Channel Sales

How is selling technologies different?

Technology was originally designed to improve human efficiency using the advanced hardware and software combinations.

This set IT selling apart from other offerings because it revelled in using “bleeding edge” technology to provide competitive advances for business, despite the risky downsides.

Today selling technology has many similarities to other industries because IT has become a business utility, with focus on the operational cost efficiency. Many technology devices have become commoditised. Much of the reasoning is linked to many sales people falling prey to the “technology for the technology sakes” selling cycle. This is most evident in server sales, with more sold today than ever before, yet sales revenues have never exceeded 2001 levels.

This “next new, shiny version” selling had dominated value proposition for the last few years, rather than innovative ways for technology to make our business more efficient.

Consequently IT solutions have become far more about finding the best pricing client list of for hardware and software requirements then understanding the business problem and offering new innovative options to achieve a better outcome.

IT departments have been under high levels of cost scrutiny and greater technology delivery expectancy. This has forced them to become more anti risk oriented then ever before. Despite this, how many IT projects have you heard of lately finishing on time and on budget?

Today’s best IT sales people when selling solutions, find the balance of controlling the business new technology expectancy whilst protecting the IT Department’s reputation.

Busy-ness  

Sales skills are one part of sales results, but in Business to Business, “selling strategy” is more important than individual sales skills.

Understanding the behaviour language of the customer can make the difference between closing the sale “too early” and “leaving money on the table"!

Business Partner sales people need to be patient and observe the customers reaction; ask clarifying questions, before they jump into “closing questions”, shutting down the sales opportunity too early.

If technology sales people increased their average sale size by 10% the number of opportunities they need to close would reduce by 8.3%. When you’re closing hundreds of sales annually, this can make a big impact to how strategic you can afford to be, not to mention how much more time you can devote to helping your clients.

When the sales opportunity grows, it lends itself to increasing your margin, A 5% overall margin increase is easily achieved when adding more lucrative products or services to the sale provided you strategically prepare and position the technology value to the customer before you shut down the sale. This approach will reduce our sales busy-ness.

In a marketplace that's constantly asking our customers “to do more with less”.....we should take a leave out of their book and look to our selling strategies to make us more sales effective.