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Technology Stocks : Vantive Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Clam Clam who wrote (1971)	5/3/1998 10:54:00 PM
From: Melissa McAuliffe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3033

Clam, You make the point that sebl has done something special by selling to the VP of Sales. I think they are the only one who knows what they are doing in the first place if this is true. I can't believe that anyone in this day and age who is selling application software can be successful thinking they can sell to IT. This may have been true in the stone age of software but it changed long before now. Users are too sophisticated to turn this totally over to IT. IT people are typically your gatekeepers....not your ultimate decision makers. And who wants to waste their time selling to a gatekeeper. I was a VP of Sales and cannot fathom an IT person deciding what SFA system I would buy. Their job as a gatekeeper is to make sure the system meets the technical criteria. But who buys a system based solely on technical criteria?? SEBL has obviously hired their salesforce with this in mind and the proof that it works is there. This is a major cultural difference between sebl and the others and I think we will see this reflected more and more as we go forward as these other companies cannot change this easily. It sounds to me like sebl is also selling at the right level which again is evidenced in the numbers and the size of their deals. All salespeople are not comfortable selling at high levels and again it appears sebl has hired with this in mind. It seems to me that even if your prices are steep it really isn't going to matter if you are selling to the right people. My personal opinion is that a deal should never be lost on price. Also if price becomes the overriding decision factor then somebody didn't do their job. Obviously I would qualify this in the case of a company that wants something for next to nothing but that doesn't come as a surprise at the last minute and you shouldn't have wasted your time in a deal like this in the first place if you know you don't have the least expensive software. I don't believe companies make their decision based on price anyway. I always sold software that was more expensive than anyone else's and can't remember losing a deal on price....ever. Even to retailers who are notoriously cheap. Or the 7th avenue garmentos who are even cheaper than the retailers.