How far to drive for a customer?
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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!
Seems like a lot of time for me for a 1 hour demo, for so little potential reward. But if you have the time, then there is nothing to loose. Is there an alternative? e.g. a try before you buy? Its unfortunate, as I'm guessing if you're company was a little bigger, you would have a full time sales guy who would be able to do this kind of thing, and see maybe 2 or three potential customers in 1 day. It would look good though, making all that effort. If your chances of getting the sale are also good then you should do it.
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If the goodwill you generate by going generates one sale, that's $2,000 for 8 hours of music, $20 of petrol and an hour of work. Sounds like a good deal to me, I'd do it in a second. Christian I have several lifelong friends that are New Yorkers but I have always gravitated toward the weirdo's. - Richard Stringer
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The problem is: you're not 100% sure that they'll buy it, right? Can't you demo your application over the Internet? I mean, you can setup a machine with a Terminal Services (I'm supposing it's not a web application) and, while you show it to him, you talk on the phone. I recall selling our software, which costs way more than $2000, over the phone to more than one customer. In a few cases, we needed to go there only for a meeting to close the deal - and in your case, I believe that $2000 for a day driving and a quick meeting is fair enough. Yes, even I am blogging now!
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I have a customer who wants me to drive to their office for a presentation of our application and ask a few questions. They know a number of users of the application who are quite happy with it. The thing is that they are 3.5 hours to 4 hours away from our offices. Our application sells for about 2000$ 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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Carl Mercier wrote: one long boring drive Bring someone with you! Regards, Brian Dela :-) Now Bloging![^]
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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 Mercier wrote: VNC Slow, very slow. There's a version (sorry, I don't remember the name) that installs a video driver and works in the same way than Terminal Services, which works very fine over a 128K DSL, unless you have lots of bitmaps in your application. Yes, even I am blogging now!
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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!
If you can earn more than the price of the sale + goodwill, etc. in the same time doing something else, then don't bother. Otherwise, get moving. BW
"Get up and open your eyes. Don't let yourself ever fall down.
Get through it and learn how to fly. I know you will find a way...
Today"
-Days of the New -
Not a music fan ? What's wrong with packing a salad ? Christian I have several lifelong friends that are New Yorkers but I have always gravitated toward the weirdo's. - Richard Stringer
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If the goodwill you generate by going generates one sale, that's $2,000 for 8 hours of music, $20 of petrol and an hour of work. Sounds like a good deal to me, I'd do it in a second. Christian I have several lifelong friends that are New Yorkers but I have always gravitated toward the weirdo's. - Richard Stringer
Christian Graus wrote: $20 of petrol Wow - wish I could drive for 8 hours on only $20 worth of petrol ;P
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Christian Graus wrote: $20 of petrol Wow - wish I could drive for 8 hours on only $20 worth of petrol ;P
Why did my previous post end up down here????? :~
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I have a customer who wants me to drive to their office for a presentation of our application and ask a few questions. They know a number of users of the application who are quite happy with it. The thing is that they are 3.5 hours to 4 hours away from our offices. Our application sells for about 2000$ 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!
What I started doing a while ago, is requesting a charge of $500.00 per day, and for them to cover travel expenses paid. Get this money up front. This way if they are serious they will pay it. They may whine a little about the cost, but this keeps you from working for minimum wage, or losing money. You may offer a small discount if they buy later on. A good friend of mine who has been a software dealer for many years uses this approach, and it works for him, and it has worked for me. Another option my friend uses is GoToMyPC. He actually gives demos, and lets them try the software, even across long distances.
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Carl Mercier wrote: VNC Slow, very slow. There's a version (sorry, I don't remember the name) that installs a video driver and works in the same way than Terminal Services, which works very fine over a 128K DSL, unless you have lots of bitmaps in your application. Yes, even I am blogging now!
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I have a customer who wants me to drive to their office for a presentation of our application and ask a few questions. They know a number of users of the application who are quite happy with it. The thing is that they are 3.5 hours to 4 hours away from our offices. Our application sells for about 2000$ 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!
I flew across country (on the customer's dime, thankfully) to give a four hour presentation on IP over satellite. 10 minutes into the presentation a financial crisis occurred that took away 70% of the participants (there were many senior managers in the room). I was a bit p-o'd. Personally, I would suggest working out some compensation that can be voided if they decide to go ahead with the purchase. Otherwise, it's a big waste of time, IMO. Marc MyXaml Advanced Unit Testing
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I flew across country (on the customer's dime, thankfully) to give a four hour presentation on IP over satellite. 10 minutes into the presentation a financial crisis occurred that took away 70% of the participants (there were many senior managers in the room). I was a bit p-o'd. Personally, I would suggest working out some compensation that can be voided if they decide to go ahead with the purchase. Otherwise, it's a big waste of time, IMO. Marc MyXaml Advanced Unit Testing
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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