Below is a compilation of the most common objections/obstacles sales faces in customer conversations. Each objection/obstacle has a list of qualifying questions and resources that can help you navigate these conversations. Please add comments to bottom of this page so we can capture the best challenges and their responses.Feedback is always welcome. Thank you for all that contributed to this page! Please refer to training session for more information.
OPEN ALLCLOSE ALL
Value
Users can't quantify JMP's value to decision makers or senior leadership?
Response:
In the most general terms, JMP puts the data closer to the subject matter experts who understand it, giving them the ability to identify problems, explore solutions, and make decisions faster. Asking the users to confirm that they can save time, gain insight, and explore solutions is a good first step.
It is our job to help a customer craft the messaging around JMP’s impact based on their use case. Giving our customers information that they can relate to in the form of customer stories is a good way to arm our users with value statements. Additionally, bringing in subject matter experts, product management, and sales leadership can help drive engagements with senior leadership at the customer level. Helping a customer organize an internal JMP user group is a great way to build transparency and concensus around the value of JMP.
Impact/Needs-Payoff Questions:
- What resources do you need to sell this to your decision makers?
- Nearly all of our customers invite us in for workshops, would your manager sponsor one?
- Would you be willing to organize a JMP user group?
- Is your organization maximizing the insight you can glean from your data?
- What is the impact of getting it right? To you, and to your organization?
- What happens if you get it wrong?
Resources:
JMP (Pro/Clinical/Live) is too expensive.
Response:
This objection may not be about pricing at all. In many cases it’s triggered by anxiety about requesting precious budget dollars for an unproven software tool. It can help to put the cost in context by talking about the value you’ve identified to this point.
We know that the JMP product suite is competitively priced among similar analytic tools. The best way to better understand why a prospect believes the cost outweighs the value is to probe for additional information; the questions below can help.
Impact/Needs-Payoff Questions:
- What is the impact on productivity when your processes fail?
- What is the value of a more accurate prediction/root cause analysis/etc?
- What could you achieve with more efficient and reliable analytics?
- What else could you accomplish with the time saved performing optimal experiments?
- What value do you see in the ability to automatically calculate your settings?
Resources:
We do not need all of that functionality – we only use a small portion of JMP.
Response:
Most of our users start by using a small portion of JMP’s functionality; this is not unusual. However, it can sometimes lead to users requesting a cheaper or “lite” version of JMP because they are only viewing JMP through the lens of their particular problem.
“You can be productive with JMP in just a few short days and see a quick return on investment. However, JMP is an extensible platform that has a broad range of customizable applications. Over time, our users find new areas of opportunity to solve problems with JMP. Regardless the extent a user decides to leverage the functionality in JMP, JMP is still competitively priced, and when fully leveraged, JMP’s ROI is significant.”
Impact/Needs-Payoff Questions:
- What if you could automate some of the tedious tasks in your current process?
- Are you curious about how some of the users in your industry use JMP?
- Who else in your company could benefit from using data to make decisions?
- Some of my customers have seen a time savings of a full day every week when they implement JMP. I would love to show you just how we do that; would that be of interest to you and your team?
Resources:
Culture Change
Lack of urgency: Our company is profitable, the way we do things now is working for us, we don’t need to change.
Response:
A prospect who doesn’t have a sense of urgency may not be worth your valuable selling time. However, if you got to this sales engagement through a lead, there was something that triggered his or her interest. What was it?
Most companies are forced to dig deeper into their analytic culture at some point, usually when their profits are low, or their costs and/or risks are high. A prospect not working on our timeline is not a lost cause, but this objection may be his or her way of brushing off a salesperson. You should qualify your contact for an understanding of the power of data-driven decisions, his or her openness to change, and his or her influence in the organization.
Impact/Needs-Payoff Questions:
- What is the cost to the business to wait to implement a new culture of analytics?
- What could you achieve with more efficient and reliable analytics?
- Is data-driven analytics no longer a priority for your company?
- If we speak again next quarter, what circumstances will have changed?
- Increasing efficiencies is likely a priority to someone at your company. Who is chartered with continuous improvement?
- What could happen if you wait too long to implement new methods?
- Who is affected by the results of your analytic workflow?
- What is the impact of delays caused by the back-and-forth with IT on data and report requests?
