1. proceedit
Top 10 End Customer
Objections and How to
Face Them Successfully
Top Ten End Customer Objections and How to Face Them Successfully V 01 P1

2. Content
Treatment of Objections
Top Ten End Customer Objections
We Don’t Have Processes (!!!)
No budget Available
All our Processes are Supported by ERP & CRM
I Don’t Trust on your Savings
Scared of Having to Suffer again a Project
Are your Solutions Ready to Use?
Massive BPM Deployment will Cost a Fortune!
They Won't Accept to be System Governed
Are my Competitors Implementing BPM?
Who Are You?
Please Comment!
How to Contact Us
Gratitude
Top Ten End Customer Objections and How to Face Them Successfully V 01 P2

3. Treatment of Objections
In spite that our model is absolutely barrier-free, customers are
always putting objections. As you know, objections area
psychological defenses against “this guy that is trying to fool me”.
Objections are not negative, in fact they are extremely useful for us
because, knowing customer thoughts, we can contra-argument by
highlighting how our business model solves every worry customer
could have.
The main and more frequent objections we have received in the
last years are listed in the following slide “Top Ten End Customers
Objections”.
You can see suggestions on how to contra-argument those
objections below on this document. Read carefully the document
and practice contra-argumentation before contacting customers.
Quick and appropriate contra-argumentations is the best way to
transmit our customers we know our business very well and we
transmit credibility.
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4. Top Ten End Customer Objections
1. We Don’t Have Processes (!!!).
2. No Budget Available.
3. All our Processes are Supported by ERP & CRM.
4. I Don’t Trust on your Savings.
5. Scared of Having to Suffer again a Project.
6. Are your Solutions Ready to Use?
7. Massive BPM Deployment will Cost a Fortune!
8. We Won't Accept to be System Governed.
9. Are my Competitors Implementing BPM?
10.Who You Are?
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5. We Don’t Have Processes (!!!) - 1
It seems incredible but it happens to us very frequently that
customer really thinks they have no processes in its organization,
even talking with IT people!
In fact this is not a bad point to start because customer is not
contaminated by other actors of the BPM market and therefore we
can much better explain the BPM concept and the benefits of
applying our business model, not having to fight with pre-
established paradigms.
Contra-objections:
All organizations and individuals, even animals, work following formal o
informal, explicit or implicit processes.
BPM helps the organization to formalize, normalize, optimize and
automate those processes to dramatically increase the efficiency of the
organization.
Put examples of processes close to the sector of activity of the customer,
or the function of the customer representative you are talking with, and
how BPM can improve them.
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6. We Don’t Have Processes (!!!) - 2
Use definitions and process examples you can find in our document: “BPM
& BPMS Presentation”.
Show your customer examples of BPM Process diagrams and forms of
BPM personal tasks.
If customer is interested and consider it necessary we can arrange a
remote BPM Process live demonstration.
Top Ten End Customer Objections and How to Face Them Successfully V 01 P6

7. No Budget Available - 1
We have no budget available, “We have to put your proposal in the
next year budget”, “Budget list is closed this year”, … the recurrent
objection as an universal barrier.
It’s funny, customers never has budget but, very surprisingly, they
are investing every year; therefore, in most of the cases this
objection is a just a polite way to say, “Look my friend, I’m not
interested in what you are trying to sell me”.
Let’s hope we fall in an other category: our customer is interested
but, as budget is always a question of priorities, we are not in the
first positions of the list. In that case, our job is convincing him
that we are the main priority. Why? Because our processes are in
fact a enormous cash flow machine for end customers.
Contra-objections:
Try to clarify which type of budget is not available: investment or
expenses. That will help you on how to focus the contra-argumentation.
Highlight the advantages of our business model in terms of no-investment
required and pay-back agreement.
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8. No Budget Available - 2
Try to emphasize that with the savings obtained by the deployment of
processes they will have finally! budget available for other investments.
Use typical BPM cloud service cost ratios as cost per task performed or
cost per document, to show that we are talking of very low unitary cost
and total costs always below 25 % of the tangible savings.
And the best argument, try us and check the savings, it will cost you
nothing, you will loose nothing, you can gain a lot!
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9. All Processes our are Supported by ERP&CRM - 1
“All our processes are already supported by our ERP and CRM” or
even “All our processes have to be supported by our ERP and CRM
to assure the data uniqueness”, “We don’t want to have our data
spread among many applications, we want to maintain our
referential integrity” … they sound being very solid and technical
based arguments but … completely out of the reality and of what it
is possible to achieve today.
