KNOWING WHO THE DECISION MAKER AND WHAT’S YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION IS ESSENTIAL FOR EVERY SOFTWARE / SERVICES BUSINESS TO EXPAND.

WHERE DO YOU START?

Who Are You Going To Sell To And What's Your Value Proposition

Selling in the US Market, more than any other Geographic Region, is about selling to the business owner in the company and understanding their pain points. Who will be your champion in the business and who is the executive decision maker? This will help you navigate past that soft exterior (our Pear analogy) You have to have a message that relates to their pain points, it could be budget/price but more than likely it is value. While local presence will be important in some shape or form (something we will discuss later in this article)

being able to express the value you bring to their business and what makes you better than the competition (not in a disparaging way) will make this discussion on price a lot easier in general.

Your first number of customers will be key as references in any market and also here in the US. What will you do differently to win those early customers? Can you get a reference from an existing subsidiary in your home market into their parent company? Do you have a partner here in the US that can help you gain initial credibility, a company whose technology you use or a sales partner? Are you willing to give special terms for your first number of customers? For example, a sale or return or some acquisition pricing. Those earlier referenceable customers are key. A number of years ago I ran a division of a large corporation in the Americas. The division sold high end continuous forms printers, the sales price was roughly $650,000 a printer, the division’s annual revenue was $800 million (that included hardware, software and services). When we sold them into a bank, that used them to print your bank statement, we usually sold 20 printers at a time.

However, that market segment was shrinking due to people receiving their statements electronically. We dominated that corporate segment but had no share in the Direct Mail market that was predominately small/medium size businesses who primarily printed the junk mail that you get in your mailbox. Long story short the first 3 units we sold into our first Direct Mailer were a third of the price, a hard deal to swallow at the time. But it was the best investment we ever made, the fact that we could reference them in this new marketplace, helped our share grow significantly over time. What our Product Development Team learned from that direct mailer to improve our product was invaluable.