In a period of ten years SAP went from an also ran ledgers software vendor to the biggest solutions provider in the world (sorry Oracle – you did it through acquisition and sorry Microsoft – you aren’t a solutions provider, really).
What’s the SAP secret? The marketing guys persuaded CEO’s and CFO’s they’d get a better business when they chose SAP.
We could argue whether SAP delivers on the promise or not – salesforce certainly would – but we can’t argue that the positioning didn’t lift SAP from “also ran” to “nobody got fired for buying” status.
In the process SAP raised the bar for solutions providers. It’s no longer enough to provide functions and features. Today the benchmark is “added value” – the software helps users know stuff they wouldn’t otherwise know, and do stuff they wouldn’t otherwise do.
One of the best examples I’ve seen of this in action is the Hubspot Inbound Marketing solution – it genuinely lifts the users’ game, with “intelligence” built in. Most of us can be more effective Inbound Marketers when we use it.
It’s also the basis of every decision we make about what to do with Front Office Box – does it add genuine value? Not just giving the users what they think they want, but lifting their game.
Do you look for “value add” when making decisions about software?
Is your business more capable, because of the software you choose?
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