- What happens when you experience delays getting the data you need? How does that impact your ability to respond to requests from your internal customers?
- How does your design process affect time to market?
- How expensive is scrap & re-work?
- How much does each experiment cost?
- What’s the cost of a blown batch?
- What if you could run experiments in less time?
- What if you could get more information out of fewer runs?
- Some of my customers have seen a time savings of a full day every week when they implement JMP. I would love to show you just how we do that; would that be of interest to you and your team?
- Do you have other software tools that you will be evaluating soon? Should we talk again before you make those decisions?
Resources:
We already use another tool for EDA/DoE/predictive modeling/etc.
Response:
We know that JMP is unique in the marketplace. Existing software tools that a customer has invested in have probably found their place in the organization. Qualification should help you decide if there’s value in adding JMP to complement their existing software or replace it altogether.
Complement: “JMP was designed to be complimentary to other analytic tools. The JMP platform is very flexible and extensible; many of our customers find that JMP provides additional value in conjunction with their existing software investments.”
Replace: “Many of my customers switch to JMP when the dimensionality of the data and subsequent problems to solve have grown in complexity. This happens so often that there are multiple independent guides on how to make the switch. We’d love to show you how JMP can take your analytic efforts to the next level.”
Impact/Needs-Payoff Questions:
- What if you could automate some of the tedious tasks in your current process?
- What if you could find correlations in the data on the fly?
- Would your company benefit from having a common analytics language and platform?
- Do these tools meet all of your analytic needs, controlling process from design to production to quality?
- Do your existing products give your users quick access to information to help them make sound decisions with data?
Resources:
We tried DoE in the past and did not see significant improvements; we don’t know if adopting DoE will give us a competitive advantage.
Response:
Access to top DoE talent is an advantage that competitive software products can’t match. A customer who believes that they are partnering with JMP to be successful instead of simply buying a software tool is more likely to choose our product.
”DoE fuels innovation, and JMP is on the cutting edge with the foremost experts on staff. Many of our customers use DoE to gain a competitive advantage, and they turn to JMP as the leader in this field.”
Impact/Needs-Payoff Questions:
- How does your design process affect time to market?
- What else could you accomplish with the time saved performing optimal experiments?
- How expensive is scrap & re-work?
- How much does each experiment cost?
- What’s the cost of a blown batch?
- What if you could run experiments in less time?
- What if you could get more information out of fewer runs?
- What value do you see in the ability to automatically calculate your settings?
Resources:
Lack of engagement between customer and JMP; line of business gatekeepers - no champion identified
Response:
While not a true objection, a lack of engagement is an obstacle in our land and expand sales process. It may be that a gatekeeper is working behind the scenes to “protect” users from salespeople. It’s always best to be in the good graces of your JMP administrator. However, your responsibility is to delight the JMP users, and step them through the journey of JMP partnership, so negotiating easy access to the JMP users in your accounts is key.
Many customers are amazed to find out just how many resources we can unlock for them. Be sure to inform every user you encounter at the gatekeeper’s organization that they are not leveraging JMP’s free resources to accelerate their ROI.
Impact/Needs-Payoff Questions:
- Are you certain that your dept/team/company is utilizing all of the resources they are entitled to?
- Can you identify the next area of improvement that JMP can partner with you to develop?
- How are you determine if you are getting ROI from your JMP investment?
Resources:
Adoption – “We are unskilled; I don't have time or resources to train everyone on a new tool.
Response:
Getting users skilled up at JMP is a part of our competitive advantage. We are well equipped to respond to this objection. However, very often this objection can be hiding underlying objections:
- Timing - this is not a priority for the prospect right now;
- Authority - your contact does not have the influence or access to authority to rally people around this initiative;
- Value – your contact does not really understand the value of JMP and is using this objection to get you off his his/her back.
Additional questions should help uncover if this is truly a knowledge gap concern or if there is another underlying objection.
“We have so many different ways to get users productive quickly. I'm happy to go into some detail on those, and we are scheduling these sessions three weeks in advance right now if that would work for your team.”
Impact/Needs-Payoff Questions:
- How are you bridging the gap of skills and knowledge between team members?
- What is the impact on productivity when your teams can't effectively communicate due to different accumen or skill level?
- Would your company benefit from having a common analytics language and platform?
Resources:
Licensing
We prefer a concurrent license model; we don’t want to count users.