Why, very simple because most of the critical information (probably
+80 % and growing) the users are managing are out of the
traditional data silos of the transactional applications the
corporations have built in the past and that they are still feeding
with old information. In fact live information is managed by users
on Exchange, Outlook, DropBox, Google, LinkedIn, Facebook,
Twitter, …) with o without explicit permission of the corporation and
the fact that BPM concept is a good way to begin the formalization
an normalization and of all this dispersed and critical information.
Nevertheless this is a very positive objection, at least they
recognize the have processes! The point is, “Are you optimizing and
automating your processes in the most efficient state-of-the-art
Top Ten End Customer Objections and How to Face Them Successfully V 01 P9
level?”

10. All Processes our are Supported by ERP&CRM - 1
Nevertheless this is a very positive objection, at least they
recognize they have processes! The point is, “Are you optimizing
and automating your processes in the most efficient state-of-the-
art level?”, “Is your company interested on having some control on
all this dispersed, unknown, unrecoverable and not traceable data
& documents your users are spreading among many different non-
controllable repositories?”.
By the other way, in fact, almost all big players in ERP market after
having tried to complement their applications with workflow
modules, they finally have recognized that different software
technology is required to automate processes and they have
bought for that purpose specialized BPMS software vendors.
Contra-objections:
Put simply questions to customer representative as a mechanism to
discover non satisfied demands and then opportunities for BPM.
“How many processes have you implemented?”.
“Are you completely satisfied from the processes implanted over your ERP,
CRM?”.
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11. All ours Processes are Supported by ERP&CRM - 2
“Are your processes automating all actions, internal and external, required?”.
“Why are you not implementing more processes or on a more quickly way?”.
“Which has been the cost and time to implement one of those processes over
your ERP or CRM?”.
“What happens when you have to modify the way those processes are working,
are the tools provided by the ERP or CRM flexible enough, do you have to
program to do it?”.
“Can you design your processes on a graphic?”,
“Can you monitor the process instances launched and obtain KPIs from them?”
Act, react depending on the answers.
Use the arguments explained on our document: “Change on IT Paradigm”
to explain how the organization is changing and how BPM can help on the
orchestration of the chaos that information avalanche can create in the
organization.
Put examples of processes close to the sector of activity of the customer,
or the function of the customer representative you are talking with, and
how BPM can automate them just to check they have been implemented
of not over ERP or CRM. Use the top 20 process list to find examples.
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12. All our Processes are Supported by ERP&CRM - 3
Try to explain the different concept a BPM Process is wit respect to
workflows that can be implemented on the ERP or CRM. Use arguments
explained in our document “BPM & BPMS versus ERP & CRM”.
Try to identify if a new process is required. Put cost on the table, for sure
the ones quoted by the ERP o CRM implementer will be much higher.
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13. I Don’t Trust in your Savings - 1
“The savings figures you are indicating are just theoretical, we
would never arrive to this savings”, “It is impossible to figure out
the operational savings to be obtained by implementation of BPM
Processes, imagine that we have problems to estimate the cost of
our products!”, “Software vendors always fool when talking about
savings, I don’t trust on what are you saying”, … for sure we have
all of us received or perceived this type of objections.
Although according to or market survey this is the main end
customer objection against the massive deployment of BPM
Processes, surprisingly, it is also the easiest one to overcome if
customer collaborates a little bit in cost-savings analysis.
For that purpose, we have developed and specific Excel tool which
facilitate the rigorous analysis of the savings that the
implementation of the BPM Processes will suppose for the
organization.
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14. I Don’t Trust in your Savings - 2
Just indicating few operating and cost data we are able to
developed in a couple of hours a complete economic analysis.
The most important point is that we use as a basis the data
provided by the customer. The rest is just mathematics, customer
has to trust on it once we have explained.
Additionally, the capacity of our model to perform what-if analysis
is a god tool to answer customer questions and to improve the
credibility of the analysis.
Contra-objections:
You can show the comparison savings tables we have on some of our
documents.
If customer doesn’t agree with the figures, don’t argue, just propose your
customer an cost-savings exercise. Tell him about our methodology to
estimate operational costs and savings. For sure he will be interested.
If customer accepts, asks him for the data you need to make the
analysis: nominal users involved, number and type of processes, number
of instances launched per month and the main saving input that is the
estimated time saved in each process task, personal and automatic ones.
