A month ago I had a brief but revealing conversation with a brilliant technology salesman. He had just quit his job in a leading technology vendor (because they were fidgeting with his commission) and had landed a better salary paying job which was being frustrated by the lack of tact of the 'boss'. This brilliant salesman said to me:
"Some companies think it's useless to sell boxes--pcs, laptops, printers. If you look at if face value, it does look so but in my previous company where we used to sell boxes, we got high value business out of customers who after buying boxes would ask us for high end solutions-license maintenance, data centre set up, network management and so forth."
I say: "Go on."
"In this new company, the MD says he does not want to push boxes because the margins are too low--but he does not even have operating capital and he is not bringing in new customers because he only markets the company as a services vendor- not boxes."
I say: "If you've got it flaunt it! Give customers a reason to step into your shop."
I say: Depending on the type of customer you are faced with, putting into consideration their current requirement, and their overall objective, i.e. ICT objective, peg-backed by the overall business objective, push what they want at the moment, while targeting the other business as well. Most of these customers/companies have ICT strategies running for maybe 5 years...and these strategies are implemented in phases, and for you to know this you must have mapped out this company so well to understand what their strategy is and their over all business objective. Once knowing this, you will be able to know what to pitch when: box or solution?
ReplyDeletei believe the battle in the market place today is a battle of minds. if my little experience in the market is to go by, we even have customers who do not have such strategies and do not know what they need; until something goes wrong.
ReplyDeleteso as a brilliant sales person, the obligation lies in becoming a client centered consultant rather than a mere vendor - whether hardware or services
Ebbs and Nicholas I do agree that the customer should determine what the company pushes--and while I don't advocate for being a Jack of All Trades, when we look at most successful businesses, their key selling products are not the ones they originally pushed. So do tell the customer that yes we are good at A & B but also C.
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