I am the last one to follow what a competitor does and copy them. But, it is certainly a good habit to know what the competition's capabilities are. So, when cvent invited me to join an online demo of their service, I said 'why not?'. If they are sloppy enough to invite me, I might as well take them up on it.
After missing a few demos, I joined in yesterday. Today, I got a sales call and they finally asked me what we do. And I told them that we do similar stuff to them and that I was waiting for someone to ask. (I spoke to about 5 different people as they were inviting me to several online demos.) After a congenial conversation where I complemented them and told him how we are different, he said, "Well, I guess there's no need to continue then." I said, I guess not.
I can't wait until we are big enough that we don't look at our lead's websites before calling them. Sales 101 if you ask me: Know what your customer does. But, their sales process is great. And this is a small detail.
Cvent truly does have an excellent product and if I was a large organization looking for a robust event registration solution for internal and client meetings, I'd go with them. They stressed in their presentation that they are the market leader, the most profitable and NOT the new kids on the block.
I am proud to say that we aren't yet profitable, we only lead in our hometown's market and that we are the new kids on the block. And if you are a smaller organization, an individual, a blogger or a promoter and your main need is to market your event, the new kids have some new tricks. And they aren't even on the market leader's roadmap. Obviamente.
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