Increase Sales! Hire Technologists Better

Back in the “old days,” the “dark ages” when most of today’s managed service providers (MSP) were still considering themselves “resellers” sales was a simpler thing. It all came down to choices.

Back in the “old days,” the “dark ages” when most of today’s managed service providers (MSP) were still considering themselves “resellers” sales was a simpler thing. It all came down to choices.

Making the Right Choices – In Earlier Days

The first and most obvious choices resellers made had to do with the products they sold. They chose them fairly carefully. They asked several questions:

• Which ones were popular?

• Which had great brand recognition?

• Which were less expensive?

• Which could they source from distribution?

• Which ones were most customers buying?

• Which ones were compatible with what they had already sold to their customers?

  

From this, resellers chose which logos to feature on their website. They also pursued marketing development funds (MDF) from “co-op” programs which were based on a percentage of their sales out. The trick was to sell volume to earn money to pay for marketing so they could sell more volume. Cart before horse. So it goes.

Another choice was target markets. Many said their target customer was “anybody with money.” These resellers didn’t last long. Some chose to focus on small & medium businesses (SMB), with others wandering into the dangerous waters of large enterprise where prices were slashed and everything was expected.

Then came the bigger choice. Who was going to go out and sell all this stuff?

In the beginning, people who had been selling other stuff saw real opportunity in selling IT stuff so they interviewed for those positions. Many had been conditioned to be cutthroats. Others were pushy “hard-sell” specialists. They dressed well. They spoke fast. And they closely obeyed the “ABC” rule – Always Be Closing.

Those who did some reading read Zig Ziglar, Earl Nightingale, and books like “How to Master the Art of Selling Anything to Anyone.” They were salespeople.

When interviewing, hiring managers asked all the usual questions. How long have you been selling? How big is your rolodex? Do you have active customers you can bring over to us?

Few asked, “How much do you know about information technology?”

New Choices Required for a New World

Then came cloud computing. After initial fits and starts about it not being secure, not being reliable, even not being understandable, people started to get the message. It was secure. It was reliable. When you came down to it, it was conceptually simple. And you could save money by not having to buy any more stuff. This upset those who made their living selling servers and storage and related stuff.

Resellers required transformation. First, they realized they needed to learn how to sell cloud computing. Product vendors warned them they would have to sell twice as much to achieve the same revenue. That wasn’t true, but it sounded scary.

Many managers of these resellers-in-transition reported having to turn over their entire sales force. They actually fired all their existing salespeople and started hiring new ones, people who understood something about technology services.

Now, these new MSPs had new choices to make. Instead of servers and storage they were comparing Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. They could still sell routers and switches, but in the future a certain pandemic would drag that to a halt.

The criteria for becoming involved with any kind of product had changed from achievable margin, which had always been pretty close to nil, to serviceability. That is, what services could the MSP create to wrap around any product they were considering a partnership with. Instead of pushing those products to their customers, they would include them in project specifications and thereby pull them through. Some vendors got this and knew how to answer those questions. Others listed their stuff in catalogs.

Then that age-old question returned. Who’s going to sell all this?

The primary priorities of the customer who purchased stuff was always, “How much does it cost and how quickly can I get it?” While the answers weren’t always good ones, they were pretty simple to obtain.

Now the primary customer had changed from a purchasing agent to a line-of-business executive. And their priorities were quite different.

• What can you do to solve my business and operational challenges?

• Should the software be run on-premises, or should it come from the cloud?

• Who will manage the infrastructure, the applications, the workloads, and everything else?

• What is the strategic plan for this project?

• What is the strategic plan for a safe, non-disruptive migration to this new solution?

• How does the technology work?

The fast talking, well-dressed slick salesperson with the 90-mile-per-hour haircut had no chance.

Do a Better Job Hiring the Right Person to Sell Well to Your Customers Today

Many owners of IT channel businesses have discovered that the people from their staff who their customers like best are their technologists. The consultants, engineers, developers, and technicians who actually provide the services and interface most calmly with them.

Many customers will readily tell you, “I just want to talk with someone who knows what they’re talking about!”

For some transitioning resellers, this comes as a revelation.

Hiring managers responsible for selecting such technologists need to adjust their interview process. They still need to “check out” and “tech out” each candidate, no doubt. They still need to confirm their certifications, experience, and other technical “chops.”

But now they need to seek other skills. What some people used to awfully call “soft skills.” When interviewing technologists who will become your primary customer interface, you need to ask some significant additional questions:

• “What is your greatest priority?”
  Good answers will include “solving my customer’s challenges.” Or “making things work well for my customer.” Or “getting my customer to think of me and my company as part of their team.”

• “What’s the most important thing to do when interacting with a customer?”
  Listening. Active, careful listening. Confirming understanding. Taking notes. Showing serious, genuine interest in their concerns. Asking probing questions to get to better answers and input.

• “What do you do when something goes wrong, or something will take longer than expected?”
  Call the customer immediately and convey the problem. If they have to call you to find out about the problem, you’re sunk. If you call them, everything is fine.

• “What is the best word to use when dealing with an irate customer.”
  Note that there’s no question mark at the end of that one. It’s not a question. Good people managers will know to never ask “why” of someone who is screaming at them. It will only prompt an emotional response. Instead, stick to “what” questions. What can I do right now to help resolve this? What is the first thing you must see happen? That keeps everything practical and pragmatic and quells anger.

The right candidate will not only have technical mastery, but they’ll also be able to explain it plainly. Keep the customer informed. Build rapport, trust, and earn the confidence of their customers. Become a reliable, trusted consultant to their customers. Someone they like and will turn to. It’s all about that relationship.

We Don’t Sell

Coming from someone like me, who managed sales, marketing, and business development for so many years, this must sound like blasphemy, but the fact is that the best of us don’t “sell.”

We’re there to help our customers increase their success. Increase their profits. Improve the customer experience they provide for their customers. Make our contacts into heroes.

We ask them what they need to accomplish, and come up with the best, most cost-effective way to accomplish it.

People used to tell me that such people, who could managed both technology and customers equally well were “unicorns.” Rare creatures that are hard to find.

Not so much anymore. I find myself meeting more and more of them all the time. Truth be told, many of them are owners of their own firms because they also bring excellent entrepreneurial skills. But there are still enough technologists out there who can be encouraged to manage their customers the way their hearts tell them to. These are not “unicorns.” They’re simply professionals.