Seven Software Sales Tips!

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Sales Management, Sales Strategy, Software & App Sales

As a professional software salesperson is it critical to have a solid sales process.  Here are 7 tips to help start you on the right track or help you realign your current process.

1.   Pricing and Product Fit
What is your monetization model? Have you put the right pricing structure and business model into place? With the dynamic changes in the software industry, it could be time to revisit how you have positioned and priced your product. If you currently have a multiple product strategy, you need to be careful about avoiding channel conflicts in the pricing strategy.  Monetization strategies differ greatly from SaaS based products versus straight mobile app offerings.  Do yourself a favor and get familiar with your competitors and their strategies along with reading up on industry trends.


2.   Value Proposition
How does your product or service disrupt the marketplace?   This is referred to as your value proposition and is an essential part of your software sales plan. Great products need to match the most desired functionality and innovate beyond what is currently in the marketplace in order to not become another “me too” application.  Ensure the value proposition differentiates your product or service from your competitor’s.  There is usually two type of decision makers in the purchasing process (technical and business), so ensure your value proposition is positioned correctly to speak to both unique audiences.  The business buyer is numbers oriented and will be looking at how your solution will save time and/or money thereby effecting the bottom line (illustrate the ROI).  The technical buyer will be more concerned with staff implications, ease of integration, stability and support to name a few.

The value proposition should be clearly articulated within your proposal.

3.  Identifying The “Ideal” Customers
Sketch out exactly who your customer base is? Are these customers in a specific industry, size companies or have any other common characteristics? Take the time to draw up ideal customer profiles for each product or service you offer.  Use the age old question “Who is your ideal customer?”

Your SDR’s time is extremely valuable, so having a strong software sales process in place to reach your ideal customers. Do they consume certain blogs, podcasts, publications or go to specific conferences and networking events? It is good to know the customers preferences to you can add value in your communications and meetings


4.  Use Automation – SDR 2.0
Today simply working harder than the next SDR is not enough to create scalable success.  In years past hiring a lot of SDR’s and adopting  a quantity approach could achieve stellar results, however at a high cost with high turnover.  Salesforce is a perfect example of hiring lots of young aggressive SDR’s to simply blow out the market with activity and gain millions of customers.  This approach can work for a well funded (venture backed) company, however for a boot-strapped or early stage start-up the financial commitment might be too much to handle.

The good news is there are countless SaaS based services to help support your sales efforts and gain efficiencies never thought possible previously.  This is not a full review of these tools, but simply a list to get you started on your own due diligence effort.  I can say with confidence that these are all some of the best and most tightly integrate with Salesforce.

Call Automation:  Five9 , New Voice Media , Connect and Sell

Workflow Automation (email and more): Reply App , Persist IQ , YesWare,Toutapp

5.  Build  Relationships
The next step is to determine who within your target market you need to focus on building relationships with. Then have a software sales process that can support the relationship building phase. Your target contacts should be stakeholders, influencers and individual purchasers. Consistent and regular communication is essential and can be automated by the software tools explained in step 4 of this post.

Trust is the number one building block in any sales relationship and it is essential to be a trusted advisor with your customers.  This foundation will help lead to customer retention and referrals.  In my first five years at OpenArc our team grew our top line by 80% YOY while maintaining a 95% customer retention rate.  That retention rate is very significant as we have all heard it is easier to work with an existing customer versus going out to get a new one.  This article in Forbes does a nice job explaining a few effective ways to retain your customers.

6.  Reinforcing the Value Proposition with Case Studies
Now that  you have connected with the appropriate personnel within your target accounts, you must convince them you can truly deliver on the value proposition provided.  This is best done through case studies of your existing work.  Our company OpenArc has dedicated an entire section of our website to case studies to illustrate our capabilities and the benefit we have provided our customers.

Customers purchase by one or more of the following three factors: Time, Money, Emotion.


