10 WAYS to WIN in the Market | Tips!

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's episode, I'm going to answer a question from one of my newsletter readers, Tawa, who is a Zimbabwe entrepreneur who just took on the agreement to take and represent Intuit QuickBooks software in Zimbabwe and is trying to sell it there. He's finding that he goes up against big competitors like Pastel that he mentioned, and is wondering how can he break in and convince people to buy his software over everybody else's. So I've had some background in software with a biotech software company, that was my first kind of main venture, and what really helped us is you have to find out what's different about your software compared to everybody else's. So for us, we were a small startup, you know, we didn't really know what we were doing at the beginning. We had to go up against huge publicly funded companies, and what we figured out was our software was the easiest one to use of anybody out there. So you have to You need to find out how are you different. So for us, we didn't have all the features that everybody else had, especially our big competitors, but ours was the easiest to use. And so for our customers who wanted something that was easy, that did most of the stuff they needed, they could do it through our software. And that was a pitch that people could quickly understand. So we didn't always win the pitches compared to our competition if we went head to head, but they understood that, you know, how we can stand out and how we can help. And we did win a lot of business. So for you, what's the main difference between QuickBooks and Pastel, that main competitor that you're going up against? Is it ease of use? Is it something else? Figure out some key points that make you different and just hit those home. Emphasize them as much as possible so people can at least understand and know how you're different and hopefully how you're better. Another thing that might be useful, and I don't know how the culture is in Zimbabwe, but in North America here, I've never heard of Pastel, so I don't know what, you know, who makes it or how good it is, but QuickBooks is the leader, it's one of the leaders for sure, in the accounting software here in North America. For entrepreneurs, everybody knows who QuickBooks is, as well as Simply Accounting, are kind of the two main software packages that most people use. I've never heard of Pastel. So one of the messages you could be going after is saying, well, look at what they're doing in North America. If people in Zimbabwe look up to North American businesses as, you know, kind of the center of entrepreneurship, if people think that way, then that could be an opportunity to say, hey, you could be like these North American companies and grow really quickly. And, you know, explode your business, so use the same software that they use. If people in Zimbabwe don't like North American companies, then I wouldn't use that pitch. But quite often that could be a great way to be able to present yourself and position yourself against a bigger competitor who, you know, doesn't exist outside of, you know, whatever local market that you're in. So I hope that helps. For anybody else who's had experience selling software, it'd be great to hear what you have to say. One final thing that I found that, you know, could be really helpful for you is find channel partners. So For accounting software, you might wanna think about accountants or bookkeepers. As a business owner, a lot of people use accountants, a lot of people use bookkeepers, and they don't care, you know, who, whatever software they use. If their bookkeeper or their accountant is using something, that's often how they get the recommendation. So try to get in with the bookkeepers and the accountants, and potentially QuickBooks can help refer you to some people who are, you know, in your local market who are, you know, using your software and get them to be able to recommend you and refer you to their customers and say, you know, we use QuickBooks, it's fantastic, you guys should too. And as an entrepreneur, when they're starting up or they're, you know, growing your business, you listen to your advice from your bookkeeper, your accountant. If they're using certain software and they recommend you use it, you're probably going to use it. So that could be a good channel for you to be able to get in as well. I hope that helps. If you guys like the video, please give it a thumbs up. It always makes me want to make more of these videos for you guys. And if you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear what you have to think. If you want to leave a comment on the video, You know, whatever I said, if you want to comment on it or if you have another question, leave it in those comments. And thank you, and we'll see you on the next episode.