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How Not To Sell Software in 2012

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Re: How Not To Sell Software in 2012

#51

Post by notaddicted »

pnathan wrote: post #21
raganwald wrote: post #17

There's no software priced between $1000 and $75,000. I'll tell you why. The minute you charge more than $1000 you need to get serious corporate signoffs. You need a line item in their budget. You need purchasing managers and CEO approval and competitive bids and paperwork. So you need to send a salesperson out to the customer to do PowerPoint, with his airfare, golf course memberships, and $19.95 porn movies at the…

Actually, I know of a number of products that are in the [1K, 75K] range. * Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate * vSphere datacenter edition * TestComplete from SmartBear * > 3 perforce licences

Joel's article was written in 2004 so, using gasoline as the benchmark, the 2012 dollars figure is $2180 [1].

[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28average+price+of+gas...

Re: How Not To Sell Software in 2012

#52

Post by pavel_lishin »

patio11 wrote: post #46
pavel_lishin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "1 month email course on X" What's the advantage of being spammed for a month vs. having the entire month's course on an HTML page that I can peruse at my leisure and at my own pace? Or am I misunderstanding what an e-mail course is?

If you ask me for email, by definition sending you the email you asked for is not spam. The advantages to the software purchaser: 1) You're a busy guy. If we critically hit you with a wall of text right now, you'll bookmark it and never get back to it. If you're honest with yourself, you know this, because you've got a backlog of things to read four miles long already. What's your RSS reader look like? Instapaper? I…

(I was using spam in a loose term)

Eh, I was going to address your reply point-by-point, but then I realized it was kind of dumb - all of my replies were just my opinions and preferences. To sum it up, though, if I'm really interested in a technology, I'd rather choose when I get to read about it - if I don't have the information in front of me, I'll read the information provided by your competitor, and if I have to choose fast, I'm probably going to go with the devil whose brochures I've read, instead of the one whose I haven't.

Re: How Not To Sell Software in 2012

#53

Post by batista »

wheels wrote: post #36

> Practically everyone who’s paying for software is doing so through an app store And how well's that working for them? • All of the revenue for the thousands of vendors in the Apple App Store together for 2011: $3.6 billion • Oracle's revenue alone for 2011: $36 billion Notice that decimal point there? There's a reason it's in a different place. I don't like the enterprise sales process – being on either side of it,…

• All of the revenue for the thousands of vendors in the Apple App Store together for 2011: $3.6 billion • Oracle's revenue alone for 2011: $36 billion Notice that decimal point there? There's a reason it's in a different place.

Yeah. How about because Oracle is a 30 year old business, whereas the Apple App Store is a one year old new market that came out of thin air? What's the non Apple App Store Mac software sales revenue for the same time the Apple App Store is in operation? That'a fairer comparison.

Also, how would the Apple App Store revenue be if they followed the Oracle sales process --call us to give you a price, etc? That would also be an interesting number.

But the reason I'll do it is because our customers demand it and folks at that level, when a deal closes, pay enough to make it worth it.

ie: la la la la, it's how it always been done, we don't need to look at the process, la la la la la, talk to the hand.

Re: How Not To Sell Software in 2012

#54

Post by caublestone »

unreal37 wrote: post #9

There is this space between "personal" and "enterprise" where this model works. Call it "startup" or "small business". I want something, I have a credit card, I buy, I move on. The less hassle the better. 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 salesme…

I work in Procurement and run RFP's all the time. you are right that enterprises go through this whole process and that they ask a lot of questions about software capabilities. But honestly, at the end of the day, the process is so long and drawn out mostly because of compliance. Start-ups are fun companies that don't really have to worry about the threat of being regulated or audited by the government. But a publicly traded company that has a lot of risks (banks, car manufacturers, enterprise hardware) is going to be constantly under watch. As soon as the government finds what it deems a mis-use of funds, say sainara to productivity and hello to deep auditing and a halt on productivity thanks to long meetings with auditors.

I really think if it was about price and quality, you could get through a sourcing effort in a week or two. Show me what ya got, tell me how much you are charging.

Full Disclosure: I hate my job.

Re: How Not To Sell Software in 2012

#55

Post by caublestone »

Hume wrote: post #31
bliss wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having spent the last year on a procurement project I agree, when it's millions of pounds at stake (much more in potential benefits) the sales process is necessarily protracted. However, I agree about the pricing games. In my experience, companies give a massive list price (but don't answer questions about how many companies actually pay that price - I figure none) and then argue the "discount" percentage. Stoney sil…

Do you know the price point at which purchase orders predominate over credit cards for payment? I'm launching a product soon and I plan to price it at $6k per year. I assume that the software will be paid for by PO but if anyone here has a different view, I'd like to hear from you.

$10k is the most common threshold Ive seen. However, there are other issues that come into play, like if your product requires the exchange of NPI (Non-public information).

Re: How Not To Sell Software in 2012

#57

Post by pavel_lishin »

wheels wrote: post #42
pavel_lishin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "1 month email course on X" What's the advantage of being spammed for a month vs. having the entire month's course on an HTML page that I can peruse at my leisure and at my own pace? Or am I misunderstanding what an e-mail course is?

Yes, you are misunderstanding what an email course is. An email course is a daily or weekly reminder to you to keep using the product so that you'll be primed for the sales process. Given that your viewing of images will be tracked, it will also qualify your level of interest to the sales person that will be following up in person.

Ah, thank you. I've only had to make purchasing decisions twice or so, and it's always been for a pretty small and cheap product where I just tossed a credit card at them, and software/serial arrived in my inbox.

Re: How Not To Sell Software in 2012

#58

Post by edwinnathaniel »

davmar wrote: post #30
gruseom wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, that is a great comment based on experience. Can you say more about your industry and/or path to success? What was most surprising? Do you have salespeople actively soliciting business or do most prospects find you? What advice would you give to startups planning to break into the b2b world?

gladly. i think the single biggest contributor to our success has been the fact that we are in close contact with our customers. if we lose a sale, we have the opportunity to learn why we lost. during a webinar, we hear the reactions of customers. with RFP's we get a list of the features they want. when we win, we stay close to them during implementation. we learn what works/what doesn't work with our products. based…

Would you mind to provide examples of B2B software that we rarely heard of?

I have interest in B2B more than B2C occasionally but don't really have a lot of domain knowledge. Would you happen to know a few general tricks how or where to get such knowledge?

Re: How Not To Sell Software in 2012

#59

Post by stdbrouw »

> I can find and talk to your other customers basically instantly in order to determine what they paid for your product and if they’re getting the value they expected from it. I will do this.

The joke is, quite a few enterprise vendors will ask you to sign some sort of NDA before they'll even show you a demo. And of course you'll pay before ever having tried the software. "Trials" – are you mad?

Re: How Not To Sell Software in 2012

#60

Post by einhverfr »

notaddicted wrote: post #51
pnathan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I know of a number of products that are in the [1K, 75K] range. * Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate * vSphere datacenter edition * TestComplete from SmartBear * > 3 perforce licences

Joel's article was written in 2004 so, using gasoline as the benchmark, the 2012 dollars figure is $2180 [1]. [1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28average+price+of+gas...

SQL Server was in that range for many forms of licenses, and so was Windows Server when I worked at Microsoft. Actually I could think of a lot of software in that range.

Today, I was looking at UBS in South-East Asia..... A basic system may be a bit below $2k, but a functional system is probably about $4-5k.

Also a basic functional system of Sage ERP for smaller businesses is often well above $10k and below $50k

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