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Selling software is not like selling hardware. Pat McGrew offers tips and suggestions for acquiring the skillset needed to successfully sell software solutions.
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About Pat McGrew
Pat is a well-known evangelist for inkjet productivity. At McGrew Group, she uses her decades technical and marketing experience to lead the industry toward optimized business processes and production workflows. She has helped companies to define their five-year plans, audited workflow processes, and developed sales team interventions and education programs. Pat is the Co-Author of 8 industry books, editor of A Guide to the Electronic Document Body of Knowledge, and a regular contributor to Inkjet Insight and WhatTheyThink.com.
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Discussion
By Corry Casler - PressWise on Feb 16, 2021
What a helpful piece Pat. Your tips are spot-on! As a successful software sales executive, hope you don’t mind; here are a few tips that have added to my success:
1. Software is technical - Involve your team. In the beginning of my software sales career, I wanted to do everything myself. I thought if I asked for help I would be seen as weak. You’ll be able to help prospects so much more by involving your support team to help. Making them Key Lime pie as a “thank you” for helping doesn’t hurt either.
2. Don’t simply ask “what do you need”, but “why do you need it”? The user-story will give you an immense understanding of how you can (or can’t) help.
3. Don’t be afraid to say “no”. No software can do everything and as much as I want to do business with every prospective client, it’s better to mutually part ways over poor fit than go through a nasty divorce later.
4. If you’re on commission, put it out of your head. Have the right intentions, help the client, do the right thing and the money will come, seriously. I can’t tell you how good it will feel when a prospect comes back to you after looking at other companies and says, yours was the best demo out of all the others we saw or you really got us,
5. Know your product. Commit to study a bit of your software knowledgebase a few times a week to stay sharp.