7.  Drive the Right Behavior
A sales process is a necessity, but don’t let it get in the way of your SDR’s doing their job and enjoying their job. One way I have found to encourage the right behaviors is to reward the right behaviors.  Time off, money, recognition are just a few ways to reward your team.  The best thing a sales manager can do is understand how each of your team members likes to be rewarded (finds fulfilling) and use their unique preferences as a starting point.

If you’re interested in discussing software sales, browse through my blog here.


Do You Have a Diet Mobile App?

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development

These days there’s a mobile app for just about everything, so it figures that diet and nutrition trackers are becoming a big hit. They let you log your nutrition intake, shop for healthy foods and pick and choose healthy eating plans. Take a look at these 5 apps worth trying.
  1. Fooducate (iOS, Android)
This mobile app helps you to both shop and eat healthy. It lets you quickly pull up nutritional information from the barcodes on food products and can help you make sense of those nutrition labels that otherwise come across as gibberish. The app shows you a letter grade from A to D, and offers up a quick summary of nutritional information in easy-to-understand language. It will also suggest healthier alternatives. Whether you eat out or cook, you can manually enter nutrition information. The mobile app also doubles as a calorie, exercise and intake tracker.
  1. Shopwell (iOS; Android)
Shopping well is definitely the first step to eating well. That’s the idea behind Shopwell that will scan barcodes and rate groceries according to your nutritional needs. The app creates a personal profile and will select from various nutritional goals while also implementing necessary dietary restrictions, like food allergies or vegetarianism.  The app takes all these elements into account and uses them to score the items you scan while offering easy-to-follow nutritional pointers.
  1. Calorie Counter Pro (iOS, Android)
This mobile app is an all-in-one exercise tracker, food scanner and nutrition log. Users can scan barcodes for nutritional information and input recipes and custom foods. The exercise tracker lets you enter over 500 different activities and you can also manually enter calories burned, distance and time for walking. What’s more, there are planning features for dieters wishing to set a target weight or plan their exercise and eating.
  1. Diet Point Weight Loss (iOS, Android)
Another mobile app that helps users select the right weight loss program for their needs. There are over 130 diets programmed under various categories as well as complete meal plans and shopping lists. The app will notify you that it is mealtime and help avoid those cravings or overeating. Whether you’re going low-carb or full-on caveman, the app will have the plan for you.
  1. Nutrino (iOS)
This is a meal planning and nutritional goals mobile app. It’s been designed to work with other devices and apps to track physical activity and adjust food recommendations accordingly. Users are able to set their nutritional goals – be it muscle building, weight loss or healthy eating – and also set dietary restrictions such as halal, gluten-free or lactose-intolerant. The app will build a personalized meal plan based on the information and users can further customize the plan by inputting preferred foods or swiping for alternatives. Water intake, sleep and exercise can all be logged. Mobile Apps for Diet – Would You Use Them? Would you use these kinds of apps for your dietary and lifestyle requirements? Have you had any experience with them? Feel free to share in our mobile app section.

