How Not To Sell Software in 2012

How Not To Sell Software in 2012
al3x.net

There are also pretty obvious economic reasons why companies with 5-figure customer LTVs might avoid credit card billing. There are services that work well with metered billing, but many others in which customers will demand flat licensing.

I can also absolutely see why Github would would to keep a pretty tight handle on who's trialing what is in effect a packaged-up version of one of the most important software sites on the Internet. We're a FI customer. Incidentally, on the scale of "enterprisey" sales processes, they were an absolute dream to work with.

our current sales cycle includes a lot of the negatives that you point out. however, we're up front with our pricing while our competitors aren't.

we actually created a product that did nearly exactly what you said. we didn't get nearly as many customers with that method. people would sign up (sometimes) and when they did, they tended not to pay once their 30 day free trial was up. our conversion rates sucked. we ended up canceling that product and removing it from our site after 8 months.

when we have a webinar with a sales call, our closure rates increase dramatically. customers tend not to pay by credit card even when given the option.

i actually think you're 100% right for many, many products. but i don't think it'd work in my boring b2b industry.

edit: we probably didn't do enough experimentation on the small product as we should have, so i take some of the blame for that.

This blog post should be titled "How Not to Sell Software to Alex Payne".

But in real enterprises, I don't have a credit card. I don't even have authority to purchase. (There is a whole department named "procurement" for that.) But I need to see "sales decks", do webinars, talk to salesmen trying to understand my needs and saying yes to every question I ask, download trial versions, spec out requirements, do a business case, write up a recommendation to management, and figure out how complex software with lots of optional modules fits within our existing environment. It could take months to make a purchase decision on some software. In the past year, my current client has paid to fly me 500 miles away (a few times actually) to talk to salespeople face to face to get product demos and talk strategy before the ink is signed on the purchase order. These decisions are not easy nor quick nor cheap.

I understand the frustration in this post. I respect this model doesn't work at smaller scales. The current model is not perfect at larger scales. But $50,000 a year software doesn't get sold by credit card online nor through "app stores". Any company that tried to switch away from the old model and follow the new model at that level would fail, I believe.