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

To: Melissa McAuliffe who wrote (2429)	8/26/1998 2:48:00 PM
From: GJD	Respond to of 3033

VNTV guidance for 2nd H sales growth was 20%. The earnings ests for this Q is 0.04 and for next is 0.08. Unless there is solid evidence that they have solved their sales execution issues, the stock will not move much. Even if they do, with this environment it may not help. Companies reporting great earnings like SEBL and PSFT are suufering right now. The mkt is turned off to this whole group right now.

To: Melissa McAuliffe who wrote (2429)	8/26/1998 3:18:00 PM
From: Geof Hollingsworth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3033

Hi Melissa, My notes from Luongo's presentation at the New Millenium conference a couple of weeks ago (FWIW): Said their business is trending toward selling larger systems to larger customers and customers continue to try to consolidate their vendors. The end-game is more complex, and as a result the sale takes longer. Often requires multiple approvals. 50% of last quarter's customers bought 2 or more modules-no evidence of a slow-down based on Y2K concerns. Shortfall in the business was attributed to execution by the sales force-70% of sales force is less than 6 months old. Sales now generally involve the IT manager, the functional area head, and often one of the C's. The top management at the customer is getting involved because the failure rate of SFA systems is so high (Gartner says only 50% are being used). The C's are requiring tangible results-IRR's and total cost of ownership analyses are key, as are site visits to referencable accounts. They continue to have generalist sales people (i.e., organized by account, not by product)-only start to specialize at the SE/AE level. They are running sales training sessions for Version 8 on the weekends (4 days total over 2 weekends) so the sales force doesn't lose any face time with customers.