, and understand how we differentiate ourselves so when someone asks, "Why work with you instead of X?" you're ready with how we're different.
Human Spaceflight Competitors
VAST
- Tagline: “Live in space for up to 30 days aboard the world’s first private space station.”
- Now competing against us to receive mission awards from NASA.
- Haven-1 targeted to launch August 2025 via SpaceX Dragon.
- More focused on tourism and living in space, with a smaller emphasis on research.
- VAST and SpaceX work closely together.
Virgin Galactic
- Potential competitor for Private Astronaut spend. Good fit for someone who just wants to go to space and not live on the ISS and perform research.
- Still called “astronauts” but not recognized as such by the official astronaut community.
SpaceX
- Expanding into human spaceflight (HSF), microgravity research, and human research.
- One of our largest expenses for each mission is to SpaceX for the use of the Falcon 9 rocket. Going directly to SpaceX instead of through us for a mission would likely be much cheaper for our customers. Need to prove ROI for each customer based on their individual needs.
Blue Origin
- Blue Origin flies humans to space on their launch vehicle, New Shephard. These launches are similar to Virgin Galactic flights and could be seen as another option for our Private Astronaut candidates.
- Thier launch vehicle, New Glenn, will take payloads into orbit and are competition for our science on what will be Axiom Station.
Manufacturing and Research Competitors
Firefly Aerospace
- Firefly describes themselves as an end-to-end transportation company that will provide more affordable and reliable access to space.
- The claim to launch payloads within 24 hours of receiving notice and orbit requirements.
Starlab Space
- US-led transatlantic joint venture between Voyager Space and Airbus that is designing, building, and will operate the Starlab commercial space station.
- Starlab will serve a global customer base of space agencies, researchers, and companies that want to perform microgravity science and research.
Varda
- Manufactures unique products in microgravity and returns them for use on Earth via reentry capsules.
- Designing and building the infrastructure needed to make low Earth orbit accessible to multiple industries, from in-orbit production equipment to reliable and economical reentry capsules.
Space Forge
- Rapid, reliable on-orbit manufacturing of electronics, pharma, and alloys.
Pricing
Pricing will be provided to you for the specific mission you're selling. Seat base price for a 14-day mission is $65 million.
Payload pricing will change based on experiment needs. Work directly with a Payload Project Manager for a ROM.
It is important to note that the $65 million sticker is for the seat only. There will likely be additional costs for science payloads.
Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) for a seat that can be shared with the customer as general buckets that could make up the seat price are below. These costs vary by mission.
- SpaceX rocket. This is the largest cost and cannot be negotiated.
- PAM resources, interfaces, and services from NASA
- Insurance
- Training direct costs
- Quarantine
- Medical screening & kits
Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) for a payload are evaluated by experiment. ROM's are generated based on payload complexity and the projected schedule to perform the required integration, testing, transportation, and operations activities.
Country Overview
In HubSpot, each country has a government checklist that needs to be completed for a government seat sale to be successful:
- Are we clear to lobby in this country?
- Connected with consulate?
- Connected with Embassy in country?
- Connected with Embassy in D.C?
- Connected with Ministry
- Connected with trade?
- Filed for Advocacy? (always loop in RevOps )
- Fiscal Year
- Strategic Narrative developed?
- Upcoming conferences customer will attend? (next 6 months)
- Upcoming spaceflights (satellite launches, moon landings, etc.)
This checklist is helpful for multiple people and will be referenced by the Revenue team and can be found on the left side bar of government records.
If you’re not making as much headway in a country as you should, have you checked all of these off?
To find the checklist, scroll down on the left side panel on the country record.
Important POC’s you should identify and work introductions if we haven’t been in contact already.
- Ambassador in D.C.
- In-Country US Ambassador
- Houston Counsel
- Ministry Contacts
- In-Country Space Agency
- Important influencers
Track all interactions in HubSpot.
Calendar Information
- Upcoming launches
- Elections
- Conferences
- Country Holidays
Track all information on country record in HubSpot.
