Something I found when working with goAugmented is articulated here by the wisdom of mengwong from JFDI a great organisation run by the passionate Chris Mason - JFDI link here.
Based over at 71 Ayer Rajah Crescent #05-16 Singapore 139951
E: info@jfdi.asia T: +65 3158 1804
I met them last month and would love to meet them again but time this time might not allow.
Anyhoo back to the blog post...
Problem
Sometimes, a customer will look at what you’re offering, listen to what you’re charging, politely decline, and go off and build it themselves.
Discussion
Whenever a buyer is faced with a potential purchase, that buyer always considers an implicit alternative: building it themselves.
If it’s cheaper to build it internally, they just might do that.
You say your product costs $100,000?
For that much money they could hire two staff and have it built in a year.
Or they could hire an outsourced development shop and have it built in six months.
At least, that’s what they think.
Solution
Your sales pitch should nip this line of thinking in the bud as early as possible, by demonstrating why buy, not build, is right for them.
Your product might contain a bunch of intellectual property which is very hard to replicate. Maybe it’s up a pretty steep learning curve that your customer doesn’t have the heart to climb.
Maybe it’ll take them way too long to build it, and they needed it yesterday.
Maybe they know that even if they try, they might fail to build it. Writing software is hard! Especially for customers who aren’t in the software development business.
Maybe they don’t want to maintain it after building it. From you, they’ll get bugfixes and an upgrade path.
Maybe your product is priced an order of magnitude cheaper than building it themselves.
If you’re savvy, it’ll be just very slightly cheaper. Now you’re pricing to value.
See Also
If your customer is in the software development business, maybe you can license your technology to them instead of asking them to buy the product.
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