Eric Wright on Challenges of Enterprise Software Sales

Joining us this week is Eric Wright, Technology Evangelist, Turbonomic .

About Turbonomic
Turbonomic workload automation for hybrid cloud environments delivers enterprise organizations with automation that enables on-premises and public cloud to self-manage in real-time, thereby assuring application performance while lowering cost and maintaining compliance with business policies. The platform matches workload demand to infrastructure supply, helping customers maintain a continuous state of application health.

Launched in 2009, Turbonomic is one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the virtualization and cloud management space, trusted by thousands of enterprise organizations to maximize the value of their IT investments.

DiscoPosse Podcast

The DiscoPosse Podcast is designed to share personal and technology stories with great folks from all across the industry.  More than just tech, you’ll find founder’s stories, technology stories, personal productivity, fitness, and much more.  Recently rebranded from the original GC On-Demand which spawned from community interactions I have enjoyed through my role at Turbonomic.

Follow Eric’s podcast at https://discoposse.com/.

Highlights:

  • Discoposse Podcast
  • Discussion on Luke Kaines Article
  • Open Source Impact on IT Ops and Purchasing
  • Money Drives Operational Alignment
  • Sales as Organizational Improvements

Time Stamp

  • 0 min 6 sec: Introduction of Guest
  • 1 min 19 sec: Discoposse Podcast
    • History of Podcast
    • Canada – Brewers Retail
  • 6 min 07 sec: Luke Kaines Article, My Losing Battle with Enterprise Sales
    • Like Watching a Netflix Story Heading to an Unexpected Ending
    • Starts with Hard Lessons Learned – how not to do things
      • Who are you building the product for? User or Purchaser
      • Still early in our industry on how to build a product that doesn’t require enterprise sales
    • When is sales enterprise? How to define that?
    • You succeed on your ability to manage relationships of warring departments at the prospect’s company; it’s not the product that you are selling
  • 13 min 16 sec: Examples of Politics impacting sales
    • RackN and Internal Champions
    • Open Source allows customers to bypass their sales departments: dangers of this happening
    • Tour de France of IT Operations
    • Justify the cost of the product vs. value or the product
  • 21 min 05 sec: People take things seriously when money is being spent
    • Free consulting never gets used
    • Open source has less perceived value since its free but it’s not really free
    • Personal investment vs team investment in solution
      • Disagreements add value to organizations
      • Silos vs Cross-Silo Communications
    • 31 min 08 sec: How sell product communicating value to multiple groups via internal champions
      • Having to use software purchased already to get value
      • Have to pay for software, even free software
        • Even open source software has commercial support that cost money
      • Always about building a team and communication
    • 40 min 25 sec: Wrap-Up

Podcast Guest: Eric Wright

Eric Wright is a Principal Solutions Engineer and Technology Evangelist at Turbonomic, VMware vExpert, and Cisco Champion with a background in virtualization, containers, VMware, OpenStack, Business Continuity, PowerShell scripting and systems automation in many industries including financial services, health services and engineering firms. As the author behind DiscoPosse.com, a technology and virtualization blog, Eric is also a regular contributor to community driven technology groups such as the VMUG organization in Toronto, Canada.

When Eric is not working in technology, you may find him with a guitar in his hand or riding a local bike race or climbing over the obstacles on a Tough Mudder course. Eric also commits time regularly to charity bike rides and running events to help raise awareness and funding for cancer research through a number of organizations.

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