Comments on: Are Sales People Really Needed?

By: John Eaton

John Eaton — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 01:13:47 +0000

Harry,

Did you read Dilbert the day after you posted this?

http://www.dilbert.com/2009-12-01/

By: Jim Price

Jim Price — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:50:41 +0000

I’d start with a comment that, hopefully without sounding too corny, a good ’sales’ person is actually a ‘great’ relationship manager. Having spent the first 15 years of my professional life in technical sales, I spent the great majority of my time trying to understand my customer’s business, and the balance of my time marshaling company resources to determine if and how we can construct a legitimately valuable solution that is compelling to the customer’s technical AND business challenges.

In our era of almost everything being a commodity or nearly so, the right vendor selection is one that demonstrates alignment with the customer problem, post sales support to ensure the solution lives up to its promise, and and a future relationship that makes repeat engagements even more effective and valuable than the initial engagement.

None of the following get accomplished with inside sales (no disrespect intended), or with online sales.

There is an art to being a great relationship manager, and kudos to those ’sales’ reps in EDA or other industries that practice their profession well.

By: Jeremy Ralph

Jeremy Ralph — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:37:08 +0000

There are a lot of quirks with EDA selling and if someone knows the ropes they can provide a lot of value to the EDA co. and the customer. Each large EDA deal is a very complex process which is driven by the customer’s development cycle, budget, and politics. I think a good EDA salesperson could help the customer engineering team to expedite the purchase of a tool that is needed for an upcoming project. Engineers wanting a new tool can get discouraged by the internal bureaucracy sometimes. The EDA salesperson needs to really understand the dynamics of the decision process. Provided there are EDA sales people that can accomplish this (and if you know any send them my way :-), how do you compensate them and keep them interested?

On the other side of the argument, the cost of the traditional sales channel is quite expensive and contributes to the cost of the product. What is the cost of selling in EDA and is it efficient when compared to other industries? What is the return on attending DAC? What is the return on flying to visit prospects face-to-face for meetings which could be conducted online? What is the cost/benifit of onsite evaluations, support and customization?

Lots of questions and few answers here. I do believe that more of an online pretense for tool evaluations - without requiring any software to be downloaded or installed by the customers - is the way forward, like what we’re doing with SpectaReg Online, and what Xuropa is doing with online Labs.

By: BottTech

BottTech — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:53:36 +0000

Funny… my sales guy says his software is so damned good that us ASIC engineers are not necessary.

By: Ray Salemi

Ray Salemi — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:35:32 +0000

I think you answered your own question with this faint praise: “Certainly, some of these folks do provide value, marshaling corporate resources to address a tool issue or providing methodology assistance for a new technology. There are also the dirty parts of the job. Without sales people’s efforts, many opportunities would die an early death in the hands of lawyers, accountants, and purchasing reps, or at least they would not occur as quickly as they do.”

While your article treats this as a throwaway value, it is the key value of EDA sales. Technology is only one part of the question. The other to parts are business need and relationships.

You really can’t work through the other two without sales people.