Effective Strategies for Overcoming Challenges in the Sales of Software Faced by Austrian B2B Companies, Using STIWA as an Illustrative Example

Abstract

Historically, Austrian B2B companies are very production driven and, as a result, have clear and effective sales strategies for their products. Nevertheless, over time services, such as software have gained in interest and potentially offer strategic alternatives and higher profits. Therefore, many Austrian B2B companies have followed that trend and added software solutions to their portfolio. However, most of them have not managed to sell their software solutions as effectively as initially planned. There are specific challenges that need to be overcome by implementing effective sales strategies. STIWA is currently in the development of a new software solution and wants to solve these problems. Therefore, STIWA is used as an illustrative example to provide helpful guidelines for companies in comparable situations. In order to provide a profound theoretical base and understanding, this paper first of all focuses on an extensive literature review. As software is often misinterpreted, the first part of this paper puts a focal point on establishing a basic understanding of a product and a service and allocates it accordingly. Based on that, the two types of software are compared and the challenges for selling it are explained. The second part of this paper continues by specifically focusing on sales, providing the most important strategic steps. Additionally, it builds-on established knowledge and reveals the most appropriate sales approaches, techniques, and methods for selling software solutions. By specifically focusing on the adaptation of the organization this part of the paper makes sure that the recommended methods are implemented accordingly. The third part aims to make the sales concepts that were explained more successful by using Artificial Intelligence as a supportive tool. By defining the technology and displaying the implementational challenges and solutions, this part offers clear guidelines. Additionally, it explains the importance of AI in sales by specifically focusing on its benefits. Then, general information about STIWA and their new software solutions are provided, which is the base for describing appropriate strategic steps. Additionally, this paper includes extensive primary research in the form of 15 semi-structured in-depth interviews. The first interview group focuses on potential software customers and aims to find out the decisive criteria for purchasing a software solution. Therefore, software decision-makers from various industries were interviewed. The second group focuses on AI providers to find out use cases that can revolutionize the sales of software solutions. For this purpose,, different AI institutions from Austria and Germany were interviewed. The generated data offers valuable insights into current market trends that are key for formulating up-to-date and more effective sales strategies. Finally, all the previous sections are combined and show that there are two effective sales strategies that are recommended and need to be implemented together. The first strategy is based on the decisive criteria and builds up strategic guidelines. It outlines that sales can only be successful by starting as early as in the development phase, and by engineering a software that not only has a perfect aim, but also an actual need on the market that is well perceived. Therefore, engineering and sales departments should work together closely, where sales functions as an interface between the company and potential customers. This constant exchange of ideas and information makes sure that sales will be more effective from the very beginning. Additionally, it is key to have a software-savvy sales team that ought to be specialized in only selling software. Generally, it must be a soft approach that focuses on understanding the prospects processes and organization and how the solutions offered will benefit and potentially change the entire business. This must go hand in hand with a constant value transmission. Hence, it is key to equip sales teams with appropriate value communicating tools. Above all, special training as well as an attractive compensation system are required to keep teams motivated, as selling software is tedious and a long-term process. The second strategy which is based on the usage of AI to increase the efficiency of the first strategy offers AI use-cases that reduce the failure rate of sales by taking the appropriate decisions. The outcome shows that a mixed AI strategy which is based on sales steps that are enhanced by AI tools and on sales steps that are kept the traditional way is the most appropriate strategy, as it strategically evaluates every activity and step of the sales process and defines whether it makes sense to use AI or not. Furthermore, such a strategy tries to integrate a single tool in various steps of the sales process to use it in various use cases. As a result, a slow and soft AI approach is the solution because it considers all internal and external challenges.

Date of Award	2024
Original language	English
Supervisor	Peter Hutterer (Supervisor)