HubSpot Country Setup and Associations
For consistent information across all country records, please refer to the graphic below for a visual representation of record associations using Italy as an example. Everything should ultimately tie back to the country record and the ideal flow of associations is Country>Companies/Government Entities/Contacts.
Brain Books
What is a Brain Book?
Brain Books are a one-page PDF that includes all pertinent information executives need to know when participating in a customer meeting. Including:
1. Logistics: Date, Time, and Location
2. Meeting With/Customer Bio: Completed by Enablement
3. Meeting Objectives: Completed by Sales
4. Talking Points/Sales Approach: Choose either/or and label appropriately. Completed by Sales.
5. Customer Summary/History: Completed by Enablement if information is in HubSpot. Sales to review and fill in any gaps.
6. Context: Completed by Enablement if information is in HubSpot, otherwise Sales provides.
7. Links: HubSpot records and any additional pertinent information
Below is the gold standard for Brain Books.
Enablement will pull together bios as well as customer history and additional context that can be pulled from HubSpot.
As a salesperson, your responsibility for Brain Books is providing the sales objective and provide and/or fill in any holes in the customer history. If there isn’t a sales objective, ask yourself if this is the right time to schedule this meeting.
In the Brain Book above, note the objectives are actionable and move the relationship and CRO sales priorities forward.
- All information is scannable and on one page.
- All bullet points are factual without any fluff language. No self promo or Axiom promo.
- Enablement sends the Brain Book to sales for review. Once sales signs off it goes to Kirsten for final review. Kirsten then sends to Tej and Sonia to attach the PDF to Tej’s calendar for the meeting.
- Brain Books are due to executives at least two days in advance of the scheduled meeting for review.
Unacceptable meeting objectives are like the below examples:
- Expand business opportunities (needs to be more specific)
- Build the relationship (How do we leverage relationship growth to meet sales objectives? We are not sending our executives across the globe to say hi to somebody.)
When do we need Brain Books?
Brain Books are a requirement for all executive meetings, even if that executive has been involved in customer conversations.
These are the only consistent sales tool we use across all prospecting activities. Brain Books provide a reference for customer history, we build off them as relationships progress.
If for some reason the intended executive cannot attend, the replacement will use the Brain Book to prep for the meeting.
There are no exceptions, Brain Books are completed for every executive sales meeting, including:
- Sales/business development
- Current customers
- Investors
- Partnerships
- Press Conferences (Comms will generate prep, we combine with Brain Book information for one, final document)
- Events/Conferences
Before you schedule a meeting, you should know the objective of the meeting.
Be proactive and send your objectives, attendee(s) name(s), and title(s) to Enablement well in advance of the two day deadline to send completed Brain Books to Tej. We know that sometimes meetings are scheduled last-minute, and that's ok, but we'd like to prepare as much as we can ahead of time.
Defining Sales Goals
How are you helping achieve company goals?
Goals should be:
- Clearly defined with actionable steps
- Realistic
- Measurable
- Time-bound
- How will using MEDPICC help achieve these goals?
- You should build off the CRO’s goals for the Revenue department.
- For example, if one of the goals is to get 15 new customers/year, how many of those can you acquire and how?
Task:
Create three sales goals for yourself for the next year. Remember, these should be measurable so each should have three tactics to help you achieve this goal. Example below.
Where do you find leads?
- Conferences
- Vendelux is a tool used by Revenue Operations to identify and contact prospects at global space events. If you are attending a conference, please work with Enablement to pull a list for your outreach efforts.
- If you have a conference you’d like to have evaluated for us to potentially attend, please submit that request via this form.
- Referrals
- Target company websites and search for their executive leadership bios if available.
Additional training through HubSpot Academy:
- Attracting Leads Through WhatsApp (12 minutes)
- How to Build an Organic LinkedIn Following (25 minutes)
- 101 Sales Qualification Questions (27 minutes)