When selling enterprise software “play the man not the ball”.
The decision maker is going to carry the can if (and probably when) the project goes bad. Find ways of minimizing that risk and you’re most of the way to winning the deal.
Selling software can be a tough business! Especially when it’s big ticket enterprise software.
With any kind of business software the prospect always thinks he knows more than he really does – after all he uses computers all day, every day.
But with enterprise software the challenge reaches a whole new level. Because the selection of the “right” software requires more than choosing the best fit. It extends to mitigating risk.
Selling enterprise software we need to focus on reducing the risk for whoever is making the selection. We can forget friendly user interfaces and flexible reporting. We can forget sexy features. We can forget price, at least for the moment.
The critical issue is finding a way to make sure our prospect doesn’t get fired when the project goes wrong. (95% of enterprise software projects fail to deliver the expected benefits, on time and within budget).
To illustrate the situation lets look at the propositions the competition will put forward:
- Vendor A suggests “buy from us, we have processes designed by experts” probably in German.
- Vendor B suggests “buy from us, your IT people will prefer our tools” built by my old friend Greg in Redwood Shores,
- Vendor C says “buy from us, your users are already familiar with our UI” with a Washington State accent.
The alternative pitch from us is “we’ll make sure it’s not your fault if it goes wrong”.
The sales guy who can make this strategy work is going to win the business.
The decision maker will turn into our “coach”, helping us understand the internal dynamics and pointing us at the others we need to influence, and how to do it.
Our first “sale” has been made. The decision maker favors us, because we’re going to look after him/her.
This “sale” isn’t about software. It’s about protecting the poor sod who needs to make the decision.
Now we’ve done that we can get on with the rest of the project, with the decision maker on our side.
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