Nurturing Salesmanship

By Matt Pillar, chief editor

Sales hiring and management are consistently among the top three challenges VAR and MSP executives face. Trouble justifying a first sales salary and commission structure, learning to let go of the reins, refining sales processes to reflect corporate culture, and managing sales efforts to standard are common refrains.

These challenges are likely to be found in any sales-centric professional services organization. I’ve certainly experienced them both over the past 20 years in the publishing industry. They are, however, more difficult to overcome in crowded, borderline commoditized markets. Back when the value-added and managed services plays were freshly drawn up and the players in the game few, these challenges sort of worked themselves out. Sales come easy when demand is high and supply is low. Today, value-adds and managed services are everywhere. That’s why channel executives, regardless of size, need to stay sharp on salesmanship. A few specific, yet synergistic calls to sales action have struck me as particularly salient for these times.

• Determine the prospect’s time frame to buy and hold them to it. When your product or service offering was new and unique, sales forecasting was the advantage to knowing when a prospect would pull the trigger. Today, there’s a greater value in understanding time to close: competitive strategy. When you know your prospect’s decision date, you can map your sales strategy to the calendar and create a chance to outmaneuver and out-value your competitor. You can also offer a limited-time rate that expires after decision day — and you can blame the shelf life of that rate on the hardware, software, and distribution partners who hold you to the same standard.
• Follow up for differentiation. Follow-up — and more precisely, how your sales reps follow up — are keys to standing out among the competition. Millennials might be inclined to manage follow-up touches with prospects via text, e-mail, or social media, but phone calls and face-to-face visits have become the differentiated way to communicate. Several of the channel sales gurus I’ve listened to over the past few months — including guys like Steve Riat (Nex-Tech) and Nathan Austin (Mytech) — suggest snail-mailing bulky packages and books that reflect your company’s culture to prospects. Meaty content, in the form of webinars, e-books, podcasts, and blog posts, should be delivered in “drip” campaigns that align with the sales cycle.
• Establish — and maintain — an emotional connection. To execute on this point, it’s critical that the sales rep qualify the prospect’s date of decision, because the serial-position effect applies to sales cycles. The serial-position effect suggests that the last (most recent) impressions are most easily recalled, followed by the first (primary) impressions. But don’t discount the lull between the initial prospect and the close. If your sales reps aren’t buying beers, mailing books, and selling your features and benefits consistently through the cycle, someone else’s rep is.

There’s no room for the status quo in your sales organization. While you might think your products and services are differentiated and stand on their own merit — and perhaps rightfully so — the burden is on your sales machine to demonstrate that differentiation to the market. Without a stand-out and strategic sales approach, they don’t stand a chance.