How far to drive for a customer?
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I'm considering demo'ing the application over the Internet using VNC, but I'm not quite sure how well it will perform over a regular DSL connection (100KB/sec or so).
Carl - I've used WebEx from home over a slower connection than that and had good luck presenting. You might think about giving that a shot. Otherwise, get in the car. :) My 2 cents.... Marcus Spitzmiller "Why must life be so hard? Why must I fail at every attempt at masonry?" - Homer
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I have a customer who wants me to drive to their office for a presentation of our application and ask a few questions. They know a number of users of the application who are quite happy with it. The thing is that they are 3.5 hours to 4 hours away from our offices. Our application sells for about 2000$ US. How far would you go for this kind of money? Quite frankly, I think this is hell of a drive (remember, I'll have to come back! 8 hours total! ish!)... It's a long of a drive especially for people who have heard a lot of good things about the software... I believe only one administrative person wants this demo. What would you do? Decline or drive like crazy? Thanks!
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I have a customer who wants me to drive to their office for a presentation of our application and ask a few questions. They know a number of users of the application who are quite happy with it. The thing is that they are 3.5 hours to 4 hours away from our offices. Our application sells for about 2000$ US. How far would you go for this kind of money? Quite frankly, I think this is hell of a drive (remember, I'll have to come back! 8 hours total! ish!)... It's a long of a drive especially for people who have heard a lot of good things about the software... I believe only one administrative person wants this demo. What would you do? Decline or drive like crazy? Thanks!
You could
- Take your girl friend with you
- Take a couple of buddies with you and some beer/vodka [drinks only for the return trip of course]
- Go by flight
- Go by a fast train
Nish
My blog on C++/CLI, MFC/Win32, .NET - void Nish(char* szBlog); My MVP tips, tricks and essays web site - www.voidnish.com
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l a u r e n wrote: and i had no life Is this an indirect way of telling us that you have one now? :rolleyes:
My blog on C++/CLI, MFC/Win32, .NET - void Nish(char* szBlog); My MVP tips, tricks and essays web site - www.voidnish.com
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I'm considering demo'ing the application over the Internet using VNC, but I'm not quite sure how well it will perform over a regular DSL connection (100KB/sec or so).
If you do this, make sure you test it out before hand. If your firewall/router is blocking their incoming requests, and you don't know it until the moment of truth, then you may lose that sale. I had to do something similar, but kind of different. I was repro'ing a bug in a partners app, and they wanted to see it. So I had booted up a Virtual PC machine (Windows XP Pro), created a help request using the remote help feature. I generated the help request file and saved it to the machine. I then had to edit it to use get my internet IP address rather than network IP, and then had to email it them. In the end, it worked out _very_ well, and the customer was amazed that it all worked. I even let them drive the machine so they could poke around and troubleshoot what was happening. I think I may have converted them from using Ghost to using Virtual PC too, and impressed them with the Remote Assistance feature in XP. One thing to note, I had to do the help request from the Virtual PC machine rather than the hosting OS because when connected to the host machine via remote assistance, the Virtual PC window just appeared as a black window. I had tested this before hand and avoided an embarrassing situation.
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l a u r e n wrote: and i had no life Is this an indirect way of telling us that you have one now? :rolleyes:
My blog on C++/CLI, MFC/Win32, .NET - void Nish(char* szBlog); My MVP tips, tricks and essays web site - www.voidnish.com
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I have a customer who wants me to drive to their office for a presentation of our application and ask a few questions. They know a number of users of the application who are quite happy with it. The thing is that they are 3.5 hours to 4 hours away from our offices. Our application sells for about 2000$ US. How far would you go for this kind of money? Quite frankly, I think this is hell of a drive (remember, I'll have to come back! 8 hours total! ish!)... It's a long of a drive especially for people who have heard a lot of good things about the software... I believe only one administrative person wants this demo. What would you do? Decline or drive like crazy? Thanks!
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As an Aussie a 4 hour drive is nothing. I am going that far this afternoon for a weekend away. I guess it depends on how comfortable your car is. I would not recommend it in a 30yr old mini.
I have a 1 hr drive to work and a 1 hr drive back - 2 hrs driving every day. Through some really heavy and unruly traffic too.
My blog on C++/CLI, MFC/Win32, .NET - void Nish(char* szBlog); My MVP tips, tricks and essays web site - www.voidnish.com
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This is your opportunity to go the extra mile for a potential customer. ------- sig starts "I've heard some drivers saying, 'We're going too fast here...'. If you're not here to race, go the hell home - don't come here and grumble about going too fast. Why don't you tie a kerosene rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt "...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
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I have a customer who wants me to drive to their office for a presentation of our application and ask a few questions. They know a number of users of the application who are quite happy with it. The thing is that they are 3.5 hours to 4 hours away from our offices. Our application sells for about 2000$ US. How far would you go for this kind of money? Quite frankly, I think this is hell of a drive (remember, I'll have to come back! 8 hours total! ish!)... It's a long of a drive especially for people who have heard a lot of good things about the software... I believe only one administrative person wants this demo. What would you do? Decline or drive like crazy? Thanks!
In the US you get $.35/mile if you use your own car. (Check these numbers, they are several years old!) factors that in, as it is a drag on profit. Also factor in the time you could be doing something else that would generate money. Then factor in any other costs that I've forget. Now add how much money you make from the demo. How much you will make from future sales to this customers. How much you will make because the customer tells others. If this is a first sale, then it might be worth losing money on it to get a reference. If you have many happy customers it isn't worth as much to go out of your way for one. Is this really a target customer. Some customers are worth pissing off in hopes that they go away and tell their friends. More than one company has cut their sales in half and raised profits because some customers are not worth having. However this is a difficult decision that you need to consider carefully. Don't forget to factor in the possibility that they won't pay! Havery Mackey once sold to someone outside their normal area, devlivered the produdct, and then the customer didn't pay. (in his buisness there is compitition everywhere, and delivery charges are the most expensive part of the cost, so he should have been asking questions, but he was young then) You really should read his books, he is a best selling author, and has many insites into the sales process.
