APEX for Sales People

You, as a developer, are really convinced about Oracle Application Express (APEX) but that is not enough...

If your company doesn't follow you, or you don't have projects, you can't really do APEX projects right?

The problem is that you need to convince your manager, the sales guy or your customer in another way.
But the typical arguments why to use APEX, in a developer points of view are not the same as what they want to hear!

Most of the conversations by Sales guys or managers are about costs (decreasing IT costs/budgets), increasing margin and revenue, doing more with less people and to get the solution for a given problem in a fast way.
(And if it wasn't difficult enough you might be in front of not only a manager but also an IT person who's not that open for a change ;-))

One of our client's problem for ex. is how to react more quickly to business needs? That is a valid question no? What if the business wants to launch a new campaign but the software/IT organization is not ready for it yet? In a typical waterfall model type of project it can take several weeks or months to get a solution. Maybe a RAD-tool might be a good fit in that case. Especially if you work in modules or an Agile way where you have more releases, more often.

It's not easy to speak those people's language if you are not used to it. I also think it depends the person you have in front of you, as some are more open for new ideas than others. I can't really give you a bullet point of "If he says this Than say that" (although I'm sure some sales people got such training), but I'm convinced that if you can help the people in front of you to full-fill THEIR goals and you speak with confident about your ideas, you already made a good start.

It depends a bit the customer, but in a lot of the cases APEX can decrease costs and get a solution faster which enables them to get more revenue. A demo is in most of the time also a good way of proving your word. But always remember it's not always the cheapest solution that is the best at the end.

There's a Solution Kit for APEX available that can help you to convince other people too.