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How Not To Sell Software in 2012

al3x.net

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Re: How Not To Sell Software in 2012

#81

Post by sedev »

I notice a lot of comments taking on Al3x's comments about the way things are, but almost none taking on his comments about the way things will be. It'd be a little to facile to just say "skate to where the puck will be, not to where it is," but I definitely agree with him that the demographics are changing, and that the benefits that (let's be generous) used to be in the Enterprise Sales Process, are not guaranteed to be there in the future.

If you assume that he's correct about the demographic changes and the consumer tastes, do you think he'll be right about the benefits of the Enterprise Sales Process evaporating over the next 5-15 years? I think that's a good bet.

Re: How Not To Sell Software in 2012

#82

Post by einhverfr »

Nrsolis wrote: post #29
thematt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. As an example of just how ridiculous it gets, we recently drafted an RFP for a solution for licensing our custom-made software to our customers and had a vendor come in with their solution. When it came time to discuss pricing, their response was "we charge based on the amount of revenue you'll be getting from the software...so just tell us how much money you're going to make from your software and we'll get…

Of course it's expected! When you have a solution that is going to make a huge amount of money for some other organization, you'd like to capture some of that upside as well. Did you know that HBO prices it's channel lineup to the CableCo's at 50% of whatever they sell it for -or- $minimum_price_per_subscriber. Enterprise software is a whole different game and blog posts like these dont fully capture the wide range o…

I think the reason why it is a diferent game is overlooked in blog posts like this. The apps that you purchase from an app store, whether brick and mortar or online, are discrete utilities with completely standardized finctions such that the market can be reduced to only a few sizes.

Enterprise software is a different game because that asumption no longer applies. Instead ypu have software that a lot is riding on, and it must be matched to the business.

Re: How Not To Sell Software in 2012

#85

Post by aantix »

davmar wrote: post #76
aantix wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, how did you find your sales guy and how did decide on the revenue split?

we're a type s corp, so it's a flow-through entity. at the end of the year we distributed remaining profits based upon equal ownership (things have changed as we've grown). he worked off commission only to begin with and i drew a small salary once we had revenue. but...i was in college and my salary requirements were low. the sales guy? my dad who had another job at the time (sales at: apple, sun microsystems, hitach…

I'm in San Francisco.

I've got a product that I have developed in the evenings that could be beneficial to the startups in the area. I work a fulltime as a Rails engineer, so I can only make a few contacts a night.

Thanks for the advice, I sincerely appreciate it.

Re: How Not To Sell Software in 2012

#86

Post by schnaars »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #79
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,…

"Shut up and take my money!" applies at both ends of the spectrum. If a hundred thousand people want to give you $10 through an app store, it might make sense to figure out how to make that possible. If one person wants to give you a million dollars using an ACH transfer or through gold doubloons, you should probably figure out how to make that possible too.

I'll take 1 person giving me $1M over 100K giving me $!0 any day.

Re: How Not To Sell Software in 2012

#87

Post by schnaars »

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…

Are you kidding me? SFDC is $125 a month per user. Even a small company is paying $15K a year for their licenses. Salesforce is doing okay.

Re: How Not To Sell Software in 2012

#88

Post by bdunbar »

Today’s startups are tomorrow’s enterprises. Many of the other startup folks I know share the same expectations about how software should be sold.

They'll change their minds when they become an enterprise.

Listen: we don't do things that way because we like layers of bureaucracy, and long, tedious meetings.

Well, some of us don't.

Enterprise customers and vendors operate that way because it's the easiest, most painless way to get stuff done.

If it wasn't, we wouldn't do it that way.

Re: How Not To Sell Software in 2012

#89

Post by seltzered_ »

This reminds me of steve blank article, where the salesforce burned his well-written datasheet about a product because it's cause too many folks to "get to no" quickly:

http://steveblank.com/2011/08/05/bonfire-of-the-vanities/

I work in the semiconductor industry which is rife with webinars, field sales/apps engineers, etc. I hate it, but in some ways it's a wacky industry where you have a garden variety of customers ranging from grad students wanting free samples for a science project, to Apple/Dell wanting to cut your margins to nothing while lying that their volumes will be huge when they're also just testing out a science project.

You end up with a problem where you don't know how much effort your apps engineers will have to spend working with a customer and whether their time was worth working with them. So you end up with negotiators called sales people/field engineers. In theory it works unless those negotiators are bent on extracting as many commissions as possible, and/or don't walk into the right markets.

Re: How Not To Sell Software in 2012

#90

Post by bdunbar »

lhnn wrote: post #74
caublestone wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 publicl…

As long as you hate being a part of that shitty machine, it's ok... I guess. EDIT: I love my job.. mostly because I got to install an app for my team that increases productivity WITHOUT: -Requesting a dev server build -Requesting a test server build -Getting permission to use an open source tool -Getting persmission to run said tool on "non-standard language" (PHP) -Explaining why I'm installing a tool for which one…

The original poster was going on about how when his startup is an enterprise he won't do things 'that way'.

But enterprises work best when you have those parts that you hate in play.

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