A Winning Sales & Marketing Strategy for ERP Businesses

The sales and marketing of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is an entirely Business to Business (B2B) transaction. As the need for an ERP solution differs from industry to industry and, within industry types, from company to company, the key factor in the marketing of ERP is the preliminary research to identify the exact segment for pitching the sales note. If this research is skipped or floundered, all the manual and material investments in marketing the ERP solution might just collapse to naught.

ERP products have to be sold multiple times to breakeven the enormous cost invested in its development and to generate revenue for sustaining the business. In this course, the sales force of any ERP company is posed with the obligation to target many companies with disparate business process requirements, wherein, even companies in the same industry segment might have different needs. So, marketing an ERP product entails industry oriented business-specific surgical segmentation of the market.

After successfully segmenting the market and identifying potential prospects, the following 3 aspects play a crucial part in acquiring and retaining customers:

  1. The core reason for which the client wants to implement the ERP has to be recognized through telephonic/personal interactions with key stakeholders and through on-site surveys.

        2.  Based on the learned conclusions drawn from the preceding survey, a demonstration of the ERP         has to be presented to the client in such a way that the demo perfectly aligns with the gap the               client intends to bridge through the benefit of an ERP.

          If the prospect were to become a client, the ERP design formulated for the demo will also serve as a pilot blueprint for the Implementation and Development Teams.

            3. Once a Lead is converted into an Order, the Marketing personnel’s consensus on the choice of implementation team should be made imperative in order to ensure the easy synchronization of the team with the client’s key stakeholders.

Though there is no single formula for the sale of ERP, the sales sequence briefed above is a simple yet time tested protocol with an appreciable success rate. The sales ploy, in addition to its success rate, is also strategized to earn customers who would eventually become long term business allies and, of course, perennial revenue generators.

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