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15. I Don’t Trust in your Savings - 3
It is crucial for credibility that you obtain this last figures from customer.
Just as an orientation, 1 minute of time saving per personal semi-
automated task and 3 minutes for and automatic one, would produce
spectacular savings. Half a minute for personal tasks and 1 minute for
automated ones would be enough in most of the scenarios to justify the
cloud service costs.
It is also critical the correct estimation of the rotation of the process
(number of process instances performed per month). Obviously it is much
better to implement processes with a high rotation (thousands of
instances per month, for instance) which will be much more profitable
than low rotation processes (hundreds of process instances per month).
As a last attempt to convince customer, you can propose our special
agreement, our cloud service monthly fee will be always not higher than
25 % of the tangible savings obtained by the customer.
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16. Scared of Having to Suffer again a Project - 2
If customer have recent experiences of software implementation it
is logic that he will be reluctant to be involved again in a “project”
with complains like: “I don’t have time”, “I don’t want to complicate
my life again after being implemented our ERP, CRM o whatever”,
“I have no resources available to participate in the project”, “In a
project you know when you begin in terms of efforts, time and
money spent, but never when you will end”, …
It’s very important in this case to differentiate or business model
from the traditional approach in the IT Industry: no investment, no
risk, no commitment, no cost involve till process is running at a full
customer satisfaction. We just need some indications about what
the process has to do and how to connect it with existing
applications, the rest is our business.
Contra-objections:
Tell customer that, normally, main worries and efforts in the
implementation of a traditional transactional application are related on
how to adapt customer way of operating to the way the application has
been designed. This is the main cause for troubles.
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17. Scared of Having to Suffer again a Project - 2
As opposed, a BPM Process is 100 % tailored to the customer needs,
without any tension any exception and, again, with no investment, no
commitment, no cost, no risk involved, … it is a complete different project
scenario.
You can say to the customer representative: “Don’t worry Sir/Lady, we
take the leadership, only few questions” … and then we put a lot of
imagination during the functional analysis.
Take profit form our business model. Use as a explanation support the
concepts, diagrams and tables from our document: “Business Model for
End Customers”.
And a very important thing, in traditional projects, project time is money,
and invoiced at a very high hour rate. In proceedit projects time is just
time, the reasonable time required to developed/personalize the process
and both parts are 100 % aligned to the same objective, start-up the
process as soon as possible and obtain full customer satisfaction. Without
obtaining this full satisfaction, we will not be able to charge any penny,
which is a really good motivation for us.
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18. Are your Solutions Ready to Use? - 1
“Are yours solutions ready to use?”, “I don’t want to wait for
months to solve my problem”, “Show me now how the process you
say is working”, … Congratulations! If that is the objection of the
customer, normally it means that there is some real interest
behind.
The answer is clear, of course not, our solutions are not ready to
use in hours or few days because always personalization and
connection to corporate applications is needed, but yes if we are
talking about few weeks, the prêt-à-porter concept.
For sure, using our BPM Process catalog, we can show something
similar to what customer requires and develop/personalize a fully
personalized operational solution in few weeks.
Contra-objections:
Explain customer why processes have to be personalized. We adapt
processes to customer needs but no the opposite. Although companies
have many processes in common, every company does the thinks slightly
different. When we develop a new BPM Process we try to foreseen the
different use cases we can’t anticipate 100 % of them.
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19. Are your Solutions Ready to Use? - 2
In addition to that, most of the BPM Processes needs to be connected
with corporate applications and the connecting scenario is different for
every customer although with our big experience in connectivity we can
easily arrange.
Call us, tell us what customer has in mind, and we will organize for you
and your customs a remote demonstration. We can take advantage of the
proceedit experience and methodology for quick development /
personalization and the more than 500 BPM Processes we have in our
catalogue.
Tell customer that he will not have to wait for months, only for weeks to
have a fully operative application covering their needs.
In most of the cases, customer is waiting for years to solve a need, even
urgent ones, because the budget trap, why not waiting for few weeks,
with no risk, no cost, no compromise.
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20. Massive BPM Deployment will Cost a Fortune - 1
“If I have to pay 1.500 €/moth per the cloud service of the first
process, and we are planning to implement dozens of processes,
we will have to pay a monthly fortune when reaching a massive
processes deployment”.
