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This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

josephwalla.com

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Re: This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

#51

Post by gk1 »

mattmanser wrote: post #35

I've worked in enterprise SASS, salesman know not a lot about their own product, ROIs are plucked from asses and often it's all fibs. Bear in mind I thought our sales guys were great, our product pretty good vs the field. But basing your purchase on an email like this? You're a complete sucker. All that happened was that a salesman just called their bluff. And they were impressed by it!

You've boiled it down pretty well. As many others have noted, this is a typical angle to take when trying to change the topic from price to value, and this CEO writes this exact email many times per week. I'm surprised the owner of HelloSign doesn't already know this tactic.

Re: This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

#53

Post by dspillett »

simplemts wrote: post #23
fijal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to swap "people" in your sentence for "americans". It's a cultural thing, not a human thing.

Seriously? Bargaining, or discounts, in this example is very, very common all over the world. I have found Americans do less of it than in most parts of the world, such as China, Turkey, Thailand, Morocco, etc.

I've assumed that my experience is accurate and that it is more common in rural areas (where ad-hoc/informal barter systems still prevail) and poor areas that see significant numbers of (relatively) richer visitors (i.e. tourists).

In the latter case the price starts high (to catch the people who will just pay anyway) then the price goes down, or there is a bait & switch (the bargain item advertised in the window is sold out, could we interest you in this instead?), or both. Perhaps the poster above is conflating "loud, brash, confident tourists bargaining" with "American tourists" - a pair of populations that certainly do intersect though not as much as commonly held stereotypes would suggest.

Re: This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

#56

Post by UrMomReadsHN »

mattmanser wrote: post #35

I've worked in enterprise SASS, salesman know not a lot about their own product, ROIs are plucked from asses and often it's all fibs. Bear in mind I thought our sales guys were great, our product pretty good vs the field. But basing your purchase on an email like this? You're a complete sucker. All that happened was that a salesman just called their bluff. And they were impressed by it!

A good salesman will get you to take a bad or mediocre deal while at the same time convincing you you've gotten a great deal. Always question "facts" thrown out by someone trying to sell you something.

"instead of doing a price cut, it may be worth explaining why your product is worth more." This is news?

Re: This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

#57

Post by hyperliner »

MattBearman wrote: post #52

I've never had anyone ask for discount for my SaaS (BugMuncher), nor has anyone ever complained about the pricing. Should I take this as a sign to put my prices up?

Careful there. Read about Netflix:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2011/12/28/5-business-les...

Re: This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

#58

Post by exelius »

drdaeman wrote: post #43

Maybe this is due to lack of context, but with all that "designed to improve your company performance in the critical area" and "investing heavily in great customer service and innovation" that email sounds terribly enterpriesey to me. It all could be boiled down to a one-liner in spirit of "Sorry, but we can't offer our services any cheaper. Our prices are indeed higher, but the services are better than competitors…

> Just my opinion. I'm not a businessman.

It shows :) No offense, but this is an engineer's mindset. Great for building products; terrible for selling them.

A businessperson's mindset is "if they don't understand their value proposition well enough to explain it to me, their product likely isn't any better than the competition and they know it." Better still, by explaining your value proposition in terms of a prospective client's problems, you are showing them that 1) you understand their problems 2) your product addresses their problems and 3) that you are committed to a long-term, mutually beneficial business relationship, not just a sale.

OP's link is a great example of good business communication. It's obvious that many of the flaws are due to the anonymization; I've written these e-mails before and the main goal is building a business relationship based on trust. If you have built a relationship with your customer, you get a little bit of leeway to badmouth the competition if it's relevant.

Re: This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

#59

Post by exelius »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #48
stevewepay wrote: post #26

Sales 101 is being able to take the conversation away from "price" and change it to "value". 20 years ago, my friend was selling IBM desktops and servers to educational institutes and I learned this from him. There was no way IBM could compete against the prices of those small computer stores, so he had to actively show how buying IBM would save money over the long run, etc. He was a very good salesman so it worked p…

And yet, eventually IBM pulled out of the consumer PC business.

That was a proactive move that turned out quite well for them. They saw that the consumer PC business was going to shrink significantly over the next 10 years, so they sold off while the price was still high.

I don't think anyone in their right mind is second guessing IBM's decision to get out of the PC business. In hindsight, it was a great move executed with perfect timing.

Re: This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

#60

Post by pablosaurus »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #37

If I got an e-mail like this, I'd most likely go with the competitor. > The FooCorps's of the world have spent a couple decades now in a the race to the bottom and it shows. I have no doubt you can get their product (or a whole raft of others) for a few bucks cheaper than us. AKA. "Our competition suck and it shows." > Our product, Acme, is different. Of course. > Look, FooCorp's customers are switching to Acme in dr…

You would make a business decision based on the tone of an email?
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