I admit, I was excited to receive this particular email. It was a confirmation to demo SalesCatcher to one of the biggest auto groups in the country.
Obviously, this would be a good get. I suddenly had visions of SalesCatcher being in all their stores overnight, greatly improving our bottom line, and when their sales spiked as a result, they would buy us out and make us millionaires.
So am I currently writing this from my new mansion in Beverly Hills?
Read on.
Going in, I thought I had a good enough chance. I had already been assured by two of their regional managers that our product was a superior quoting tool to their current system (which I easily verified through some mystery shopping). But because “corporate” makes all the decisions, these managers weren’t even allowed to sample it for a free 14-day trial in any of their stores.
So Thursday arrived (March 28th, 2013 to be exact). Although we were in different time zones, our webcams put us in the same room, as did his ability to see my computer desktop on his computer.
I appreciated the fact that he had invited two associates to join him – the more the merrier. After I was introduced to these pleasant gentlemen and we had a round of making fun of their ridiculously long titles, I began the demonstration.
All was going well, particularly when I showed them SalesCatcher’s unique ability to make a quote out of an invoice in 5 seconds by just using the “copy and paste” functions (I always swell with pride over this).
But a few minutes in, I noticed something strange: they weren’t asking the questions that general managers and internet directors usually ask. So either they weren’t interested from the get-go, or they were coming from a totally different place.
When I was finished, I was grateful that he didn’t take long to say “no.” Even though I was deflated, at least he ripped the band-aid off quickly.
It was what he said next that caused me to temporarily forget my sudden case of mild depression: that regardless of what their stores were currently putting out as quotes, those will all change because they have something similar to SalesCatcher “in the works” now and that it would be rolled out at some future date.
Then it dawned on me that maybe, just maybe… IT guys in charge of this very function for their auto group would be the last people to make me a millionaire (my fantasy) by buying SalesCatcher outright. Or anything close to that. If that’s the case, I still didn’t waste their time: I don’t think they minded seeing the currently available cutting edge technology we’ve perfected over the last three years.
He said one more thing: that SalesCatcher is excellent for individual stores or smaller groups who don’t have millions of dollars to pour into developing tools… like SalesCatcher.
I believe him. Their loss (no SalesCatcher for them!) is everyone else’s gain (free trial too!).
So in the end, we can still continue bringing dealers’ quotes into the 21st century one by one, and I didn’t have to lie about the big fish that got away because I still have a pretty good story to tell.