This is a very common paradox, at this point of the game customer
probably has bought the idea that every single process he will
deploy will produce at least four times its own operational costs, in
fact 4 - 10 € of savings per every € spent, month by month,
process by process, but he is reluctant even to begin working with
us implementing a first process, because he realize than he will
have to pay us a substantial amount when massive deployment has
been reached, even being this amount a small portion of the
tangible savings obtained he feels is not fair!
Contra-objections:
As this is a psychological barrier, we have to be very careful facing this
objection. Don’t insists in the fact that they will also save a fortune when
massive deployment would be reached, in our opinion that would be a lost
battle.
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21. Massive BPM Deployment Will Cost a Fortune - 2
In our opinion, what it really happens is that for customers, consciously
or unconsciously, the amount hey have to pay are something that they
consider 100 % certain but, the estimated savings are of and other
nature, could happen or not, then in the comparison there is a perception
of risk, much higher when deployment will progress.
We suggest to explain that, by definition, cloud services costs are
essentially proportional to the consumption customer is making, but they
are some barriers to the usage of the processes which control the
proportional expanding of the cost and, therefore, they are limiting the
proportional increase of the monthly costs when the number of deployed
processes increase: for instance, according to our experience, the
maximum number of concurrent users of a BPMS platform is close to one
third of the nominal ones because a user: 1) is not always involved in
process tasks and, 2) is not doing two process tasks at the same time.
By the other hand, we have to emphasize that BPM Processes will
always be implemented one after and other, with no compromise for
customer, then not additional costs would have to be accepted by
customer, before having the opportunity to check the savings obtained in
real operation.
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22. Massive BPM Deployment will Cost a Fortune - 3
The above means that customer only has to take decisions on additional
expenses once knowing with 100 % certainty the real additional tangible
savings obtained by the next process to be deployed, not before.
To reinforce our argumentation we suggest to present several future cost-
savings scenarios to customer by dividing the deployment project in
several phases and calculating the budget to be spent and the expected
tangible savings for be obtained for each project phase. This is very
simple to prepare with our Excel tool, in fact we use to do it in this way
for all the proposals we are presenting.
Nevertheless, objection will probably remain and unfortunately blocking
even the development of the first process, that’s why we have
implemented a rappel system based on the amount invoiced to each
customer every month.
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23. They Won't Accept to be System Governed - 1
“Our employees will never accept to be governed by the system”,
“They are good on what they do but they don’t want to be
controlled”, “No way to succeed on this matter. We don’t want to
impact on our labor ambient by applying strict rules on how to
work”, “Unions will block any advance on tis way”, … for sure you
had or you will receive comments similar to that ones.
But the question is: “Who owns the company: employees, Unions,
… Who is paying the salary?”. Some times those comments show a
certain management weakness or at least, certain confortable
acceptance of the status quo. When the company is going well they
think is not the right time to begin this battle. When company is
having strong competitive challenges, probable is too late. And the
funny think is that the battle is no so heavy at it seems to be
before beginning it, and at the end most of the employees are
satisfied that system helps them on the ordinary non-added value
tasks when processes are well designed with high usability
standards.
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24. They Won't Accept to be System Governed - 2
Contra-objections:
Use the following sentence as a mantra: “Optimization and Automation
liberates time and energies of your employees that they can be dedicated
to much more added value tasks”.
And this second one: “BPM Processes are the basis for externalization of
the company operations even with teleworking or microBPO approaches
and then for employees satisfaction, cost reduction and operational
flexibility”.
Review with customers the BPM benefits that are explained in our
documents and adapt them to customer specific situation.
Insists that with good communication of what the organization wants to
do, essentially being more competitive to survive in a global market,
employees and Unions will have to accept the new way to work. Put the
new working way in positive, less boring tasks, more space for creative
tasks, make productivity targets much more transparent and fair, … why
not sharing productivity improvements?
Tell customer that with our business model they can try the acceptance of
the processes without any commitment, investment, or risk.
Use testimonials when available.
Top Ten End Customer Objections and How to Face Them Successfully V 01 P 24

25. Are my Competitors Implementing BPM? - 1
“Are my competitors implementing BPM Processes?”, “I only
invest on very well recognized and proven state-of-the-art
technology”, “Why I have to be the first to try”, “Do you have any
reward for being a pioneer”.
Of course being a follower has some advantages because you don’t
have the failure risks involved when you are an innovation leader.
The point is, with our 0-risk business model, why not being the
first, you have nothing to lose but a lot to gain.
