Hi Judy,
These are all excellent pieces of advice from yourself and everyone else from the working Moms to contract percentages. We are an SaaS software co based in Florida, and have been open a little over a year (are profitable) and are looking to find some excellent software sales people based on contract percentages. Im curiuos where we would find these people?

We are also in the process of moving our applications to another location that will handle all of our server needs and in this process a few of their salespeople that sell their products have seen our products and have contacted us about selling ours to their clients. We're currently discussing 40-50% of the setup fee plus 7-8% of monthly fees for a two year contract but this may change a bit as we create demo sites for their specialized industries.

Marketting wise we have a robust CRM backend along with sophisticated marketting movies and websites but thus have only had very limited sucess with gathering leads from our website or search engines within our targetting industry. We have about 800-900 hits on Google when our co name is googled, and have submitted to 40-50 free search engines and are currently on a pay per click with Capterra.com but I hesitate to spend more money blindly on anything else before i see some kind of ROI. So many cos out there guarantee results but nothing happens, any advice on this?

Good insights, Judy. Thank you!

Outstanding advice, thanks!

I am in the process of establishing a 100% commission sales plan and am interested in hearing what % works and is fare for both new sales as well as renewals.

Hello Judy,

I completely agree with what you said.If we are right company Yes we have to put a Management Page.

But i have doubt. most of the companies in US wont entertain cold calls especially people who want to do business from india will have a offshore sales team,and would do cold calling and in US its like a world of Voice Mails. emails will go in junk due to the filter.

But still i can say i had bit of sucess in getting projects.P***ing all the barriers diffrent objection handlings and things like that.

what is the more better way we can implement in this process of sales.

Your thoughts and inputs please.

Judy,

I would definitelt be interested in hearing more as we are a Canadian based software company. Contact me hpoll38@yahoo.com

Hi Rudy,

my name is kURGAT, I have started A value added company reselling softwares. My big challenge is selling software mainly POS, and D.M.S. How do i approach big corporate clients.

We have worked with Industry consultants in a few countries (not US yet) with moderate success in a couple of cases and none in some. The business model seems to be trying to generate business for software around the consulting they already do and not vice versa. I will be looking into these opprtunities as well. We do provide all support and leads.

Good comments by Dave and MylesJ.

50% you say? Does this depend in any way on the price of the product? volumes?

I agree with Dave that the problem is being able to make a good contract. It is almost impossible to do that without being in danger of having your contracting partner be declared your employee. If you set up a territorial arrangement and the partner either does not put effort into your product or worse, uses your training to go find a more expensive product to sell, you are pretty much stuck for the duration of the contract unless those things are covered.

We are about to go into marketing mode on software we have been developing for 6 years. One of my formerly good VAR's hasn't sold much in the last couple of years. Now he wants exclusivity "to make it worth his while". I figure if the other guys have been making sales and I have been making sales then he hasn't been working on our behalf.

My problem is evaluating new VAR's. We are covered from Carolina up on the east coast and in the Northwest. A few VARs I've talked to want exclusives without committments. I know you can't really set sales requirements until the VAR gets moving in the local market. I used to get committments of a minimum of x hours a week, x cold calls and x follow-ups as part of the initial honeymoon period.

I have to go slow because I am picky and my main concern is customers that I have had for 20 to 30 years. I'm hoping that the 50% margins I'm offering will be attractive to the right kind of local VAR.

Hi Judy -- Here's a thought -- What I found to be a carrot to get some higher-calibre individuals and companies involved in marketing and selling a new product coming from a small firm is to have some sort of formula for giving them either equity (in the firm) or a percentage of sales in a given area for developing the area. This is tricky in determining what to give-away that is both valuable so they feel they have a longer-term commitment but not too costly to your company's long-term goals...and it's not something that large established firm necessarily need or want to do...but if a smaller firm with a new product can find the right formula for the company, the company can have a better chance of getting top-notched individuals/companies marketing and selling the product long-term. Obviously part of the challenge is locating and qualifying the individuals/companies to market/sell the product. It's sort of a reseller franchise model that requires a clear contract. I don't know if you or others have had experience with these sorts of models...

In my business, mom's rock and they can work on commission and work part-time and make way more than they can in any other part-time job.

Thanks Judy, for starting this blog thread. I'd eagerly await your postings on this..esp if you can cover the problems facing 'very small' software companies from outside the US.