August 30th, 2010 - Posted in Solution Provider Services by tim
Long sales cycles are frustrating not only because it delays revenue but because they also introduce the risk that you won’t. The longer it takes to bring a prospect from the mouth of the funnel to a closed deal, the greater the likelihood is that you either won’t finalize the relationship or that it will come in at a much lower amount than you expected.
August 23rd, 2010 - Posted in Solution Provider Services by tim
For so many IT solutions, TCO is the easiest selling point: it isn’t hard to show a company how it can save some money. When you focus on the cost argument too much, though, you miss a golden opportunity to sell based on ROI, too. Every TCO play has an ROI component, and getting there requires no mental gymnastics.
It’s all about moving resources around … prudently.
Let’s assume your solution can cut TCO for a particular platform by 50 percent in dollars and two full-time employee equivalents. That’s a savings — great! Now, your client needs to know what to do with the “leftover” resources. Raise the issue of redeploying both the cash and the bodies to initiatives that will advance the company in the marketplace. The cost savings becomes fuel for a growth engine.
August 16th, 2010 - Posted in Solution Provider Services by tim
Do you spend sales appointments talking about yesterday’s news? That’s what everyone else is doing! Make your company stand out: help your clients understand what’s on the horizon. Get them set for the future, and you’ll deliver a far better ROI case — for them and for you.
The cost and return benefits associated with conventional IT solutions are inherently constrained. They are known quantities, innovation that has become standard. To provide outsized value, you need to introduce your client’s to what hasn’t become widely adopted yet, and implement technology that will keep them ahead of the game.
How does this work?
August 11th, 2010 - Posted in Social Media Marketing by tim
A successful sales call requires preparation. You can’t just glance at your notes in the parking lot and assume the rest will take care of itself. Fortunately, you have plenty of information at your disposal, maybe even more than you realize. For your next appointment, keep the following in mind:
1. Study what you have: we give our clients detailed sales intelligence for every appointment. Read it carefully, and collaborate with colleagues for additional insights.
2. Read between the lines: is there something the prospect isn’t saying? Sometimes, a handful of pain points can suggest a greater underlying problem.
3. Hit the web: learn more about both the person and the company … Google exists for a reason! Check LinkedIn for the prospect’s background; you may learn something useful.
4. Gather materials: pull white papers, brochures and other tools that align closely with the prospect’s pain points. It’s great to have something to leave behind.
June 16th, 2010 - Posted in Solution Provider Services by tim
Sometimes it seems like IT sales professionals treat a full lead pipeline as a security blanket. They like to know it’s there … but they don’t do anything with it. The sense is that just having lead available means the future is secure. After all, they can pursue them anytime they want, right? Unfortunately, leads don’t get better with age – especially the hot ones. Eventually, someone will meet a prospect’s needs, taking away the near-term opportunity and giving another company the chance to turn it into a long-lasting relationship. In the end, a full pipeline actually provides little security, if it isn’t approached with swift action.
Of course, there are other reasons why leads are left dormant. Some sales professionals prefer to chase leads that have big tickets, not recognizing that a small client now can become a big one later. And, every rep has his or her favorite accounts, which provide a consistent flow of revenue with little opportunity for growth. In some cases, fear is involved: nobody wants to chase an opportunity and lose.
June 1st, 2010 - Posted in Solution Provider Services by tim
The potential for social media to build your brand and drive sales is salient, but there’s more to marketing than electrons. Direct mail remains a powerful way to engage IT decision-makers and lure them into your sales cycle.
Direct mail is both effective and increasingly unexpected. E-mail inboxes fill up quickly with newsletters, pitches and white papers, making it easy for yours to get lost in the shuffle. But, a well-designed mailer with a powerfully conveyed message can pop – and it has to be touched, put on a desk and opened.
Paper isn’t easily deleted!
As you put together and execute your marketing plan, be sure to include a significant direct mail component in your mix of marketing tools. It’s another way to reach your market, and one that will make you stand out.
May 25th, 2010 - Posted in Solution Provider Services by tim
Too often, we think we know the answer. We know our clients pain points. We know the solutions they need. We know how much they should budget for it. Unfortunately, what we purport to know is rarely what actually happens. Prospects may delay a purchase, alter implementation timelines or even go down an entirely different path. When this happens, IT sales professionals and implementation teams are often surprised, feeling that the change of plan came out of nowhere. If you pay attention, however, you’ll pick up cues along the way that can keep these surprises from arising.
May 19th, 2010 - Posted in Social Media Marketing by tom
It’s natural to want to entertain or inform your readers with the best content you can put together. Rather than push a product, the conventional wisdom holds, you want to engage, interact and make the world a better place for your clients.
And you do. You really do want these things. The only problem, of course, is that such lofty ideals aren’t free, and you’re the one stuck with the tab. So, you need to generate some revenue, and your corporate blog is one of the ways you do that.
To get the most out of your blog, however, you need to find that middle ground between pure advertising and pure news/information/education. Essentially, you need blog content that can unobtrusively deliver an engagement opportunity while still delivering value to your target market.
May 13th, 2010 - Posted in Solution Provider Services by tim
Most IT sales professionals know what it takes to close a deal. Put one in front of a well-qualified prospect, and the rest takes care of itself. The problem, of course, is getting those meetings. Without effective marketing support, sales teams are stuck cold-calling, hovering at networking events filled mostly with job-hunters instead of decision-makers and otherwise trying to find very small needles in incredibly large haystacks. The odds against success are high.
The situation is made worse by a tendency – in both sales and marketing departments – to focus only on the present. Even if you can rack up enough appointments for this month, what happens next month? Next quarter? Next year?
March 10th, 2010 - Posted in Social Media Marketing by tim
You need to connect with the CIO or IT director, of course, when you are selling a solution. Also, you’ll need to show the CFO the value to what you are proposing. Getting a new system’s ticket punched by these two executives is standard practice in IT sales. But, there may be another angle. If your client has a risk manager and you don’t know him — find a way to get on his calendar.
We’re still pretty early in the millennium, but if the first decade is any indication, the next thousand years will be the domain of the risk manager. Financial busts have become commonplace, and natural and manmade disasters (including those resulting from terrorism) have caused profound loss. With these threats looming, businesses need to conceive of a broader set of business continuity/disaster recovery solutions than they did in the past — while also gauging the systems and applications needed to help them identify, monitor and remedy financial risk.
