Sale Strategy

Sun Apr 1 06:19:52 PDT 2018

Mike,

I love the "truck" analogy; they can cost well over $15K, suck up lots 
of $$$ yearly and yet, gone by age 15 ...

There are so many people out there offering "canned" packages at very 
little cost (or so they present it as) that I have not found an 
effective way to counter that.  Mind you, I am not a salesman and truly 
lack ability to effectively breakdown benefits of filePro over others 
... I usually opt for asking prospect to ask questions round areas of 
concerns and I address them one by one best I can.

$350K, nice number; I hope you turned around and took another $350K to 
rescue them.  I lost a customer in CA with an identical situation except 
that in my case, managers did not rally to support my application, CFO 
put her feet down and they all fell in place.  Funny thing is that CFO 
quit shortly after they converted and opened a store of her own and 
started to compete with my formal customer.  Company was never able to 
function 110% and $$$ kept flowing out paying for all sorts of support, 
maintenance and God knows what else ... I stopped taking their calls on 
principles (or bitterness, I felt betrayed) ... they went out of 
business inside of two years; not sure if because of software 
cost/failure or market conditions (the crash put a lot of storefronts 
out of business).

I like the "virtualizing" option; where can I learn more about this?

Thanks,

On 04/01/2018 08:55 AM, Mike Schwartz via Filepro-list wrote:
>> How do you guys manage to sale filePro today?
>>
>> $349 per seat is a price tag and then some ... I am one that believes that
>>
>> So, how about some tips on "filePro sale pitch" to win those ever present
>> battles!!!
>> --
>> Jose D. Lerebours
>       It is odd that a customer pays a few thousand dollars for a system,
> runs it for 15 years as the "heart and life-blood" of their business, then
> complains about paying another couple of thousand dollars that will probably
> carry the system forward another 15 years.  I bet they don't get 15 years of
> dependable life out of their delivery trucks or their office furniture...
>
>       Since they are happy with their old SCO operating system, why switch
> that to Linux?  I'm sure you can find hardware that will still run the SCO
> operating system.  Bill Campbell and others here on the list can probably
> assist you in virtualizing their old SCO server, if they simply want to
> virtualize.
>
>       Business decisions are ultimately ALL about payback.  So, when trying
> to sell a customer on upgrades, normally I emphasize the "quick payback"
> that they will get with the new reports or new filePro features.  However,
> since this is a "lateral" move to Linux and if they are not interested in
> having you do more programming to make use of the new filePro features, they
> won't get a quick payback on their investment.
>
>       So, the only payback they will get  is that the "heart and life-blood"
> of their business will have been overhauled; similar to buying all brand new
> delivery trucks.
>
>       It is probably worth mentioning the new filepro features to them.  For
> example, maybe they will want you to add filePro's direct PDF printing to
> their system.
>
>       Remind them that there is a heavy cost to switch software.  Just the
> function of SEARCHING for a new software package will probably  consume a
> LOT of man-hours.  They have to look at things like training and buying a
> LOT faster server and hardware system than their old filePro system
> requires.  Windows apps have their uses, but Windows systems are not always
> the best option for database systems, even if their users do not type 100
> WPM.
>
>       For example, a few years ago I had a large insurance brokerage who
> spent more than $350,000.00 to "upgrade" to a "canned" MS-Windows insurance
> database system.  After almost 3 years of testing and adding more and more
> Windows servers, they tried to go "live" on the new system.  Unfortunately,
> they never could get things to balance on the new system and found it took a
> LOT longer (like 10 times as long) to enter insurance policy info into their
> new system as compared to filepro.  Also, they just could not get the same
> "sort and select" reporting flexibility that their old filePro system had.
>
>       Finally all of their managers confronted the bosses and told them they
> were going to QUIT unless they went BACK to their old filePro system.  So I
> had to scramble for a couple of weeks to get them a couple of new servers
> and upgraded filePro system so that they could cut back over to their old
> filePro system!
>
>       One of my favorite sales phrases is:  "Every time a user has to take
> their hands off of their keyboard and move to their mouse, then scroll
> around a page and position the mouse to the next data field, they have lost
> a LOT of time."
>
>        So, in this case, I advise:
>
> 1)  Do NOT move off of SCO (Xinous) Openserver.  There's probably no valid
> reason to spend the money to do that.
>
> 2)  Think long and hard about considering moving to any new software
> package.  It will probably end up costing a LOT more than you thought it
> would.
>
> 3)  Non-GUI database applications are NOT dead.  They are typically more
> cost effective than GUI Windows based apps are.
>   
> Hope that helps...
>
> Mike Schwartz
>       
>   
>
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-- 
Jose D. Lerebours
954-559-7186
https://www.cargosaas.com
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