A common concern among sales executives is the “velocity” of their sales approach. As we’ve been talking about in this series, concern about “velocity” often keeps tech vendors from trying to sell “solutions”.   In this series, I’ve been talking about the 4 Steps to “Sell Solutions at the Velocity of Transactions.”

• Step 1 Use “Vision-Quest Marketing” – to generate awareness and inbound inquires
• Step 2: Use “Destination-Based Selling”  to provide a clear end-state and accelerate buying decisions
• Step 3: Provide a “Yellow-Brick Road”– to give customers a prescriptive “Path” for getting to this “Destination”
• Step 4: Use “Sales Plays” to create specific “Steps” on this “Path” that your marketing and sales teams can communicate and sell

Now that we’ve established a “Destination” and a “Path” for your customers, what should technology vendors do to get customers to adopt their Solutions and Products? If you looked at 10 sets of marketing materials and sales tools from across the industry for storage, networking, management, converged infrastructure, virtualization and cloud solutions, you would assume that the answer is – “build tools to sell your product/service”?

But as one of my professors in college used to say, “If you put that answer on your paper come Q day, you’ll get a BIG RED X, (Heh, Heh, Heh).” (more…)