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comment by thenewgreen
thenewgreen  ·  3348 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: (Case study) Free and a King's Ransom

    I'd say one glaring 'error' was this line:

    To be candid, at this point cost really wouldn't matter because you have no idea what the software is capable of.

-I'd say he had a number of glaring errors, but that was certainly one of them. He really did a poor job of framing the call. He had a clear objective in his mind that he wanted a demo. Period. He was so hyper focused on it that he didn't "hear" his client. It's perfectly reasonable for his customer to ask about price, especially since in this case his customer is using a competitors product.

If I were the one presenting, I would have given a range on what the price could be and let him know that this price range is variable based on what product suite you go with -which it is. He, is familiar with this and will understand. I would assure him that once I let him know about the new, advanced capabilities he would see that the value of the software exceeds the costs. Then I would proceed. But there comes a point when you have to answer the "cost" question, it's all in how you answer it.

    The salesman should've presented the advantages in relation to competitor's software
-Yes, I agree to an extent. But he also needs to show that his software is in a new class unto itself. It's a cloud based software which allows his clients firm to forge real-time connections with their customers, anytime from anywhere. He needs to paint a picture of what that means.

"Let's say you are at your daughters soccer game and one of your customers sends you an email requesting their financial statements from 2012. You can access this information, securely via our online portal from your cell phone in less than a minute. What does that mean for you? How does that differentiate you from other firms? In this scenario, by utilizing our cloud capabilities you have, after business hours, responded to your customer quickly and thoroughly and you did it without missing a minute of your daughters game." this is powerful stuff.

Thanks for the reply rezzeJ