4 Mobile Application Development Trends This Year

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development

Developers don’t need us telling them that the mobile application development landscape changes constantly. But let’s pause just for a minute and look at how it’s changing. The best place to start is with the 2015 State of the Developer Nation report from VisionMobile. According to the report, there are 4 trends mobile app developers should be taking note of.
  1. Apple’s Swift
Anyone in the tech industry knows it’s hardly ever a case of “if you build it, they will come.” Adoption of new technologies can take time. So the rapid rise of Apple’s Swift language for iOS apps is worth mentioning. According to the report’s survey of 8,000 developers, one in five of them were already using Swift a few months after its launch.
  1. Growth of Cross-Platform Tools
Mobile application development is seeing an increase in the use of third-party tools. According to the report, 83% of respondents are using the tools for things like testing, analytics and crash reporting. Even more noteworthy, the use of cross-platform tools has increased from 23% to 30% in just six months.  Cross platform tools worth mentioning are Xamarin and Oracle Mobile Application Framework (built on Apache Cordova) So what goes into choosing the right tools? Tech execs seem to agree that it’s important to choose a stable provider that will be in it for the long haul.
  1. Enterprise Apps Are Making More Cash than Consumer Apps
Smartphones are flying off the shelves and mobile application development is teeming with activity. But it’s not guaranteed that your app is going to earn much. Developers working on enterprise apps are actually more likely to make cash. 43% of developers working on enterprise apps hit $10,000 per month or more in revenue. Only 19% of consumer app developers hit that milestone. A lot of consumers aren’t too keen to shell out money for apps but businesses seem to be more than willing to pay for software that helps their employees be more productive.
  1. The Internet of Things is Super-Hot
A lot of developers are investing their energy in the Internet of Things (IoT) even though it may take a while to pay off. Over 50% of developers report to be working on some sort of IoT project, and many seem to be doing so as a hobby. And it’s no surprise that the biggest areas of interest right now involve mobile application development, particularly on Android and iOS. To Sum Up the Report It is still early days, but VisionMobile’s report claims a huge upside in IoT for the developer community. Those products with the best software are going to be the most sought after. And developers will become essential to creating competitive apps.

So we get a picture of a mobile application development market that is evolving rapidly in pretty much everything from languages and tools to economics and device platforms. Keeping up with the changes can be just as challenging as doing your actual job. But that’s exactly why mobile is such an exciting endeavor right now.

Want to know which apps are tops for 2015? Check out my blog, 9 Great Apps for 2015.

Enterprise Mobility: Security Risk or Worth It?

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development, Sales Strategy, Technology Tips & Tricks, Technology trends

For the first time in computing history the enterprise is being influenced by its employees and consumers technology through IT consumerization.  IT consumerization is the blending of personal and business use of technology devices and applications.   Many companies have embraced a mobile-first strategy. But when employees are left to their own devices, InfoSec experts face unchartered territory. However, enterprise mobility can be and is in my opinion is absolutely a strategy enterprises cannot continue to ignore.

The trend towards enterprise mobility can indeed add to concerns over BYOD (bring your own device) security. And even though such systems are key to business operations, they’re not regularly maintained or tested for vulnerabilities, mainly due to availability concerns.

Enterprise mobility really is a double-edged sword: it helps provide broad data access along with communication capabilities for a great deal of the workforce, often at little to no direct cost. It also aids in opening up security issues that can range from vulnerable apps to security issues and employees accessing sensitive corporate data via unsecured networks.

Many CISOs and CIOs tend to realize that while security technologies and mobile device management do play a role, clear policies are essential to harnessing the benefits of BYOD. The aim of such policies needs to be to increase user productivity and satisfaction while ensuring compliance and the utmost security.

It Is A Risk Worth Taking 

So where do you start building a mobile security policy? Simple: start with what makes you uncomfortable. Devices need to meet “trusted device standards” in order to comply and employees should use VPN clients to gain access to the company network. What’s more, employee-owned devices should support security policies and frameworks that keep enterprise data secure at rest and in transit.

The trend towards enterprise mobility with critical systems and data can add to the concerns over BYOD security.  While some security policies are indeed standard procedure, you need to identify which functions, data and applications need protection most in order to understand how enterprise mobility could expose them. Some companies, such as Cisco and Oracle, use MDM (mobile device management) and MAM (mobile application management) to do application installs / removals, containerization and encryption of enterprise data, and in some cases remote wipe for loss prevention.

BYOD does bring many benefits when it comes to empowering your staff with timely information, offering flexibility and increasing productivity. Enterprise mobility also have many customer benefits such as improving consumer loyalty, streamlining customer support process and reducing support costs.  The benefits far outweigh the risks, but every company has unique situations and that’s where BYOD security technologies and policies should be focused.

Take the First Step

Enterprise mobility necessitates partnership with business leader involvement coupled with the understanding that not all risks are bad. The first step should be to establish a committee of business and tech leaders to identify the data and critical systems that should be considered when formulating the BYOD policy. The next step should be to review policy and technical controls based on potential risks and threats to your current operations.

