Many sales people accept “the customer is always right”.
Most IT Department personnel work for just a few businesses in their careers.
Yet technology sales people would visit half a dozen IT Departments a week.
- who would have more exposure to which technologies are valuable to IT today?
- who would know which technologies have a business impact and which don’t?
- who knows which technology projects meet business expectations and which are financial disappointments?
The role of technology sales people today is “to propose alternative to help their IT customers improve their current OPEX cost equation.”
Consequently, the “always right “phase needs an additional clarification.
‘ …..provided they are made aware of other viable alternatives”.
In the next few years data rates are expected to grow by almost 50 times1, electricity costs to triple2 and technology processor and hard drive densities to continue to expand at unrecognisable rates. IT has never been under such scrutiny. Technology is now entering the age of “Infrastructure Re-investment”.
We know severs, storage, software and personal devices have life cycles. But often these are built on a bandaid approach instead of OPEX cost assessment. How often have you investigate the financial returns on changing your customer’s technology life cycle plans?
Just like our cities, business is quickly out-growing its technology platforms. Our cities demands for water, electricity, transportation, housing & health have pushed them beyond their afford threshold, resulting in cost blowouts.
Current needs have outstripped the current infrastructure operational cost model.
Similarly IT Departments are now limited by their high operational cost models and the technologies limited ability to meet future business expectations.
The opinion of our politician’s ability to run cost effective cities is now similar to how IT suffers from a “useless department” reputation from their business. Just think…..
‘How do you rate your own IT department’s value’?
As Technology sales people, our focus should be to spend time helping our customers uncover alternatives to this growing OPEX costs blowout.
“Selling Technology” has definitely changed. No longer can we afford to wait for our customers list of requirements. They need an external perspective from those who can assess and compare multiple IT environments …. Technology sales people.
Spending more time completing customer quotations rather than proposing more relevant ways your customer could change their OPEX cost equation, won’t help your customer’s future.
Instead question and understand their future technology objectives. Research and propose alternatives to your customer’s quote requests..
Enhance the IT Department’s reputation by building their “confidence” to present technology changes ahead of business demands.
These innovative approaches require technology industry understanding, people influencing skills, “what if” perspectives plus confidence of making a difference. Most of these qualities today’s technology sales people already possess.
Sales people need to stop being the customer’s “best friend” (for fear of losing the business) and start offering innovative and alternative solutions.
