ChannelWorld

SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR SOLUTION PROVIDERS

Speak to the right person. When companies are watching costs, any new IT initiative is going to need the buy-in of the CIO to get it started.

Have the right conversation. According to research firm, IDC, the biggest mistake companies make is not knowing the target company’s business well enough.

Tailor a solution that helps the client improve and achieve better business outcomes.

Listen to what the client’s requirements are and find the solution for that requirement in a package rather than pulling together five or six different ones.

Don’t

Promise the world, and highlight your team’s skills and technologies and take the ‘here is what I want to sell you’ route, without understanding what your client wants.

Sell without knowing what your client does in intimate detail and understand where the root of their IT pain is. You aren’t going to be able to provide a solution that solves their problems.

Simply offer lip service to the business situation a customer is in. They will eventually struggle to convince the right people in their organization to buy into new IT expenditure.

Take a rigid approach to pricing and offer more than one option.

The Scenario: There is a 200-seat company that needs help with its IT infrastructure.  A solution provider has been eyeing them for a while and waiting for the right opportunity. So he decides to take a gamble and makes an appointment to meet with an employee in its IT department. He is a friend of a friend, so the provider feels comfortable talking to him.

He also knows that his competitor, who has pretty much the same offering as him, is scheduling a similar meeting next week. He doesn’t know with whom, but he got in there first, so he is happy. He’s a bit nervous because it’s a completely new vertical, but, hey, a customer is a customer and he is ready to conquer the whole market so why not start now?

Armed to the teeth with technical information about how good the offerings his solution are, he goes in and gives a well-rehearsed presentation highlighting technical prowess and the knowledge of his team.

The Message: His products are as good as anybody’s, he is promising to do pretty much anything, and his team is top notch too, so the company should sign on the dotted line. Satisfied, he waits for a call from the IT department rep he met confirming that the company will meet his expectations and buy boxes from him. The call never comes. Why? Three reasons: The wrong person, the wrong conversation, and the wrong focus.

What Went Wrong?

What Went Wrong?

The first mistake our hypothetical protagonist made in this not altogether unrealistic example above, was speaking to the wrong person. Approaching a representative of the IT department, or even the IT manager, is starting off too low in the food chain. At a time when companies are watching costs closely, any new IT initiative is going to need the buy-in of the CIO for it to get off the ground.

“If it is a small reseller, they should be talking to GMs and directors,” CEO of sales training organisation Salient Communication, Elliot Epstein, said. “But they end up primarily talking to an IT manager and going through an extended sales cycle – a straightforward solution sale ends up taking nine months when it shouldn’t have if they had gone to the right level early.”

But even if this is realized and the reseller goes to the right people, they need to have the right conversation. According to research firm, IDC, the biggest mistake companies make when talking to CIOs is not knowing the target company’s business well enough. They should be spending 75 per cent of the initial contact period listening and asking questions, not pitching.

Our hapless partner spent all his time focusing on the technologies, promising the world, and highlighting his team’s skills. In short, he took the ‘here is what I want to sell you’ route.

Instead, he should have focused on learning the customer’s business and then tailored a solution that helps the client improve and achieve better business outcomes.

If you don’t know your client’s business or are venturing into unfamiliar verticals, over-promising can ultimately lead to business failure for all parties. While most channel players are pretty savvy with starting small, building up with engagements and getting client recommendations, there is a tendency for some to try and be everything to everybody.

The Solution

“It is amazing how many people don’t even know what their clients really do – whether their clients are expanding, whether they are contracting, whether they are trying to grow a market in one vertical or another,” says Elliot Epstein, CEO of sales training organization Salient Communication. “They simply don’t understand their customers’ customers.”

Clearly, if you don’t know what your client does in intimate detail and understand where the root of their IT pain is, you aren’t going to be able to provide a solution that will solve their problems.

And if you don’t know your client’s business or are venturing into unfamiliar verticals, over-promising can ultimately lead to business failure for all parties. While most channel players are pretty savvy with starting small, building up with engagements and getting client recommendations, there is a tendency for some to try and be everything to everybody.

Yes, branching out into new markets is a good thing, but having a clearly defined focus on which verticals you will play in is key. So essentially the message is to understand whom to talk to, what conversation to have, and better define your own market focus when taking solutions to customers.

For integrators the lesson is simple – avoid techno speak when pitching solutions to prospective clients. Talk about technical concepts, products and approaches in layman’s terms so that even your grandmother could understand what you are saying. Language is important, and if you are not speaking the client’s, then you are not communicating effectively.

Keep It Relevant To Them

Like every other business, vendors have to adopt a narrative that positions their solutions in the right cost-saving, productivity-improving, benefit-laden light. And arguably more than anybody else in the channel, they need to ensure their partners get this message and articulate it to customers.

Many vendors believe they do need to, from a channel partners’ perspective, show how the customer is going to get a defined return on investment (ROI) and be able to demonstrate how the solutions they are putting forward really do provide a short ROI.

While everyone is talking about ROI and total cost of ownership at the moment, that doesn’t mean the message is without substance. But if you only give lip service to the business situation a customer is in, they will consequently struggle to convince the right people in their organization to buy into new IT expenditure.

Partners also need to ensure they are taking a flexible approach to pricing and offer more than one option.

“Unless you leave yourself quite flexible, you will find it is hard to sell,” CA security business unit senior director, Andrew Kelly, said. “All the customer environments differ that much – some have a preference for Solaris, some for Windows, some for Linux. All of those things can muck the package around a bit so I think the key is try and look for common sub-sets so you get a talking point for the customer. But leave yourself flexible to actually alter the package. It is very hard to give a fixed price and say take it or leave it, because customers are just too varied.”

It is common for some partners to pull together five different vendors in their own product range to patch together a solution, particularly in highly competitive and diverse markets like security. However, some experts feel that they would be better off spending the time doing the research and getting a full solution pack from one vendor.

So you need to actually take a step back and listen to what the client’s requirements are and find the solution for that requirement in a package rather than pulling together five or six different ones.
They should sell the client what they want, not what the channel partner wants to sell them.