As Drupal is becoming more ambitious and is targeting enterprise website and organisations, agencies are facing the fierce competition of established proprietary software vendors, who have decades of selling experience behind them. In order to survive as a Drupal or any other FOSS company, it is crucial that you start to master the art of strategy. That means understanding and knowing how to apply the fundamental principles of game theory to your interactions with clients and customers.
While game theory originally addressed zero-sum games in which one person's gains result in another’s loss, it is essentially a study of the ways interactions produce outcomes, and holds the underpinnings of how solid strategic decisions are made in business. Know the fundamentals and you will be able to anticipate how customers respond to you in order to earn their trust and cooperation more easily. Therefore software companies can also apply it to selling their solutions.
In this talk I will introduce the basics of game theory, and demonstrate how it can be applied in order to close bigger sales of Drupal and other FOSS projects. I will talk about topics such a backward induction, provide an example how it can be applied to the decision-making in a sales process, how to create your own competitor decision matrix, and as a result of all this, how to get a considerable edge in sales.
Many Drupal agencies still sell projects worth less than 50k, and projects in the 50-300k range are considered large. Yet proprietary software vendors will close deals that are worth millions. Technically Drupal can certainly compete with proprietary software, and it is time for agencies to grow up and to start to compete in this market.
