November 22

NWC 2007 Reader Survey – IT vs. Sales

The 2007 NWC Reader Survey is a great tool for IT Services and VARs to learn from. Often I wonder if I will have the opportunity to read an article from buyers directed at sales people. Now I have.

The article details the things IT buyers wish sales reps would stop doing and at the top of the list is promising features or functions that do not exist. In other words, the top No-No says “don’t lie”.

Guess the number one wish IT buyer have in a sales person: knowledge of what they are selling. Funny how that works out, huh?

Rounding out the rest of the top five No-No’s: misrepresenting integration issues, ignoring you after you get paid, low-balling deployment costs, and shipping beta products.

Let’s step back for a second and think about a sales team — invoke Pareto’s principle (the 80/20 rule). A Sales Manager’s top 20 people bring in 80% of the revenue. The top 20 probably have better relationships with their buyers and do not commit these “selling sins” as often as the other 80% of the sales team. That 80% is made up of people who are still learning the basics, don’t care, and are looking for the quick commission check.

The smart Sales Manager can use the Survey to help train. In fact, I recommend that a sales person take the survey to sales meetings. Bring the often unspoken concerns of your buyer front and center. Talk about them. If you plan on committing the sins, tell your buyer so he/she knows in advance. (I don’t advocate committing them, by the way.)

Let’s turn back to the survey and look at the top 5 buyer wishes. They would like to be able to get someone on the phone who knows what they are talking about, address business problems (not use buzzwords), be up front about problems, take responsibility for problems, and deliver capabilities that are listed on the data sheet.

Sales can achieve all of the wishes through relationships or self-action. If I change the desires around, I make them into this:

The ideal sales person communicates openly with his/her buyer, knows the ins and outs of the product or service, makes personalized marketing material and proposals, and puts helping the buyer’s business in front of a commission.

Presumably, the buyer is going to reward such an honest, hard-working sales person with long term business at a better than average margin!

If you are the buyer, my next post has a request from the ideal sales person to you…