You need more than IT expertise to help your clients
March 4th, 2010 - Posted in Solution Provider Services by Tim Freestone
If all you’re selling and implementing is technology, you’re going to have a tough time in today’s market. Your clients don’t need technology — well, they don’t need technology without an attendant business driver. This means that you need to have more than a passing knowledge of your clients’ business, and any solution you are selling should correspond directly to a business need. Of course, the more you know about your clients’ business, the better you’ll be able to make the connection between problem and solution.
The first tier of business-to-technology linkage involves the identification of pain points driven by business needs, but this is often too high-level to become an effective differentiator. Instead, you’ll need to dig deeper, gaining ground-level insights from the people who use the systems that you have to enhance, upgrade or replace. If your client sells shoes, for example, you need to know how the shoe business works. And if you have clients in highly regulated industries, such as finance or biopharmaceuticals, business knowledge becomes crucial.
