Selling Software to people who hate it
Selling software to people who hate it, is indeed a really cool title for the article but it is so good that I don’t want to write something mediocre that is not going to justify the title, this is exactly how you feel when you pitch to a high profile lead and you don’t want to mess up.
Long story short, I was travelling with my boss, Stalin Muthusamy it was around 3 in the morning and we were discussing on process, products and what not. Suddenly our topic was on sales of our product PlanPol Booth and somehow I got to take over the sales of it.
The amount of adrenaline is unreal, imagine you’re 21, built an industry-scale app and now you are in charge of sales! That’s what happened to me.
Our team had contacts of EX-MLAs, Ministers and contestants from all parties.
I started cold-calling them!
“Vanakam Sir, naan PlanPol Niruvanathula irunthu pesuren …”
my cliched but functional pitch !
My first business card. “Political Consultant” needed far fewer explanations than “Founding Engineer”.
The challenge ahead was very clear
- Politicians had zero time
- You have to sell them the idea that their age old functional process is wrong
- You have to sound confident but not arrogant.
- They hate softwares
How did i solve them?
Grab their attention, keep it short, CTA. Simple but not as simple as that.
Software sales is typically very corporate and you sit in boardrooms and show x number of slides, but here ?
I pitched on a car journey.
First sale!
And then it happened. A yes.
Closed a deal, with someone who probably hadn’t taken a software pitch seriously in years.
Relief. Pure relief. Then good, then really good. And it wasn’t a one-off. It kept happening.
Do They really hate softwares
No one hates software but i feel why people have been hating to digitalise politics or any other field for that matter you know why? It’s because of the people who build and sell them.
We have to make sure software is democratized. Should not sound greek and latin. Not made intentionally complex.
If that’s done, literally everyone loves it.
And being part of both building and selling is like cooking your fav meal the way you like and eat it!