Based on this sort of analysis, security officers and CIOs will be able to determine how to enhance and enable their enterprise mobility programs to moderate business risks.

Learn more about Oracle’s Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM)

Looking for a partner to help your enterprise mobility needs, check out OpenArc.

9 Great Apps for 2015

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development

Earlier this year, Digital Trends created a list of 208 exciting apps for 2015. While a comprehensive list of this nature is an exciting feat, sometimes too many choices makes choosing harder. So here is a much simpler list to just give you a taste of what is out there.

9 Apps You Should Be Using in 2015

Here are nine especially great apps to start checking out, one from each of Digital Trends’ various categories.
  1. Entertainment: Endless TV
If you like watching TV, but don’t like watching commercials, then this might be the app for you. People watch TV online as much as they watch it in more traditional modes. For many people, online TV is more popular than traditional TV.

However, while online TV options are great, there are still many commercials and buffering to contend with. Endless TV is designed to eliminate both of these problems.

*** If you are a Comcast / Xfinity customer – then Xfinity TV GO app is really nice for plane trips as you can download some networks show like Showtime’s – Ray Donovan!
  1. Work and Organizing: Slack
Slack allows you to communicate better with your co-workers. It encourages inter-office communications and then allows you to save and organize your files and messages in one place. Along with real time messaging, you have options to file share and have group conversations. If you work at a software development shop like I do, then you will love the integrations with Jira, GitHub, Bitbucket, Drive, Heroku, Jenkins, Papertrail, Trello, Stripe, Zapier and many more.

All this, and you can sync the app across multiple platforms including the Apple Watch.
  1. Security and Utilities: MyScript Calculator
The MyScript Calculator is more than just the standard phone calculator. It actually recognizes your hand writing and turns it into equations. Because this works similar to a notepad, you can copy the info to the clipboard in order to save it.

It is also easy to erase, undo, and redo parts of the equation. Basically, it gives you the ease of writing out formulas on paper with the convenience of having technology do the math for you.
  1. Around Town: Drync
Drync helps you remember the name of the wine you are drinking when you know you will not be able to remember it later. Scan the bottle, and it will track it and let you order it. You can read reviews, learn about various wines, and find new wines to try.

If you are or would like to be a wine connoisseur, then getting an app like Drync could be great for you.
  1. Social and Chat: Brewster
Brewster allows you to combine all of your contacts across various platforms and puts it into one database. This way, no matter how you know them, you can more easily keep track of all of friends and acquaintances. Having a one stop source for this information can help make organizing contacts much easier.
  1. Fitness and Health: Mimi Hearing Test
If you are unsure how well your hearing is, but you do not want to make a trip to the doctor to get it tested, then the Mimi Hearing Test app could be great for you. It allows you to test your hearing and then shows you the frequencies you can hear as well as how well you compare to people your own age.  If you have young children this is a nice app to have.
  1. Travel and Maps: MotionX GPS Drive
The MotionX GPS Drive app allows you to view real life traffic maps while it gives you turn by turn navigation. It is set apart from other similar apps by its large, easy to use buttons and its lane guidance. In addition, it has a parking spot meter.   This app is still missing police and traffic camera warnings like Waze which many have come to rely on.
  1. Photos and Creativity: Flic
The Flic app allows you to look at your pictures in a Tinder-like scenario. When you want to get rid of pictures, it allows you to search through your gallery and swipe right keep the photo or swipe left to delete it. This makes it much easier to clean out your photo stream.
  1. The Dark Arts: Cydia
For those who are a little more interested in breaking some rules and who are a little more tech savvy, there are apps you can use when you jailbreak your phone. For those of you who fit into this category, Cydia is an alternative app store where you can find many cool apps within.

If You Don’t Like Any of the Options …

Of course, if you want something specific and nobody else has created it yet, you can just make it yourself. Innovation is always welcome and needed in our society. It is going to be a great year for new and exciting tech.