A Guide to Selling Software to SMBs
The moment, many enterprise solutions companies think of Indian SMB’s, their eyes pop-up by seeing the 65 Million SMBs. India is the country with largest SMB’s at one place in the world. They start dreaming to achieve 1% of this group with providing the right solutions. VCs will put any money to win this. So how to sell software to SMBs in India? What are the nuances should be aware of?
Selling to Indian SMBs is not easy. Many consider its easy to sell to USA Customer than to Indian customer. That too selling software for Manufacturing companies are very difficult as they want everything at one place. For them, every requirements of theirs is a standard product features and do not want to Pay Any money.
Based on our 9 years of Sales and Marketing work in India for our cloud ERP software, ACTouch, let me put across some challenges and our understanding of this market.
Let’s understand this.
But is the Indian SMBs are so easy to win? Difficulty in Selling Software for Manufacturing Companies?
Even though, India seems to be a one nation, but it’s not truly a “One nation” follows the same rule across all the parts. What it makes different from rest of the world is,
- The dialect and the local living practices
- The way people think and behave.
- Business practices and the community
- Building trust between people is different.
What is important in India is, the Business happens with face to face rather than over the email or call. Smaller deals could happen, but the larger happens always with Face to Face meeting or trusted person. This is true even for the SaaS application too.
Indian Business owner wants to see the person behind the software. He needs to know whom to call when there is a problem. He needs to know, who will support, when the issues are reported. Important is Build the trust from day one and improve it. They don’t like surprises.
Based on our ERP sales, let us summarise “Guide to selling software to SMBs” or “Sell to Indian SMB” with the below 9 major points.
You need to understand about Indian SMB Business owners and the challenges ERP vendors could face when selling an ERP or any software to them.
- Boss takes final decision. Even though Manager’s act like they are the boss, but they will never take a decision. Most of the time to “save their job”, they would recommend their boss to buy SAP or Oracle.
If it fails, they would say that “Their competitor uses SAP and are successful. May be the implementation guys are not good and due to which their project is failed”. What they don’t understand is, for the successful ERP implementation, they need to Plan, Verify and Execute the same against the adverse problems.
- 2 types of decision makers – Need to decide how to manage them.
- Boss talks about money
- End users and Managers talk about Feature and Functionalities.
- Time is money
They don’t want a typical process of sending them warm eMails and then show the details later. They want to “see all at ONCE”. If they like they will come. Simple rule “Avoid Surprises”. They are always worried about “What could go wrong”. So be prepared to answer them. - Each SMB Business behaves like an Enterprise and a decision making process is complex. So treat them as it is. Don’t oversimplify them.
- Indian SMBs asks what you have for me?
Rest of world’s SMB’s would ask “I need these 4 points. Let’s talk, if you have”, means they would ask their specific questions, but Indian SMBs would expect you to know their business problems. So the question is always “What you have for me”, “Show me your product features and then I decide what I need”.The best way to handle this, demo your ERP product with major features with lot of Interactive questions at each stage. This would help you to understand prospects business, make them Open and change the course of demo based on it. - For an ERP, they need all the FEATURES even if they don’t use 50% of them. Numbers makes sense.
- Most of Indian SMBs work only when a Discount is offered. So think to attract here. Don’t underestimate the “power of discount”.
- Many SMBs listen to you and your stories, but will act only when they want. So don’t do Push Sales for them. It’s a recipe for disastrous. You better give them time to decide.
In our case of ACTouch ERP sales, we closed few deals in ONE Day, while few took more than 12 months too. - Yes is not always a “YES”. Until money comes to your bank, deal is NOT CLOSED
We learnt such many unwritten rules when we interact with Customers and prospects.
Connect me to understand more on “How to sell to Indian SMBs?”…
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