No Selling Please

I have been involved in sales and marketing of some sort or another for most of my adult life. Over time I have seen myriad fads, systems, techniques, and more come and go. Unlike fashion, however, it is unlikely that there will be a cycling back to techniques of old.

The changes that have occurred in just this century alone have made the sales and marketing game a very different ballgame. The power is with the buyer like never before and that is a good thing. The ability to do more due diligence on whatever it is that a company is in the market for, allows for better decision making in many cases. It's not perfect but it is better.

That's from the buyer's side though. On the seller's side it's a bit more complicated. While things have changed almost completely in the marketplace, the way that companies structure sales efforts from teams to compensation hasn't changed much at all. The pressure to show 'hockey stick growth' is always there from management even though everyone knows that it is not a long term strategy. In fact, it rarely works out even in the short term.

Lots of people say that software sales has changed as SaaS offerings become more prominent. In those areas where a SaaS delivery makes sense it has. Getting someone into a trial of some sort is the magic event that signals a much more likely degree of developing a customer. That's all well and good for some applications but there is a rub.

That rub is the need for customization that exists in almost every business. No matter how diverse ( i.e. how many levels of service) a SaaS offering gets, the ability to truly customize is limited because the goal of SaaS environments is software delivery at scale. Customization is the SaaS environments kryptonite.

Custom software delivery requires infrastructure and overhead that many SaaS offerings don't necessarily need. It's not about a product when there is customization involved. It is about a solution. Most people are selling solutions, though, as if they were a SaaS offering. The two are oil and water. They simply do not mix.

That's why I do what I do. I rely on techniques that require some old school 'law of large numbers' activities but keep the pressure tactics away from the product decision process. In order to make a truly strong partnership between a software development third party and a customer there cannot be any forced arrangements. There cannot be a 'close' on a sale because that implies some level of coercion. Everything must be the right solution for the customer regardless of the vendor's goals. If it's not, projects are doomed, money is wasted, relationships are severed, and worse.

If you made it this far, thanks. I hope there was some value here. All I ask is that if you have a genuine or even perceived software development need that I be considered to have a discussion with you. No pressure. Just a discussion of maybe a minimum of 15 minutes to determine if a time investment is warranted to further explore your options.

So no software 'sales' here. Just talk and if there is a meeting of the minds, we can determine next steps. If there is not, then we shake hands and move on to the next thing. It's not adversarial or combative with each side protecting its territory (the customer protecting capital and seller protecting margin). It has to end up in the cliched 'win-win' to some degree or why go through the motions?

Let's talk soon and see if there is a match. There is literally no pressure.