Post Product Stage

So now you have a product.  You believe in it, have the conviction to make it produce business value to your customers... but now what do you do to leverage and create a demand quotient?  Lets focus on that.

All you need to know is that business software has to do a few simple things to maintain relevance and attract buyer interest.  To me, as a simple-minded guy, it has to do:

1. Create a distinctive value proposition.  What can you do that other applications, systems or IT personnel have a problem to produce or leverage?  How does the software become (with ease) a significant asset with a ROI to their business objectives?

2. What is your value to the C-suite?  They are going to approve the purchase, either based upon end-user value and belief in the influencers and administrators and/or you need to get them comfortable with the ability to use the software to gain insight or information they previously struggled to obtain.  What interaction that gives them the dashboard or business intelligence that was previous elusive to obtain?

3. I love your vision and believe in what you can do.  I want to buy because my colleagues, trusted advisers and others who aid me in making smart decisions about business systems are also in belief.  This in its raw form is the complex sale and creating interdependency value-driven buy-in.

4. Know your buyers, the way they can attract and recruit other teams and influenced team-members and ultimately make the buying model and price point a detail to obtaining the business value.  I use user-personas when you define a segment or industry, you can begin to know how to present to those distinct audiences to maximize value. 

5. ROI.  Tell and show how this software will produce a tangible and proven return on the purchase in a defined period of time.   Be sensitive to the fact that this may not be such a quantitative analysis and more about the long term strategy and based upon ideas and more about how the tools and applications and extend or provide output of the data.

Happy software selling. 

-James