Author: Andrew Stirling
Posted: 2008-05-28 at 22:05:05
Michael
I TOTALLY disagree with what's been previously been said.
You should supply the FULL product in demo form.
Let your prospective customers see the full product, allow "user to
modify reports". It is your job to allow them to see the FULL advantages
of your software.
Do NOT restrict your software.
Remember they will try out your software with, probably, real data. They
will expect the time they have spent entering this to be worthwhile, ie
its still there when they upgrade to the full product.
I assume you have reviewed restricting it to 30 days use etc & decided
it is too easy to get round the restriction.
With CalcPay I offer the FULL payroll product.
I restrict it to 4 periods of use. ie once 4 calculations is entered
onto the P11 table(ie 4 payruns have been done & recorded) I disable the
Payroll Calculator option. This can be for 1 or 10000 employees.
(I also disable the ONLINE END OF YEAR report to send to our beloved
H.M. Revenue & Customs.)
This means that the user can fully evaluate the product.
If you disable, for instance, "allowed the user to modify reports" then
they can not review your product to its full advantage. Do not do this
type of restriction.
25% of my clients are accountants/bookkeepers.
I point out that they can email the payslips to their clients.
I wait 10 secs & then tell them that the PDFs can be encrypted.
The sale is made.
Would you have removed this in your evaluation!
Find a restriction that is a major hindrance.
Is this FabMate!? Can you restrict the Stock/MakeUp table to say 100 items.
They can then fully review your system knowing about this restriction
and then make their own minds up as to whether they should purchase it.
Can you restrict a single major report so that they can only view it?
Keep the restrictions simple & obvious.
They can run the full product.
This of course means they cannot reject it later( because it does not do
what they thought it should do), you have after all allowed them the
full run of the product.
So what happens to a client that can survive with 100 stock items, well
they get a free system.
Get over it. You would have never have got them for the price you are
charging anyway.
You have however allowed potential clients to see see your software in
its best light.
Because your software is good they will buy it!
(If your software is not good then why are you on this list!)
I find if you trust your customers they trust you.
Probably one of the reasons that I come 2nd out of 1,280,000 on a google
search (UK) for 'payroll software'
Give your clients the full product.
Forget about the lost sales, you would not have got them anyway.
Concentrate on your clients, keep them happy.
Ensure you have 95%+ retention of your clients, if not, find out why &
fix it.
Andrew Stirling
01250 874580
HMRC Accredited UK payroll program
MB Software Solutions General Account wrote:
> Tracy Pearson wrote:
>> If you have any code that modifies the FRX's on the fly, you'll need to
>> account for that.
>>
>
> Excellent point! I had a menu item that allowed the user to modify
> reports. I'll have to disable that for TRIAL version users.
>
> THANKS!
>