Getting your customers to sign up to a service that requires them to relinquish control of 70% of their code requires a lot of trust and confidence. While the latest research suggests that businesses across the UK are interested in PaaS, your selling technique will need to be just right to get them to invest at this stage.
Industry experts suggest that around 70% of software adds no differential business advantage at all. It’s simply software that is required to get the job done. PaaS allows businesses to focus on the 30% of software that does add competitive advantage, making them much more efficient.
The answer to selling PaaS with ease isn’t about understanding the coding more. It’s about using data to sell the benefits, and reassuring the customer that this is the perfect solution for them. Just keeping data in a cloud isn’t typically enough to encourage a customer to buy.
The key benefits that you should be using to sell include:
· Analytics. Businesses like analytics, and the ability to report on what works and what doesn’t. Express how easy it is to find and monitor data, and create excellent reports.
· Integration. No software is an island, and everything needs to integrate with something. Using PaaS makes this integration simple. Have a good knowledge of the key systems your customer is likely to use, and mention whether your PaaS system is integrated with them, or can be. Allowing your customer to use their favourite systems in exchange for keeping their data in your cloud is a very successful selling technique.
· Data Aggregation. Benchmarks are vital to businesses, and they get these through looking at the same data across many customers. Refining this process and making it as efficient as possible is a big business ambition. If your PaaS service can offer this, you’ll be cutting costs as well as delivering valuable data. SalesForce, for example, integrates with Jigsaw. This shows information about any contact that you add to the database, including contact details and job information.
· Other vital applications. These aren’t the only ways PaaS can be used. It could also be used for Disaster Recovery – not only backing up immediate data, but also cloud-based data. Archiving systems are always in demand, and a reduced-functionality front end for use during maintenance is always a popular option. Find ways to meet the business’s needs, and your customer won’t hesitate to buy.
What benefits are you finding the most effective in PaaS sales at the moment?
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