In last week’s post we talked about Two Key Changes to your marketing and sales process that allow you Sell Solutions, But at the Velocity of Transactions:
- Use “Vision-Quest Marketing” – to generate awareness and inbound inquires – to generate awareness and inbound inquires (Series Part 1)
- Use “Destination-Based Selling” – to enable sales to create transactional sales within a Solution family (Series Part 2)
- Element 1: Position a destination that can be achieved by leveraging your products broadly (Series Part 2)
We talked specifically about what we mean by “Destination-Based Selling” and talked in detail about setting a “Destination” for customers to accelerate sales of your products. But a Destination is not very helpful if customers don’t know HOW to get there. This week we will talk about the element 2 of “Destination-Based Selling” – “Providing a Path”
3 Key Elements of “Destination-Based Selling”
- Position a “Destination” – that can be achieved by leveraging your products broadly, as a platform
- Provide a “Path” – to the destination with specific sales plays
- Provide Marketing and Sales Tools that define the “Destination” and the “Path” (= the Solution and Sales Plays) – to enable generalist sales and your channel to qualify and position opportunities for complex solutions
What is Your “Yellow Brick Road?” (= Path)
To illustrate the importance of “Providing a Path”, I like to use an analogy to the “Yellow-Brick Road” from the “Wizard of Oz” (One of the most beloved movies of all time and still a favorite 75 years after its original release). One of the most famous lines in the movie occurs when Dorothy’s house is swooped up by a tornado and crashes down in a strange place with small people who call themselves “Munchkins”. Dorothy is sad, confused and in pain. Where should she go, what she do?
The Good Witch tells her she should go see the great Wizard of Oz, who lives in the Emerald City. When Dorothy asks, “But, how do I get to the Emerald City”, the Munchkins reply in unison, “FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD!” (which then evolves into a rather long song…)
Why is this the Yellow-Brick Road relevant to IT Vendors?
Because once IT vendors help customers envision a destination they can attain from the vendor’s products (in this case finding the Wizard of Oz in the Emerald City), they also need to know a path to get there (or they are no better off than they were before).
IT Buyers
Today’s world is very complex for IT buyers – as they contemplate the merits of Vendor A, Vendor B, public clouds, different public cloud providers, Private Cloud, Open Source and new data center paradigms like SDDC, Hybrid Cloud and the “3rd Platform”. Even if an IT organization knows where they want to end up, it is often very unclear to them what steps they need to take to get them moving toward their desired destination.
Yellow-Brick Road
When Dorothy first started out, the Yellow-Brick Road appeared to go nowhere and she must have thought to herself, “This seems stupid, how is taking this circular path going to get me anywhere.”
IT Buyers
Customers and IT organizations often feel this way, as they are bombarded by IT vendors, each delivering their own message that seem completely contradictory… (where is all this going!)
Yellow-Brick Road
As we all know, Dorothy stuck to “yellow-brick road” despite many adversities, and found lifelong friends in the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion. She stuck to the prescribed path and eventually she and her friends were rewarded when they saw their destination in front of them, within their grasp…
IT Buyers
IT Buyers often struggle to find both a realistic destination and a path to get there. I recall a meeting I had many years ago at VMware with a leading integrator and some folks from the alliances team. The question was “how do customers decide to virtualize mission critical applications, like SAP?” The integrator had often been sub-contracted by SAP Consultants to implement infrastructure and they shared an important lesson. To make a big decision like this, customers needed to know:
- WHY they should do it (the ROI, the benefits and the strategic advantages, but also
- HOW they would do it. (if they did decide to go forward)
If they don’t feel the HOW is credible, the WHY doesn’t matter that much. They want PROOF that the proposed solution is real. One way of providing PROOF is customer references, which we all know are critical. But the other way of providing PROOF is by detailing HOW you get to the “Destination” – and this includes steps that customers can take to evolve toward the desired end state
This might seem counter-intuitive – Why do customers need to know the details of HOW, before they make a decision to proceed? Because HOW information helps provide PROOF that the Solution is real and reduces anxiety that the Destination might be an illusion. The lesson is: “Provide customers the “Path” the get to the “Destination”, and you will accelerate your sales.
Next week we will talk about the final element of Destination-Based Selling
- Provide Marketing and Sales Tools that define the “Destination” and the “Path” (= the Solution and Sales Plays) – to enable generalist sales and your channel to qualify and position opportunities for complex solutions
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