5 Ways The Top IT Resellers Ensure Sales Success

You are one of 100 other vendors, resellers and distributors attempting to get hold of your prospect IT Manager. If you want to stand out from the IT Crowd, it is not enough to call “just to introduce myself as your new account manager”. You must be prepared, polished, professional and razor sharp.

We’ve spent the last 12 years working with the sales teams of the UK & Ireland’s top IT resellers and these are our top 5 strategies to ensure sales success:

1) Understand the common challenges within their industry. Become an expert in the verticals you are targeting. Read and watch videos about the industry. Know the common business and IT challenges your prospective clients are experiencing. What are the trends affecting the industry? What does the future look like for them? How is technology driving change in this vertical?

2) Research: There is nothing worse as an IT buyer than getting a call from a sales person who has not done their homework, has no idea what their company does or even looked at their website. There is no excuse for lack of research and preparation before making a call. You can access mountains of information very quickly and build up a high-level picture of the company before you call. You don’t need to know every detail about them, but a decent understanding of the business you are selling to is essential.

3) Align to their business goals. How can you help them meet their business goals, operational and technical drivers? A basic understanding of what the business wants to achieve (which can be found easily on their website, financial statements under Chairman’s report, in the media or press sections). How do the benefits and value you bring to the IT Manager help meet these goals? Make this link and you’re starting to sound not just credible, you’re starting to sound interesting.

4) People buy stories, not products. Master the art of telling stories about your company and products. Make your stories relevant to them. Show how you have helped support other clients using your technology/solution. Tell them how they rated your success and what were the challenges you helped them overcome. People love stories, they allow us to make connections with others and your prospect will start to imagine themselves in the story.

5) Never try to be a technical expert. You are a sales person, not the technical expert. Open the conversation with your prospective client, build rapport, ask sensible and relevant questions however do not attempt to bluff your way through a technical response. You have experts with the right answers to cover that for you. Too many sales people in IT think they must become technical experts. This is not your role, you are there to find out the challenges your client is having, present them with the correct solution and solve their problems using the resources around you. Know enough to be credible, but know when it’s time to involve other people in the conversation.

If you want to grab the time and attention of an IT manager who has already heard from a ton of other sales people this week, then you need to put in the preparation work that gives you the edge. You need a clear purpose for the conversation and a compelling sales message to go with it.

Don’t let your message get lost in a sea of bland, irrelevant sales calls. Deliver on these five strategies and add colour to your calls to stand out from the IT crowd!

If you’d like to hear more about the technology sales training we can provide, please get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.