Question

For many months, your prospective ERP customer has been analyzing the hundreds of assumptions built into the $900,000 ERP software you are selling. So far, you have knocked yourself out to try to make the sale. If the sale goes through, you will reach your yearly quota and get a nice bonus. On the other hand, loss of this sale may mean you start looking for other employment. The accounting, human resource, supply chain, and marketing teams put together by the client have reviewed the specifications and finally recommended purchase of the software. However, as you looked over their shoulders and helped them through the evaluation process, you began to realize that their purchasing procedures – with much of the purchasing being doneat hundreds of regional stores – were not a good fit for the software. At the very least, the customizing will add $250,000 to the implementation and training cost. The team is not aware of the issue, and you know that the necessary $250,000 is not in the budget. What do you do?

Answer 1

ERP is Going to Cost More Than Expected: What do you do? Certainly, any sense of fairness and decency suggest that the customer must be told the truth. However, a sales representative can be expected to try to solve the problem for his customer—this may mean that:

The first stop is the sales representative’s manager to see if another customer or pending customer may have dealt with this problem and solved the problem or may be willing to share development costs.

A second option is to ask the manager “Is there is any budget or pending budget for this type of enhancement or can we help the customer out by paying for part of the enhancement?”

The bottom line is that not telling the customer the truth and/or selling the customer something that will not do the job is not only unethical but also probably bad business—certainly bad business in the long run