Salesoft
THE BURNING QUESTION
SaleSoft Inc is faced with making a tough, time constrained and strategic choice to either continue with it’s PROCEED software development or redirect the efforts of the entire company’s workforce to deliver the Trojan Horse (TH) product in time for the sales automation conference. The decision taken will have to be absolutely exclusive and is expected to have a critical impact on the company’s future and indeed it’s very viability.
MEMO TO SALESOFT MANAGEMENT
I would recommend the company to
1. Fully redirect all of it’s efforts to get Trojan Horse (TH) product to market quickly so that they can showcase it at the SA conference. This would be necessitated by the financial situation of salesoft Inc as analyzed in this document. They can concentrate on getting the PROCEED product out after demonstrating TJ.
2. Adopt a customer oriented value-based pricing for Salesoft and price it at a higher entry point of $1000 for the computer hardware market.
3. Clearly choose the computer hardware industry as their target market segments and spend minimal time and effort in getting involved with selling to financial sector industries.
4. Realign their internal sales organization to cater to the needs of the TH customer base more effectively and strongly consider the possibility of offshoring some of the software development to lower cost locales like India and China to reduce the cash burn-rate.
CASE ANALYSIS
It is evident from the case that Salesoft Inc has very limited funds for operation and has to show positive developments to venture capitalists before they can raise further funds. Their situation is further exacerbated by the fact that they have already embarked on development of the CSAS product that faces market uncertainity and there is well-founded evidence that VP of sales in the companies that they intend to sell to (who are the decision makers) are skeptical about the need for a CSAS product like PROCEED.
As of September 1995, the
SaleSoft Inc is faced with making a tough, time constrained and strategic choice to either continue with it’s PROCEED software development or redirect the efforts of the entire company’s workforce to deliver the Trojan Horse (TH) product in time for the sales automation conference. The decision taken will have to be absolutely exclusive and is expected to have a critical impact on the company’s future and indeed it’s very viability.
MEMO TO SALESOFT MANAGEMENT
I would recommend the company to
1. Fully redirect all of it’s efforts to get Trojan Horse (TH) product to market quickly so that they can showcase it at the SA conference. This would be necessitated by the financial situation of salesoft Inc as analyzed in this document. They can concentrate on getting the PROCEED product out after demonstrating TJ.
2. Adopt a customer oriented value-based pricing for Salesoft and price it at a higher entry point of $1000 for the computer hardware market.
3. Clearly choose the computer hardware industry as their target market segments and spend minimal time and effort in getting involved with selling to financial sector industries.
4. Realign their internal sales organization to cater to the needs of the TH customer base more effectively and strongly consider the possibility of offshoring some of the software development to lower cost locales like India and China to reduce the cash burn-rate.
CASE ANALYSIS
It is evident from the case that Salesoft Inc has very limited funds for operation and has to show positive developments to venture capitalists before they can raise further funds. Their situation is further exacerbated by the fact that they have already embarked on development of the CSAS product that faces market uncertainity and there is well-founded evidence that VP of sales in the companies that they intend to sell to (who are the decision makers) are skeptical about the need for a CSAS product like PROCEED.
As of September 1995, the