Eric Wright on Challenges of Enterprise Software Sales

Joining us this week is Eric Wright, Technology Evangelist, Turbonomic. Highlights: • Discoposse Podcast • Discussion on Luke Kaines Article • Open Source Impact on IT Ops and Purchasing • Money Drives Operational Alignment • Sales as Organizational Improvements Time Stamp • 0 min 6 sec: Introduction of Guest • 1 min 19 sec: Discoposse Podcast o History of Podcast o Canada – Brewers Retail • 6 min 07 sec: Luke Kaines Article, My Losing Battle with Enterprise Sales o Like Watching a Netflix Story Heading to an Unexpected Ending o Starts with Hard Lessons Learned – how not to do things  Who are you building the product for? User or Purchaser  Still early in our industry on how to build a product that doesn’t require enterprise sales o When is sales enterprise? How to define that? o You succeed on your ability to manage relationships of warring departments at the prospect’s company; it’s not the product that you are selling • 13 min 16 sec: Examples of Politics impacting sales o RackN and Internal Champions o Open Source allows customers to bypass their sales departments: dangers of this happening o Tour de France of IT Operations o Justify the cost of the product vs. value or the product • 21 min 05 sec: People take things seriously when money is being spent o Free consulting never gets used o Open source has less perceived value since its free but it’s not really free o Personal investment vs team investment in solution  Disagreements add value to organizations  Silos vs Cross-Silo Communications • 31 min 08 sec: How sell product communicating value to multiple groups via internal champions o Having to use software purchased already to get value o Have to pay for software, even free software  Even open source software has commercial support that cost money o Always about building a team and communication • 40 min 25 sec: Wrap-Up