Unlock the Power of Digital Transformation in Sales for Customer Support

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software vendors are notorious for misleading current and potential customers in terms of what their digital transformation is going to look like but what exactly are those sales tactics that you should be aware of and skeptical of that's what I want to talk about here today my name is Eric Kimberling I'm the CEO of third stage Consulting we're an independent technology agnostic consulting firm that helps clients throughout the world reach their third stage of digital transformation success and when we look at digital transformation success versus failure part of the reason why digital Transformations fail so often is because software vendors don't set realistic expectations for what a transformation is going to look like instead they use sales tactics and sales spin to help portray an overly optimistic picture of what a digital transformation is going to look like using their software so what I want to do today is sort of expose what those top 10 things are that software vendors do and say to mislead customers and more importantly I want to speak to this in the context of ensuring that you have skepticism when you hear any of these 10 things as part of the sales tactics that you might be hearing from software vendors [Music] the first misleading sales tactic to be aware of is this concept of the Silver Bullet what I mean by Silver Bullet is the solution that's going to solve all of your problems with no Risk by the way and this is obviously not realistic but it is something that's portrayed oftentimes by software sales reps so things that organizations need to be aware of when they're evaluating software is they're refrain that the software is perfect that there's no risk that they can solve all the world's problems without a clear understanding of what the trade-offs or the weaknesses or the risks are for that solution so in other words if all you're hearing from your sales rep is all the positive things about the software and you don't have a good understanding of what some of the weaknesses are then you're getting a misleading sales message so it's incumbent on you in this situation to ensure that you dig in and understand what some of those weaknesses and risks trade-offs are [Music] another example of a sales tactic to be aware of is this concept of lift and shift lift and shift is a word that's commonly used to suggest that moving or migrating to a software vendor's solution is going to be as easy as just moving your current system to the new one and that's simply not the case anytime you're deploying new technology or Technologies it involves significant changes to your people to your processes and your technology now this risk is especially prevalent when you're upgrading from one vendor solution to the same vendor's newer solution in today's Cloud technology environment software vendors are commonly saying that moving from on-premise to Cloud cloud is as simple as a lift and shift and that's simply not the case it's a re-implementation of new technology because it's a rewrite of older technology in a cloud format so if you hear the word lift and shift just beware that it's not as easy as it sounds [Music] if you're in the process of evaluating software right now I encourage you to ask your software sales rep if their software can do any function that you can imagine chances are pretty high that software sales rep is going to say yes our software can do that same goes for when you issue an RFP you have your list of requirements and all the things you need the software to do chances are the software vendor is going to respond to that RFP with checking the box of yes our software can do that and chances are the software can do that whatever that is but the question is can the software do that well and that's a totally different question so the key here is to recognize that it's not a yes no decision of whether or not software can or can't do certain things but it's more of a subjective range of understanding of how well can the software do it so to mitigate this risk and to see through the Simplicity of a yes no answer to software functionality it's important to look at quantitative and objective data that can help you ascertain how well a software solution can handle certain functions and how well a software solution can handle those functions relative to other systems in the marketplace for example we have third stage have a proprietary database we use has over 30 000 different business requirements comparing hundreds of different Enterprise Solutions in the market against those thirty thousand requirements and the reason this is important is because this data can help you look through or see past those yes no sorts of answers on an RFP response or the yes no sorts of answers in a demo to really see how well the software can work when you compare it to other systems in the market [Music] now next on our list is this concept of best practices software vendors love this term I personally can't stand the term it's probably my least favorite term on this top 10 list but the reason best practices are so misleading is because there's no such thing as best practices after all if the software vendor really did have best practices that would mean you and all your competitors have the same exact business processes if you're using that same software and that's simply not realistic the other reason this isn't true is because every software Works a little bit differently and every software vendor has their own definition of what best practices are doesn't mean it's best practice for your organization though so the key here is to recognize in first and foremost Define what your best practices are what's important to your business and then find the software that best fits that but either way beware of the term best practices because it's more a matter of how the software Works rather than whether or not there's actual best practices within the software [Music] another misleading sales tactic the software vendors commonly used is this idea that cloud technology is somehow cheaper than on-premise Solutions now to be clear yes there are certain areas of cloud deployments that are cheaper than on-premise Solutions but the reality is that in the long term when you look at total cost of ownership Cloud Solutions are typically going to be more expensive than on-premise Solutions software vendors do not like when I say that they disagree with it but I strongly believe it I've seen it time and time again with clients that for every dollar they save on say not having to maintain internal servers and not having to have as much of an internal I.T staff to support a legacy system you're shifting those costs to the vendor you're paying more in ongoing annual subscription costs than you were paying before now the value may be there there may be a justifiable business value and Roi from that you might be getting business benefits on top of that but to think that you're actually going to save money by deploying Cloud technology is typically not true in some cases it is in most cases it's not so when you hear this refrain the cloud costs less than on-premise or other types of Technology really take that with a grain of salt and really dig in and understand what the total cost of ownership really is before you believe that statement [Music] another sales tactic to be aware of is technology Overkill software sales reps selling you more