Contra-objections:
Explain customer than, on a global basis (you are competing global isn't),
more than 50 % of the organizations have already implemented BPM
Processes and that the average expected rhythm of implementation is
between 5 and 6 process per year in each organization. Use the
document “BPM & BPMS Market Survey” at that respect.
Again, tell him that with our business model your customer is not taking
any risk. You try, you check and if you are satisfied you buy or lease or …
you wait for seeing in which way your competitors save money and gain
competitiveness against you without spending a penny.
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26. Are my Competitors Implementing BPM? - 2
Ask customer if it does really have sense to be a follower having the
opportunity to take profit from our business model.
And a very important point, we are technology independent, in fact, we are
not selling technology nor software programs, we are selling BPM
Processes running to help our customers saving a lot of money. It is our
responsibility to select and to implement the best technology available to
achieve this goal with the minimum cost.
Talking about rewards, tell your customer: “Yes, of course, in our business
model, pioneers have solid rewards, 10 % of licenses sold in the future of
the process made for you”. As far as we know, no other supplier is capable
of telling the same. Be unique.
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27. Who You Are? - 1
“Who are you?”, “You are new in this business and with very few
references”, “How can I be confident that you are the right partner
for so big challenge of reorganizing the way of working of my
people?” … customer can explicitly say that or just thinking on it,
but the result is the same, lack of confidence which blocks the “Go”
decision, even with our absolutely barrier-free model.
Of course, that only will happen to proceedit partners small or
new in the market or when they contact with new customers for
them.
Contra-objections:
Tell customer the cluster structure of proceedit, where more than 30
partners are working together reinforcing one to the others in terms of
developing experience and capacity, probably representing, all together,
one of the worldwide organizations with highest experience in BPM.
You can make use of ours documents: “International Technology Cluster”
and “OPEX>BPM>mBPO References” which shows our capabilities as a
cluster.
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28. Who You Are? - 2
Ask customer to give you a chance to prove our business model and
capacities. In fact they don’t risk nothing excepts some time to explain its
necessities.
Nevertheless, we have to admit, this is one of ours main weakness point.
We are not recognized yet by the market as being a reputed Business
Solution provider but, fortunately, this is something that time will
naturally solve once we have given satisfaction to more and more
customers and we think our barrier-free model will help us to achieve this
goal very quickly.
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29. Please Comment!
The right treatment of end customer objections is for sure the
most critical part of any selling activity.
We are convinced that companies who know how to take better
advantage of objections will excel among their competitors.
That’s why we have prepared this document, to help our
partners on how to overcome and take advantage of end
customer objections.
Help us to maintain this document alive and every day more
useful by your comments and contributions.
As we are all together selling products and services produced
by the rest of colleagues in the cluster, helping each other to
better perform in front of the customer will help everybody, as
individuals and as a cluster, to be much more profitable.
We look forward receiving your comments.
Top Ten End Customer Objections and How to Face Them Successfully V 01 P 29

30. How to Contact Us
We are available in the event you:
• Wanted more information about proceedit.
• Wanted to join our Cluster and provide your BPM* Processes to our Catalogue.
• Wanted to implement BPM* Processes, SOA* Connectors and/or BPM-SOA* Business
Solutions in collaboration with our Multinational Technological Cluster.
Contact: Josep Cos
Function: CEO
Email: josep.cos@proceedit.com
Phone No. : +34 660 193 163
Skype: jmcos.proceedit
Region: North America NA Latin America LATAM EMEA & APAC
Responsible: Mr. Alberto Corbí Mr. Gustavo Arcostanzo Mr. Josep Cos
Position: Region Manager Region Manager CEO
Fix Phone No. : +1 (305) 505 0613 Cel US +54 11 4792 6931 +34 932 051 350
Mobile Phone No. : +34 655 570 560 Cel Spain +54 911 5020 7539 +34 670 547 956
Skype: alberto.corbí gustavo.arcostanzo1 jmcos.proceedit
Email: alberto.corbi@proceedit.com gustavo.arcostanzo@proceedi josep.cos@proceedit.com
t.com
Office Address: 92 SW 3rd Street, suite 2512 Calle Sarmiento 349 Calle Caponata 13, At. 4ª
Miami, FL, 33130, USA Martínez, Argentina 08034 Barcelona (Spain)
Top Ten End Customer Objections and How to Face Them Successfully V 01 P 30

31. Gratitude
Thanks for
your attention!
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