Seth Godin says “The largest enemy of change and leadership isn’t a no, it’s a not yet. Not yet is the safest, easiest way to forestall change.” In sales, not now is the obstacle. Getting over that is difficult when selling change. Cloud is change. UCaaS is a huge change from PBX (News - Alert).

User adoption is another hurdle for UCaaS. And without user adoption, churn happens.

CRM systems have a similar model. It is a struggle for companies to choose one that will interface with other systems and have usability for salespeople. Then the part about getting salespeople to actually use the system sets in.

Not yet or not now is worse than a no. Zig Ziglar said: “There are five obstacles in every sales – no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.” The desire and the hurry really boil down to trust. They aren’t certain that it will be the right system, that employees will use it, and that it will have a business impact.

And if you look at the history of software projects, 70 percent have failed. The outcome was rarely seen. Cost overruns occurred in integration, deployment, training, etc. When a buyer says not yet or not now, you have to figure out how to build trust and certainty. That is why telling the story about the deployment process, training, customer outcomes, and use cases are important in sales.

The problem with the cloud is it is intangible. A CRM CD installed on an office computer or a PBX humming in the closet is tangible. The thing in the cloud – what the heck is the cloud anyway – is hard to point to and even harder to have control over.

Without trust, no sale is made. The thing about not yet is that the prospect is saying: Show me! Prove it! And the salesperson has to follow up again and again with use cases and testimonials to win the deal, while keeping an eye on the business outcomes the prospect is hoping for.

Peter Radizeski is president of Tampa, Fla.-based telecom consulting firm RAD-INFO (News - Alert) Inc. (www. rad-info.net).