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

To: Clam Clam who wrote (1973)	5/4/1998 7:59:00 AM
From: Melissa McAuliffe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3033

>>Well, did you sell software that integrated perfectly or did the end-user have to glue the pieces together. Sometimes yes...sometimes no Sometimes the software didn't even work and even better sometimes it didn't even exist yet.. Do you really think that the end users are going to perceive they have to glue the pieces together? Why don't you give sebl just a little more credit than this? You make it sound like they are going to drop all this stuff off in a box with instructions that say.."here..see if you can put this puzzle together". >>Its working for Peoplesoft, SAP and JD Edwards, among others. Why would the VP of sales care about HR software? This is just not true. Not one of these companies is selling to IT. Don't get me wrong here. Obviously IT is involved...sometimes more, sometimes less. And I am not saying you don't have to sell to IT also. Sometimes you have to sell to IT just to get through the "gate"..But this is not where you want to stay. I won't go into a long discussion on this point but trust me. It's just too complex a topic but it is something I know very well. Though I never worked for any of these companies they are the companies I competed against time and time again. With respect to selling an HR system to the VP of Sales....I don't know where you got this idea. We were talking about selling SFA to the VP of Sales. Obviously you would sell an HR system to the VP of HR. Obviously you would sell Financial Systems to the CFO, etc. This is just common sense. BTW, out of all of the above, the one area where you see the most IT involvement happens to be HR (for multiple reason which I won't go into) but even so you still have to get the VP of HR sold. These people happen to be the ones who stand to win or lose the most based on the success or failure of the new software. And these are the people who can turn your 500K deal into a 5M deal which sebl has obviously figured out. IT isn't going to do it for you. >>Well, Fidelity for one. Siebel put on the full court press attempting to win that deal but Scopus beat them. If you can't beat 'em, acquire 'em. I wasn't there so can't say what the real story was since I am familiar with what happened. If you say it was an IT sale I can't argue the point. I'm sure though there is much to this that we don't know. I never said no one ever loses a deal (except Steve Farber). Even sebl isn't going to have a perfect win ratio though I would imagine it's pretty high. I'm not even sure what Fidelity bought. Was it actually even SFA?? Unless it was this isn't even a point for discussion. I don't argue with you and TD on your financial/investment analysis. I know you guys know more about that than I do since it is your area of expertise. I have learned quite a lot actually.. Sales just happens to be my area of expertise and there is a lot more to this business than just looking at the numbers as I'm sure you know.