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overcoming the small software vendor objection

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by ajerinsky

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I am the IT Director of a small ERP software solutions firm. Our Software has over 100 man-years of development behind it. It caters to the process manufacturing arena with inventory control, purchasing, work in process, CRM, logistics, and a full set of financials. We were evaluated by an outside Tech Evaluation center and found to have about 85% functionality against SAP ( We sell to small and medium sized businesses). We consistently make final cuts in the selection process. All who have seen the software agree that we rock in user friendliness and functionality. The Catch is This: A lot of the potential buyers discount us in the final selection because of our size, we are smaller than SAP, Epicore, Exacta, etc. How do we overcome this objection?

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by jamesrl

One of the concerns is that being a smaller company you might fade away.

You need to show your customers that you've been successful in serving customers just like them. If they think they will be one of the first customers, its pretty hard going. Get a good reference site(with free software and extra support if you have to) and use that to your advantage.

Use support to your advantage - smaller customers fear that their needs and concerns get lost in larger corporations.

Anything on the scale of an ERP, people are concerned about what happens if you go under. If you put your source code in escrow, so that in the case of your bankruptcy, all licensees get a copy, they can use the source code to help them get through a migration to another product - its an insurance policy.

Hope that helps.

James

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