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26 The PCB Design Magazine • December 2016 If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. –William E. Hickson Hickson, an elementary education reformer, popularized this proverb in the 1800s, but over a century later, it crisply sums up the art of sales and selling. There is a constantly expanding list of sales methods, theories, and strategies, but none of them mean a thing unless a salesman has the tenacity to keep trying. Let's look at how sales and marketing in the PCB world have evolved over time. Marketing & Advertising Prior to the boom in digital and mobile de- vices, print was the overwhelming vehicle for getting one's name out there. Every vendor competed for ad space. Sales and marketing per- sonnel fought over ownership of such ad space, and large amounts of sales revenue went right back into funding the designing and displaying of these ads. Everyone knew that the cover, in- side cover, and back cover were pure gold as far as getting name recognition and sales leads, and the spaces were coveted and closely watched. Good ads and bad ads generated industry con- versation. (Who remembers the Bunny ad cam- paign?) Alongside advertising in print publications, postcard mailers were regularly distributed. In- dustry trade shows were full of buyers, often with transactions occurring on the show floor. Trade show booths were huge affairs that took days to assemble, with side rooms for negotia- tions and contract signing. Potential leads were showered with gifts both during and after the shows. Outside of the shows, phone calls were com- mon and pre-sale face to face meetings and dem- os were expected. It was not at all surprising for a software vendor to receive several telephone inquiries each day about the software. Inbound leads were commonplace, mostly because there was barely any competition in the EDA mar- ketplace at the time. Prior to the rise of cheap hardware and easy-to-use Windows-based user interfaces, there weren't many options for PCB designers, and certainly none that were afford- able. When these engineers and designers saw advertisements in trade publications, a lot of them were excited to know there was another option out there. by Abby Monaco INTERCEPT TECHNOLOGY How Selling EDA Software Has Changed…or Not FEATURE COLUMN: SOFTWARE BYTES