Response:
“JMP has chosen to closely align our values with our licensing method, which means we are responsible for getting every user successful with JMP. Our named user license ensures that as users uncover more potential in JMP, they never get locked out of the software. A named user license has worked for us and for our users since the inception of our business. Keep in mind that at renewal, JMP users can be reassigned if necessary.”
Resources:
Payment terms: “We do not do business with companies who cannot accept net 60/net 90 payment terms.
Response:
If this objection is coming from a procurement role, know that he or she is simply doing her job by pushing back on net 30 payment day terms. However, it is JMP’s obligation to preserve a positive customer experience, which is dependent on a customer paying their invoice net30 so we can release full-term codes and avoid a lapse in service. We provide pre-renewal notices to most customers with standard supplement contracts, providing ample time to prepare a purchase order.
The sales policy allows us some flexibility to offer net 45 or net 60 day payment terms to customers by charging additional fees if, after thorough negotiation, a deal will not move forward. However, you should be aware of how this could negatively impact the customer experience, as well as slow processes for getting invoices paid.
We would like to consolidate all of our JMP inventory under a single license/site.”
Response:
There are a few reasons that customers would choose to consolidate: cost savings, administrative ease, or security/risk. Before we explore options, we must uncover which one of these factors is driving the request.
The ability to manage groups of users by site gives a great deal of flexibility to our JMP customers. Consolidating sites, particularly for corporate conglomerates, can remove the flexibility for the local entities you partner with, and lead to a poor customer experience. It can also negatively impact JMP’s revenue stream.
*Due to the potential impact to JMP’s revenue stream, let your manager know ASAP if a customer is inquiring about a consolidation.
JMP Live
JMP Live isn’t real time/I won’t be able to connect to a data source directly from JMP Live.
Ask the customer what real time means to them? Is is ms, sec, minutes, hours, updated every day?
Make the differentiation between a knowledge system and a control system; JMP and JMP Live are not, and are not trying, to be a control system. If a customer needs true real-time or real-time rule execution, JMP is not the tool for that. However, it could be a part of the solution since you still need to develop, share or collaborate when building models for the real-time event processing. SAS has an excellent event processing solution. Consider sending those requests to SAS, especially when "real time" for the customer means event-based decisions, such as "is this credit card transaction fraudulent?"
In most cases, if the customer just wants reports to be refreshed hourly or daily, using JSL scripts, which replace packages run with scheduling software, should work well to overcome this objection. If "real time" is truly streaming data to a website, we are not a good fit there.
In JMP 16, we have made improvements to the publish process for easier replacement of reports for non-scripters (for keeping data up to date), improvements to the JSL interface, and the ability to just update the data for a package.
On the roadmap, we also have plans for connecting to a data source directly and being able to update data on demand from JMP Live. Coming soon. we will have a roadmap presentation for that workflow that can be shared with customers.
What if someone goes on vacation?
Ask what the process is right now. Who is the person who would be automating these reports? This approach can also be hybrid – with some scripts running on the JMP Live Automation Add-On and other scripts being run from the individual scientist's or engineer's laptop/desktop.
If they are using Tableau, Power BI, Spotfire or custom JavaScript/Python/R-Studio applications, ask how the data analyzed by JMP is getting in there. How long is that taking you each time?
There is a standard workflow to productionalize a script with JMP and JMP Live. The automation can be set up on a virtual machine running a Windows server OS and the JMP Live Automation Add-On.
You don’t have an automation tool built into JMP Live. Automation needs scripting and scripting needs IT to set up the tasks and manage JSL in source control. Why can’t I do all of that myself?
You have been publishing manually now; you just click publish. However, if you find yourself doing the same thing again and again, then you can look at automation. You can execute JSL scripts using task scheduling software. There are many source control software packages available for version control of your JSL scripts.
Here are some useful resources for getting started with scripting with JMP Live:
- Process Screening and JMP Live Automation blog post.
- 10 Useful Tips for Automating The Publishing of JMP Live reports blog post.
- Introduction to JMP Live: Use and Administration webcast.
I'm worried if we buy JMP Live, I (as the IT person, R programmer, etc) won’t have a job.
Assuming you are talking to this IT person or R/Python programmer.