technology than you actually need now in software vendors defense there's a lot of really cool r d and a really and a lot of really cool bells and whistles that modern technology has and someday all that technology may be relevant to your organization but today chances are fairly high that not all that technology is relevant to your organization however they will do their best to sell you as much software as they can which is understandable because of their sales reps but you really have to look at clearly understanding your business needs requirements and priorities to make sure that you're finding and acquiring the right software and the right amount of software without over committing to a bunch of software that you may not be using in the future if you're looking at enterprise-wide technology especially something like an Erp system the common sales messaging for those types of Technologies is that the solutions are fully integrated and I would argue that there is no such thing as a fully integrated solution for the most part most Erp systems have multiple modules that need integration work to ensure that those modules work together and talk together it's still the same system it's using the same database has a common user interface and there's some definite advantages to a single integrated Erp system but typically the systems don't just come out of the box as an integrated solution you have to do the work to integrate those Solutions oftentimes to take it one step further software vendors have third-party bolt-ons that they partner with to sell as part of their overall product Suite in those cases there's even more integration work that needs to happen so just recognize that even if you're buying all of your technology stacked from one software vendor chances are very high that you're gonna have to do quite a bit of integration work to make sure that those different modules and different systems talk to one another now so far I've talked primarily about software sales tactics as it relates to the software itself but some of these sales tactics also extend into the implementation and the implementation services that go along with that and what happens here is software sales reps tend to have an overly optimistic scenario or view of what the implementation of their software is going to look like now to be fair most software vendors can deploy technology a lot faster than organizations can adapt to that new technology so the question becomes not how fast can we deploy a software of Interest technology but how do we paste the implementation to where we're actually using the technology within our organization to generate the business value we expect and those are two different implementation plans two different implementation budgets but typically the software vendors and the sales reps are selling you on the first scenario which is deploy technology so be sure that when you're looking at proposals from software vendors and or system integrators that you're adding a dose of reality to that you're taking those proposals with a grain of salt and most importantly know that you need to add other activities and work streams that are not included within their proposals things like data migration and system architecture change management process Improvement all those things are really important and are things that add time and money to your implementation but they're typically not reflected in the implementation time and budget that's outlined by your software vendor or your system implementer [Music] while we're on this thread of implementation services and the actual implementation itself one of the other sales tactics that's commonly used by software vendors and their implementation Partners is this concept of the A-Team we're going to give you Mr or Mrs important client our a team our best resources and this could be true to be fair I mean some vendors and system integrators are actually going to do that they're going to give you the very best of the best resources that they have but what this does is two things one is it suggests that the rest of their team is not very good potentially which is why they need to delineate between the A-Team and the rest of their organization or they're just giving you their average resource and calling it The A-Team so you feel better about it so the definition of what the A-Team is is really up to you the implementing organization what they consider to be a team may not be the same as what you would consider to be the a team so just like you would do with any other contractor or any other internal resource you want to make sure you vet those resources so that you define that team from those outside parties that best fits your organization and your needs for this transformation [Music] the last misleading sales tactic I'll talk about here today is this concept of agile implementations digital Transformations have a history of budget overruns time overruns and overall failures and so what the industry has done is they've created this concept of agile deployments that somehow will fix the problems of waterfall or more traditional implementations in the past now while there are benefits to Agile and there's many agile purists out there that will believe strongly in agile and there are pieces of agile that can really help your transformation be more effective it's not a silver bullet that's going to solve all the problems of your transformation in fact it will introduce new problems for every problem that it ends up resolving just to give you an example if you're deploying an enterprise-wide technology and you take an agile approach and at the same time you're trying to roll out technology in a way that's standardized and consistent across your organization agile actually runs counter to that agile would suggest that you start deploying faster and start getting technology in the hands of users so that they can provide feedback and you can start to Pivot and adjust that software to fit your future State that's very inconsistent with the common business process model that you might be trying to accomplish if that is in fact your goal so that's just one example of how agile runs counter to the goals and objectives of digital Transformations oftentimes so be leery of the term agile and not to fully reject agile but to ensure that you use it selectively throughout your digital transformation so these are the 10 sales tactics so you want to be aware of and you want to see through and work past and mitigate whenever you're evaluating potential software vendors and or implementation partners and other service providers I'd be curious to know though which one of these resonate with you have you heard any of these sales tactics are there others you would add to the list I'd love to hear your comments below so be sure to drop a comment in the fields below in addition I encourage you to check out our annual digital transformation report which provides a host of different digital strategies and best practices as well as independent software rankings and reviews to help you through your digital transformation Journey I've included links to that Resource as well as other resources below so if you found this information helpful and hope you have a great day [Music] organizations need to be well as I'm talking about wow this is this is pretty strong we're coming in hot on this one because it's a rewrite of existing um wow another misleading tale um and the reason this is important is because it will allow you to add a dose again