In talking to a variety of vendors across the CTRM space and beyond, I am getting feedback that sales cycles appear to be lengthening. Wether it be a traditional RFP process or a POC approach, it would appear that buyers in many instances are taking more time to decide. The question is why? Are buyers more risk averse? Are they less certain of what they actually want? Or is it for some other reason. After all, vendors have expressed hope that sale cycle lengths might decline with a drift towards POC -type sales of SaaS software. One vendor I spoke with suggested that it might be a case of “once bitten twice shy” stating that often times vendors sales people have oversold the software and its capabilities leaving buyers disappointed. However, taking a POC approach ought to help eliminate overselling or pre-selling of functions and features as the users can actually ‘play’ with the software prior to buying. This could be the reason at larger and public firms that have to se an open and traditional competitive bidding process however and there is no doubt that there has been over- and pre-selling by vendors in the space historically. ComTech surveys… continue reading