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Want to Sell Solutions, but at the Velocity of Transactions? Try “Destination-Based Selling” (Part 2 of a Series)
A common concern among sales executives is the “velocity” of their sales approach. In other words, how rapidly can the sales team engage with customers and close opportunities? The way many Tech vendors approach this problem is to focus on selling “transactions”, and they generally try to steer clear of adding complexity to the sales process. Why? Because it could slow “velocity” and reduce the Rep’s ability to control the sales outcome and timing.
For many Tech organizations, complexity is often equated to selling “Solutions” that often include products from other vendors and professional services (which they may not get sales credit for, take a long time to “deliver” and equal more complexity). But as we’ve talked about in many posts, selling solutions is often what is needed to be successful selling a particular product. Particularly if it falls to the right of the diagram shown in Figure 1 below. I shared these 3 indicators in my post, “What 3 Questions Indicate Whether You Need to Sell “Solutions”? (and when does selling “Product” work better?…)”
Figure 1: The 3 Indicators for “Solution Selling”
You can find more information on how and when to sell solutions in the “Solutions” section of the “GTM Best Practices page” on my blog.
What I am finding is that fewer and fewer products fit on the left side of the diagram. In today’s world, software and services drive customer value, and hardware is often not the lead message in the solution. But this situation leaves the organizations with a difficult choice –which one of these paths should they follow?
- Market and sell products as part of a “Solution”, to connect with customers and create more long-term revenue
OR
- Sell “Transactions” at a higher velocity, to meet their sales goals (and keep their job)
These two choices seem incompatible – or are they? (more…)
Channel Not Ready to Sell? 2 Simple Steps to Enable Channel Revenue (Part 2 of Series)
In last weeks’ post I talked about the “5 Natural Laws of Channel Enablement”, and how following these approaches can help technology vendors “Climb out of the Box™” and drive more revenue through their channels. We also talked in detail about Natural Law #1 – the importance of enabling your partners to do something specific – not just know more about your product.
The 5 Natural Laws of Channel Enablement
- Enable Your Channel to Do something (not Know something)
- Enablement ≠ Training – Training and Tools must go “hand-in-hand”
- Channel Sales Training ≠ Vendor Rep Sales Training – Enable Channel partners based on how they sell
- Enablement must be “Packaged” within a Channel Program, to drive adoption and channel revenue…
- Sales Engagement: How channel enablement becomes revenue $
This week I will talk about talk about Natural Law #2 and difference between enabling your channel and training your channel…
Predictions for the Future Path of the Data Center…
VMworld US is a few weeks behind us, VMworld Europe is in our sights and HP Discover will provide plenty of news to finish off the year. The stream of tech industry news keeps coming with lots of buzzwords, but also lots of real change. I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of the data center and the tech industry – “Where is this path taking us?”
Regular readers of my blog will know that my focus is on the go-to-market (GTM) approach used by leading technology companies to connect their products to customers. GTM encompasses corporate strategy, product marketing, specialties within marketing, sales, sales engineering, consulting, channels of all types – and all sorts of “operations” from sales ops to channel ops to professional services packaging and delivery. All of these pieces are required to “Build a Bridge” between your offerings and your customers.
As we’ve discussed, the current “best practices” in many of these areas leave a lot to be desired. These practices reflect what worked when the leading vendors sold hardware and the channel sold and implemented hardware. Of course, that has not been true for a long time, but that does not seem to keep tech companies from trotting out the same approach to GTM…
As the industry changes and the approach to the data center changes, the levers that drive GTM success also change – which is why I keep ruminating on the current path of the industry, and its impact on GTM. I covered some of the background on my perspective on the evolution of data center technologies – particularly the dramatic changes brought on on by VMware and virtualization. Those posts were part of a 3-part series, and are a good starting point in connecting the dots backward, so we can extend them forward to the future…
What’s Next on the “Cloudy” VAR Landscape: What’s a VAR To Do …?
If you’ve read previous posts for my “Climbing Out of the Box” Blog, you may have noticed that the point of view is from the vendor perspective – e.g. “How do I sell more of my product to customers?” You also may have noticed that the #1 piece of advice has been to “put yourself in the shoes of the customer” to understand their challenges and how your company could help, so that you can market and sell your products as part of solutions that connect to the customer perspective.
The same dynamic holds true for your sales channels and your channel partners. As the customer requirements for buying IT products move toward solutions, outcomes, software and SaaS/cloud services (rather than hardware and point products,) your channel has had to evolve from the traditional hardware-centric model. For your company to be successful, you need to be talking to your partners to understand the channel perspective, and you need to be taking steps to create new sales opportunities for you and your channel partners that reflect the changing sales and channel model…
Guest Blog Post from Thom McAleer (more…)
“Climbing Out of the Box”™ 