Brief Description

Unless the software vendor has the positive attention of prospect decision makers in the sales process, they are subject to the various levels of bias and emotional subjectivity in the selection of enterprise software. Among all their prospects they want to pursue, software vendors meet a subset of companies that:

• Plans to use a consultant with their various levels of bias and incompetence

• Are confused, disorganized, and emotional 

• Has eliminated or never reviewed a vendor's product and is leaning toward other software

• Have an unrealistic budget or no sense of the value of the right type of system

• Are resistant for some other reason and the vendor wants their visibility improved

These leads are in risk or constitute an uphill battle to win the business. SoftSelect offers a process to make these prospects slow down and put in place a more methodical, fact based review. A process that causes software vendors with broad functional and qualitative strengths to 'get noticed' and rise to the surface. 

To achieve this result with the vendor's prospect, SoftSelect provides the prospect with a three-page report that compares the software packages the company is focusing upon to a SoftSelect Benchmark group. This report is called the Short-list Validation Report (SVR). We simply show percent of sales that the short list vendors have sold to companies like this firm based on three high-level measures of suitability, which are 1) company size, 2) industry, and 3) manufacturing environment. The same measures for the benchmark group is developed from the top three packages that have the best suitability for a company of this type. The benchmark group is almost always stronger than most of the packages they are reviewing and this creates legitimate doubt. The obvious question they ask is, '"What packages comprise the SoftSelect Benchmark Group." They can't get these names until they are stabilized.

In the SVR debrief, SoftSelect briefly educates them on the purpose, value, and weaknesses of the three high-level indicators of suitability. Based on the weaknesses, they are told about the process to build a legitimate long list, establish their true priorities and to quickly and methodically test the candidate solutions against these priorities to develop a short list of leading packages. They learn they cannot be shown three benchmark packages without using our fee-based process. For this reason, there is no danger to referring vendors for not being in the SoftSelect Benchmark Group. Properly positioned and debriefed, they will be thankful for the wake-up call. Included on this long list are:

• SoftSelect's benchmark group plus 3-7 other suggested candidate packages directly below the benchmark group

• Prospect requested vendors from their original list (some of which may be in the SoftSelect list)

• Vendor requested listings that have reasonable matches to the three high-level indicators of suitability

Whether the vendor's prospect only takes the SVR or hires SoftSelect to put further structure in place, this prospect has been exposed to solid structure and has a better sense that they may not be reviewing the best group of software packages. Therefore a comprehensively strong vendor who understands what is happening with this prospect has improved their ability to interact and gain positive visibility for their offering.

Over the last few years we have been working with software vendors in this capacity, but without formal structure. This program is meant to help expand the benefits of an already successful informal relationship.

It is important to note that before measuring the validity of the prospect stabilization/recovery program an reader must thoroughly understand how SoftSelect collects high-level suitability data, the Short-list Validation Report and fee-based selection support services.

Program Details

Executive Support: SoftSelect offers this program to the management at strong software vendors and seeks their support. The reason we focus on 'strong' is that our selection support services enable companies selecting systems to initially focus on their broad functional and qualitative priorities, therefore software vendors need to be functionally competitive, but equally as important, perform well on other measures of qualitative suitability, such as general viability in the marketplace, total cost of ownership, or quality of implementation strategies. Software vendors that do reasonably well in all major functional and qualitative measures rise to the top in this controlled and consistent evaluation process.  Marginal vendors are typically identified and they would not do well in this selection environment.

Program Management:  Managers for the program are identified from SoftSelect and the participating software vendor.

Training:  The process to make this program successful is first enabled when a vendor's marketing/sales team members gain an understanding and in turn confidence in SoftSelect's research process, the Short-list Validation Report and follow-on fee-based selection support services and how these items are a significant improvement over the sales environment they otherwise would be working. Also training is provided on the management process for this program and financial structure that protects the objectivity of this program which it fundamentally depends upon.

Custom Management Plan:  SoftSelect will contact participating vendors to discuss and create a structure for identifying and managing these prospects that should be offered in the Short-list Validation Report or other selection support services. We have had enthusiastic participants in the past; but without structure in the relationship, the sales team typically forget about this lead stabilization/recovery option.

Forwarding Prospects:  When software vendors detect a lead for referral to our process, they contact SoftSelect with the lead information. SoftSelect will register that a prospect originated from the vendor. If SoftSelect is already dynamically selling or working with the prospect, the vendor will be notified immediately.

Prospect Prosecution:  SoftSelect will contact the prospect and typically present the Short-list Validation Report and tell them briefly about our full services. The main goal is to have them find the Short-list Validation Report desirable and to begin a discussion based on this deliverable.  If the prospect accepts the Short-list Validation Report we report to the software vendor this has occurred and then the vendor has a number of options for interfacing with the prospect in the context of new doubts and improved structure and discipline.

Prospect Status Information for Vendors:  SoftSelect maintains the status of each prospect, on a website vendors can access at any time. We provide status codes and a few other elements of information to make it easy for the vendors to follow-up more effectively.

Full SoftSelect Services:  If fee-based selection services are sold, SoftSelect's research function will list candidate vendors per normal procedures. If the referring vendor wants to be listed, we will record this and subject to listing rules, including the vendor's software package during the listing process. SoftSelect's listing process depends on high-level factors related to general suitability for a specific prospect company. Based on our ranking process, we can determine with reasonable accuracy the general suitability of packages for a particular prospect. Therefore, the referring vendor can be listed if the company passes the general suitability screen. If the correct decision is not clear to us (i.e., in the gray zone between listing and not listing) then SoftSelect will call our vendor point-of-contact to discuss the matter and gain clarity. This process works well because software candidates outside of the gray zone are not competitive and, if they were listed, would waste the vendors' and prospects' time and cause doubt about our listing process.

• Structured Review of Your Product/Services: When our fee-based services are used, listed software vendor should be contacted and presented approximately 20 top level functional and qualitative priorities of the prospect based on SoftSelect’s selection Phase-2 procedures. If you are aware you are listed, and you are not contacted, review your options for reporting irregularities in our Lead Tracking and Feedback Process for vendors (outlined earlier in this document).

• Structured and Useful Feedback for Specific Prospects:  For projects in which a vendor's software was considered but was not selected, SoftSelect can provide structured feedback on how the vendor performed.  Again, see the section in this document on our Lead Tracking and Feedback Process for vendors.

Improvements to Prospect Stabilization/Recovery Program:  We continually keep in touch with our vendor manager and other appropriate vendor personnel to monitor your point of view and tune and improve the program and relationship. This includes basic training for new sales and related management personnel.

Benefits for Software Vendors

If the Short-list Validation Report is purposefully reviewed and used and if fee-based services are sold by SoftSelect a participating vendor will:

• Put the selection process on an even playing field with a likely additional advantage to the referring vendor because their understanding of our selection process enables them to more readily highlight their offerings' broad strengths

• Improve the sales environment and helps sales persons focus on true priorities of a given prospect and not just canned features and benefits. Also, reduce sales energy expended on marginal prospects

• Avoid the bias of typical consultants, whether benevolent (they migrate toward the packages they know) or profit driven (they make money if a particular package is picked)

• Receive feedback on their product and sales performance in the selection process if they are listed in a research report

• Reduce "buyer's remorse" as purchase decisions are more confidently made and easy to defend to prospect company management

• Gain goodwill as the catalyst for the prospect accessing a superior selection or selection validation methodology

• If your offering is selected our planning process will significantly improve the firm’s prepared for implementation