You have the knowledge of the various data sources and will be an integral part of managing JMP Live at your organization. Your JMP users are going to need your expertise with getting their scripts into production, managing schedules, optimization and performance tasks, as well as source/version control. This is an opportunity for you to learn just a little bit of JSL and become that domain expert at your organization. We have plenty of resources that can help you achieve this:
We are worried about file size and latency (speed/delays) with JMP Live reports.
We haven’t seen/heard about any issues with latency; however, it is always a best practice to make sure you summarize data when necessary, only publishing what you need to communicate. Look for optimizing the JMP Live published package and you should have good performance.
You can also embed a script to pull the full data set into the summarized data table that builds the JMP Live report. When publishing, you have to think hierarchically. Whether it is a hierarchical data pull or using the analytics in JMP, like the process screening platform to go from hundreds or thousands of individual measurements to the vital few to follow-up or triage and publish to JMP Live.
We recognize that this is an area of improvement for us. To the end, we are addressing it in the follow way:
- We have expanded the JMP Live team and are adding developers to work on back-end performance as well as the performance of the individual HTML5 reports.
- JMP 17's focus for the HTML5 group is on performance.
- With live data refresh, we are removing the need to push the data from the desktop to the server at publish-time, which should speed up the workflow as well.
We are worried that the set up/install of JMP Live is difficult and time-consuming.
Our server-based tools use industry standard deployments. We've designed JMP Live to be self-service and not require services.
The install and set up of JMP Live is pretty straightforward, only slightly more complex than installing desktop software. And we'll be here to help you through the process, including 24/7 global tech support that is trained with installing and configuring JMP Live.
Once you have your certificates and have procured the appropriate hardware/VMs, the set up and install can be done in a matter of hours. We have a lot of resources that walk you through the set up process:
We are worried that JMP Live isn’t secure enough.
We know your data is important to you. The on-premise option gives you complete control over your data. We've also taken steps to make sure content is protected through the use of admin set up groups. And security measures can be put in place by the JMP Live admin to restrict publishing to certain instances of JMP Live or prevent certain users from scripting. etc. We also perform daily security scans of our code and enlist the help of third-party vendors to perform industry-standard penetration testing.
JMP Live is under active development with major versions released every 18 months and two maintenance releases with fixes, performance improvements and stability improvements every four months.
We aren't sure this is a big, urgent need for us, or at least, not right now.
Ask why do you think this is not right for you? What are you doing now? How are your sharing your JMP discoveries? How long does that take? Have you ever spent time in a meeting arguing over "this" version of the data?
- If you're building something custom-made or open-source driven (Python, R, etc.), is that project up and running? What if I told you that you could be up and running on JMP Live in a few days?
- Don’t have the budget.
Empower your JMP users to simply publish as part of their daily routine.
Proactively find and address problems rather than waiting for people to send you a report that states a problem.
We think JMP Live is too expensive.
Ask what is the value of having your scientists and engineers being more efficient in their role? Are they spending time doing research, innovating, doing the important work they were hired to do? How much time are they spending creating PowerPoint decks/PDF reports or converting JMP tables and output to XLS to then share in Tableau/Spotfire/PowerBI, etc.? What if they could simply click Publish right from JMP within a matter of seconds?
Find a way to talk at a higher level. Failing to get the right data into the hands of the people who understand it can be a significant barrier to achieving product and process innovation. In some organizations, data scientists are not always experts in the data they are expected to work with. Subject matter experts may not be familiar with the analytics techniques required to investigate the data they generate. This can create tension and inefficiency within a team. Making the cultural shift to embrace data analytics is not always easy.
When subject matter experts have the right tools for data analytics, they are more likely to find robust solutions to problems more quickly and be able to communicate these solutions persuasively to colleagues, speeding up decision making and time to innovation.
Despite substantial challenges and internal pressures in their different industries, the members of the discussion group agreed that data analytics, design of experiments, and the ability to visualize and present results interactively are helping them deliver results.
By adopting a data-driven, best-practice approach, they are personally more effective at their jobs, and their teams are more productive, helping to drive innovation across their organizations.
Scalable solutions:
- Empowering engineers to be more efficient with their time.
- Working the global clock.
- Automating the tedious stuff so you can focus your time on innovation.
Also mention that JMP Live has an aggressive volume discount that incentivizes making JMP Live available to everyone across an organization rather than to a few specialists.
