The other day Ron Schmeltzer tweeted how broken the RFP process is for buying software and his opinion of the process (he dislikes it). [Correction: Ron was talking about consulting RFP's, so the post below doesn't really matter. But, it did get me off my bum to write the post below, something I've had in my head for quite some time.] I quickly responded, asking him how he’d do it differently if he were a buyer. I have some thoughts on this, but was curious what he thought. Brett Miller responded with a blog post he wrote back in July as to the pros and cons of the RFP process.
In general, my opinion about Brett’s points are that the cons outweigh the pros in most every case, and that there are alternative ways to achieve the pros without invoking the cons.
I feel quite strongly that the RFP process for software purchasing is totally broken, and have an idea to replace it based on the work that some early founders of WebLayers did when I was selling Actional to them at Credit Suisse.
First let me explain why I think it’s broken. Then I’ll share my recommended fix. Read more…
Early last November I sat with Chris Larsen over breakfast as he explained his perspective on Progress‘ market presence. Chris had been following Progress for years and had recently joined Progress as Executive VP of Sales. He summed up the challenges faced by the company with a story of a recent customer visit.
This big bank he visited had no idea who Progress was. They were a customer of OpenEdge, DataDirect and Sonic, and there was a big Apama deal on the table. We were late to the deal, and didn’t have the strategic relationship with the bank that we should have had as a long term technology provider. A relationship, I might add that was critical to beating some of the smaller startups competing against Apama for the business. Chris was frustrated that there were four sales teams in at the bank, none of which showed a whit of interest in working with the other.
Tons of reasons, obvious to anyone at Progress, as to why that was the case.
Just 8 months later, I’d like to share an experience. The experience was fittingly my final Progress performance. Read more…
Here’s a tip for presales engineers selling complex technology.
There we go, I’m already off on a tangent. My poor brain.
You see, I said “…engineers selling…” Yep, that’s the job of the sales engineer. Don’t fool yourselves. You get paid to sell. You’re the people with the credibility. Where the sales person manages the mechanics of the sales process, it’s the sales engineer that establishes credibility and demonstrates value.
I was once questioned by a customer about a higher price than a competitor (a distributor who took my design and priced it). My response… “you pay more because you get me.” It’s a funny story, but suffice it to say that I was lucky my sales guy was on vacation that day. He would have had heart failure at my response, and he would have just matched the distributor’s price. I sold the value (along with a little humor) and the customer agreed. They purchased at our higher price.
Anyways, back on track. Read more…
There’s a ton going on here at Progress, and a lot of it affects me. I’ve been particularly quiet, in part because the things happening aren’t necessarily what I’m able to speak about openly. It’s a judgment call of course, as I have no editor but my own ethical conscience.
In particular, I’d like to weigh in on the Savvion acquisition we just completed and my new role. But, I don’t feel comfortable doing either just yet.
I recently had the opportunity to present to the entire company during our annual sales conference keynote; a presentation that was streamed out to all our offices. I’ve got the recording, and I believe it to be appropriate to share that experience as part of my online resume/blog.
So, what you’ll hear/watch/read here is a bit about our go to market strategy and message through the charade of an executive sales call that uses a solution demonstration to convince a fictional CEO, Pete, of the value that Progress can help him and his company achieve.
We’re a bunch of gadget geeks here on the Actional team. We’ve been through so many phones, it’d make for a good photo shoot. Mostly the trend was Windows Mobile to Blackberry, though I made a stop along the way at Symbian (the Nokia E61 was a fine phone when it came out!).
I remember when Microsoft’s Zune came out, Dan Foody thought it was a really nice device. I vaguely recall him saying something along the lines of it being much “better” than the iPod. “Better” meaning more cool technology stuffed inside. Of course, the Zune hasn’t really made a dent in the market.
Palm’s Pre is similar. Probably a really sweet phone. Certainly addresses the physical keyboard I know I missed when I briefly used an iPhone. It runs a lot of apps at once, and on it’s first release supports cut-and-paste. I’m willing to bet it too will fail to make an impact on the market.
It’s obvious to me why both these products have failed (yes, I’m calling the Pre a failure already).
Read more…
Yeah, if my post about my parents having sex wouldn’t have been frowned on over at the corporate blog, this one surely would!
There’s a thread going around on a couple of blogs about how MISO is getting it all wrong in the recession. How they need to be more customer focused, and provide more relevant solutions.
What really got me going in Dave’s post was the quote:
What’s the point of selling me shiny new technology which I’m struggling to understand anyway when I need to pay the bills more efficiently but more importantly find new business.
The point is, because that’s what customers are asking for.
Read more…
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to hear Yousef Khalidi from Microsoft talk about Azure. I think the presentation was weak, though I really appreciated the long and honest QA at the end of the session, and wish more presenters had made time for one.
In particular Yousef missed a great opportunity to educate and differentiate. By creating a presentation that was at least 90% either publicly available information on his product or established information about cloud computing, his session added very little value and left people wanting more. This feeling was apparent in the both the content and tone of the questions he received.
3 things jumped out at me that we can all learn from, Read more…
I think Todd Biske was bold in writing a book around SOA Governance that focused mostly on the people side of things. From memory, two key points Todd made were:
- Educate people on the governance policies, and
- Manage services like a product, rather than a project.
I’ve thought quite a bit about the book, which I liked a lot (and reference quite regularly), and the things I learned came out in yet another form at today’s Cloud Computing Expo. I was talking about a best practice for successfully implementing cloud computing in the enterprise. In particular, how to build momentum and drive a culture of collaboration… and I said:
Tell them what you want them to do, and they’ll resist. Tell them why you want them to do it, and they’ll amaze you with the ways they get it done.
Read more…
