SoftwareCEO Community - Selling Enterprise Software

Building Value into the Biggest Deals

Posted 03-18-2009 at 06:26 PM by Skraner (Selling Enterprise Software)

Happy Hunting Grounds
Most companies focus on selling to one functional area in an account (IT for example). The VP of IT might have a pain that she wants to solve, with a specific cost of pain identified. However the IT problem alone is not enough to justify the investment required and the VP of IT is alone in the battle for approval of funds. The project dies.

Silos
The same underlying problem that is behind the IT pain may also be causing pain in other functional areas...

Skraner

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What’s Limiting Your Software Sales?

Posted 03-04-2009 at 06:34 PM by Skraner (Selling Enterprise Software)

Tags closing big deals, sales, sales constraints, steve kraner

Sales Constraints
When I ask what currently constrains sales, sales people generally say it’s time, leads, the competition, lack of S.E.’s, the fact that the new version isn’t ready, the prices are too high, the economy is too weak, etc.

An Agitated Mongoose in Your Lap
I was supervising live outbound calls at a medium-sized software company. The top sales rep did what I asked him to do and, after a couple dials, he got a potential buyer on the phone. The buyer...

Skraner

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Establishing Value on Big Deals

Posted 03-04-2009 at 04:46 PM by Skraner (Selling Enterprise Software)
Updated 03-04-2009 at 06:25 PM by Skraner (add tags)

Being a sales voyeur...
I was sitting in a staff meeting and the President and Sales VP’s were discussing negotiating, discounting and holding the line on price.

One manager said, “If we can prove technical superiority, then I can discount less. But if I can’t prove product superiority you can’t expect me to hold the line on price!”

A deal at Major Media Co. came up, and they commented on the fact that it closed with little discounting at $1.2M.
...

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Free pilots and proofs of concept fail more often than they succeed – and here’s why:

Posted 02-28-2009 at 12:03 AM by Skraner (Selling Enterprise Software)

This form of proof often fails, because customers do not see significant value in the results.

They don’t see value because:

There was no clearly defined, short-term business problem identified.
The customer is not dedicated to getting value from the pilot.
The customer doesn’t dedicate sufficient resources.
There are no clearly defined parameters for success of the pilot.
The seller doesn’t dedicate enough resources
The pilot raises more questions that it resolves

...

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In all enterprise projects, there are three battlefronts:

Posted 02-25-2009 at 10:41 PM by Skraner (Selling Enterprise Software)

Technology
The decision makers are end users and technology executives. Salespeople often think that this group has all the power but generally, at best, they can veto a product or service that does meet the tech specs.

Political
I was golfing with a senior executive at a software company who said, “My biggest problem is my sales people who say, ‘The customer says we had the best technical fit, but we lost for political reasons. The other sales team had the CIO’s ear.’”...

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