Richard King’s Post

I get inundated with companies trying to sell us new tools - and not wanting to share the pricing. What I've learned to be clear on: 1. I have a budget. While there is some wiggle room, I'm not going to waste my time or my company's time on products that we can't afford. I wouldn't do this on a corporate - or a personal - level. 2. I will ask you the price on the first call. If you can't give it to me, then I'm not going to keep giving my time. I need to see if you fit in #1. I understand if you can't fit #1, but I can't change my budget no matter how much you tell me how awesome/valuable your product is. 3. When is the next time you can call me? Well, probably not for a long time. Maybe a year? I'm going to find something in my budget, try that for a year, and then revisit. 4. The BEST sales calls give me a price and a short demo to wow me. Even if you don't meet #1 now, budgets always change. And you may just fit in my budget next year if I'm impressed and see value.

How many times have you been interested in a product but the company sells, sells, sells and all you want to know is of you can afford it. This is one of my annoyances when looking at purchasing new systems online to use in marketing. It turns me off to get over sold. If I'm interested I'll tell you, but at that point all I want to know is how much it costs. At Redcoat we have discussions with our potential customers we discover their wants and goals, we then develop a customized marketing program and tell them how much it costs. No prolonged sales process to wear you down until you are too tired. We respect your time and ours, at the end of the day our results speak for themselves. If you want to grow your business you need to talk to us. It's that simple.

This is too accurate

This one hit me where it hurts! I spent 6 months assessing clinical tracking platforms only to end up choosing to build my own. Here’s the story: The year was 2022. I was thrilled to finally have the green light to investigate and propose a clinical tracking software for use in my department. This was a massive relief as I was slowly crumbling under the workload of inefficient manual processes in the face of Dean’s office demands for increasing enrollment. I spent 6 months researching and interrogating the sales teams of five possible platforms. None seemed like a good fit, but we finally chose the least worst platform when after months of pricing discussions, they cut us a pricing break because two other departments in our college used them. Fast forward through confusing implementation meetings and realizing that their claims of flexibility and autonomy were GREATLY over exaggerated, we managed to get the mission-critical features up and running just in time for use in the major student rotations. During this time, several meetings between myself and the implementation team finally made me realize that the quality of life features we were promised were not going to work out, and the cost was going to be higher than we thought. The cherry on top was that I was still doing 75% or my work outside of the platform in manual spreadsheets. Here’s the giant blaring red flag 🚩: if you are paying a significant amount of money on a platform meant to simplify and increase your process efficiency, it should not add another layer of work to your existing process. About the time I was ready to boil over in frustration, I semi-accidentally discovered SmartSuite and kicked off my journey into the land of nocode “citizen development.” We dropped the contracted platform and I built my own in just 2 months for a quarter of the cost! What better proof is there that nocode is changing everything? The moral of this now very long story is that you need to pay attention to your efficiency and human capital ROI along with your financial. Escalation of commitment bias is RAMPANT in higher education and healthcare; once that enterprise contract plan is in place, people are too hesitant to break ties when it’s clear there is not a fit. Don’t be afraid to expect better, especially in a world where custom builds are possible in ways they never were before. Have you seen the bias caused by signing an enterprise plan? How often are companies transparent about their pricing like SmartSuite or Relay.app are? Should I share the story of developing a custom clinical tracking platform? Is that interesting? #bias #clinicaltracking #studentadmin #highered #nocodebuilds

Finding the sweet spot for enterprise pricing involves balancing transparency and privacy. Transparent pricing builds trust and eases decision-making, while privacy protects competitive advantage and sensitive client information. At Mav3rik, our pricing model is designed to be clear and straightforward, working effectively for most customers by offering tailored solutions that meet diverse business needs without compromising on value or confidentiality.

#BPFeatureFocus 💡 You’ve won the sale! Now what…? We've lost count of the number of times we’ve given a Business Pilot demo to a potential new user, shown them the quick Convert to Contract feature, and they’ve said: “Oh, that’s good.” It’s because it is! All the information from your lead and quote automatically pulled through to the Contract creation stage, just like that! https://ow.ly/jpAx50QnQNu #BusinessSoftware #SmallBusinessTools #ProductivitySolutions #BusinessManagement #SalesSoftware #SalesProcess #SalesManagement

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I'm often asked about Simplifying Veeam Reporting, enabling automatic reporting, and activating Veeam's new Customer Protection Policy. Join Chad Kelly and myself later today to discuss exactly this. Light on slides, heavy on How-To Demo. Come along for the Q&A, or if you can't make it today register anyway to receive the recording - Install Veeam Service Provider Console v7 - Enable the VCSP Pulse Plugin - Enable Automatic License Key updates - Enable Company and Customer Mapping between Console v7 and VCSP Pulse

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