Challenges to the Sales Cycle
- If Data Analysis is a big issue, our first risk is integration – not IF we can integrate, but IF they have money to spend on it. Knowing in advance that the total project cost is going to START at $25K means that we need to make sure they have a $25K problem.
- Are we high enough, talking to the right people ? Most of these clients in our space are family owned, which means, that there is 1 or 2 people at the top who make all of the decisions. We need to make sure they are with us right from the beginning.
- Is the client mature enough? Sometimes we see clients who do this work in Spreadsheets. They are desperate to get away from this, and they know that staying on spreadsheets or QuickBooks is a limiting decision, but they don’t have the money, resources, or processes to make the move from those tools to Salesforce. We can recommend things like Accounting Seed or Matrix Velocity to solve for some of these problems, but if the upfront costs are prohibitive, or if the prospect does not have the resources to commit to such a big project, its probably time to part friends. Clients who take on this much change are a GREAT candidate for CSAT issues later and potentially Carve Backs…
- Does the client have rigid business processes? Salesforce and system in general LOVE rigidity. Back to spreadsheets, if the solution to a problem with production is “add a row”, we can’t always manage that kind of change. We should understand the processes in that first meeting before we commit to spending more time.