At 5000fish, your best interest is our best interest, even if your best interest is to go with another vendor. We never want a customer to purchase our products and regret the purchase later, which is why we endeavor to adhere to this mentality during the sales process.
Just like you, we can smell a sleazy, pushy salesperson a mile away. You know the type – they will do whatever and say whatever necessary to seal the deal. But this high-pressure sales technique creates headaches for both the customer and the vendor because the relationship becomes an uphill battle that’s further hindered by feelings of mistrust from the customer.
Unfortunately, many software companies thrive on high-pressure selling. The salesperson hard-sells a customer and pushes the relationship responsibilities off onto the customer service representatives once the contract ink has dried. This isn’t a fun situation for customers or vendors to be in, which is why we won’t push Yurbi on any potential customer. Here is how our sales process differs from other software vendors:
We provide these educational resources to our customers to ensure that when they purchase Yurbi or decide to renew with us, they are making a well-informed decision. And in the case that Yurbi isn’t the right fit, we’ll make recommendations based upon a potential customer’s needs and will often direct prospects to other companies if we see that Yurbi won’t fulfill a prospects’ use cases.
Yurbi’s sales approach isn’t typical in the software industry as a whole. Software sales tend to be very high-pressured primarily because of the influx of investment and Venture Capitalist (VC) funding. Once big money gets into the game, an investors’ primary focuses are to grow the companies they invest in to the point where they’re ready to sell to a larger company, or to where they’re ready to go public on Wall Street.
Both of these scenarios put stress on software companies to increase scale and revenue in a short amount of time. With VC funding, there’s a sense of urgency to grow quickly because there is a burn rate for that funding – it’s a finite resource. Software companies will deal with this pressure by hiking their rates, and by shortening their sales cycles and working to primarily sell to high-dollar value clients.
You’ll know you’re in a high-pressure sales situation if you experience any of the following situations:
We consider ourselves to be a “bootstrapped” organization because we have grown and operated without VC funding. This means we’re not affected by every whim of our investors, which allows us to take our time and focus on our customers’ needs. Though we have a lower growth rate than other companies in our space who accept VC funding, we have an extremely high retention rate in the 95th percentile.
However, just because a company receives VC funding doesn’t mean they’re not a viable option. For example, Domo is a major VC funded company with a very high-pressure sales process. The company has received $400 million in funding, and the reason why is because Domo’s technology is pretty amazing. Though the sales process is a good indicator of how you’ll be treated as a customer, you should ultimately make your BI purchase decision based upon whether the software is going to meet your company’s needs. The most important thing is to be aware when you’re in a high-pressure sales situation, and make sure you do a thorough job of researching and reviewing the software.
Adopting any new technology requires a commitment of time and money, but when it comes to business intelligence the ROI can be huge. In fact, a solution like Yurbi can pay for itself just in the time that it gives back to your team members, not to mention the long-term cost savings you’ll see with improved efficiency and accuracy.
To learn more about how a BI tool can help your organization, we suggest reading our free eBook “The Hidden Cost of Bad Business Intelligence.” If you’re ready to take the next step, the Yurbi Pricing Guide will provide you with everything you need to know to help calculate your BI costs and develop your usage strategy.
Business Intelligence For Companies Ready To Grow