How to Stand Out as an IT Services Vendor

[spiceuser-jxjg]

This must be the hardest level of sales known to mankind. You can’t email because the emails are never read and mostly get put into spam folders. You can’t cold call because your prospect gets about 100 calls a week. And when you finally do get someone on the phone they already have their vendors they are working with…

Other IT sales professionals - how the hell do you do it? In all honestly… I am trying to learn how to be better in this field.

CIO’s, IT Directors and alike - what can someone in sales do to stand out as a potential vendor? In all seriousness. I’m not looking for the “get on the approved vendor list” answer. I want to know what someone in sales can do to get on your radar or make you want to interact with them more…

[MisterC1974]

Morning
Looking at it from an IT Manager for a small user base / company. What works for me, which may well now be old fashioned, is a level of trust, honesty, familiarity and the vendor going the extra mile to secure the order. One thing I really can’t abide by is being a guinea pig for new account managers at IT Vendors/Resellers when they bring new staff on-board and move our regular account manager up a level. This is an instant no for me. Once a level of trust, honesty, and high level of commitment to sourcing our request and going that extra mile, has been established then I rarely move. This setup works for me every time.
–Christopher–

[Suzanne-Spiceworks]

From the Spiceworks side, you could sponsor a local meetup, give away some swag with your logo, get a booth at SpiceWorld, or of course become a “green” account, which is a preferred partner in the community. If you become friends with the community, then next time a community member needs a service you offer, they’ll think of you.

No one wants to be sold to (which is why we don’t allow IT users to mention their own companies and only allow approved vendor accounts to post), but we can all use some advice and friendship, and free stuff never hurts.

Once that relationship and trust is there, as MisterC mentions, you have a chance at a lot of dedicated, loyal customers. It’s about dedicating time to customer service and loyalty as well as whatever the product is.

[spiceuser-jxjg]

Thank you for your feedback. And I 100% agree that trust, honesty, and familiarity are must have’s but how does a new sales person with an organization succeed here? Where should they start? What should sales managers expect of them if it takes years to develop relationships and build that trust and familiarity?

[Nancy-Spiceworks]

There are a lot of great gems hidden in the Spiceworks Community. Here are a few to help you get a foot in the door:

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[stranmansky25]

Part of the solution is a shift in mentality and adopting a longer-term perspective. Sales and marketing teams are all about immediate results, but ignore the fact that at any given time only ~5% of your ICP is in-market. Meaning the other 95% aren’t and will have zero interest in receiving an email or phone call.

This is really a marketing/branding problem that trickles down to becoming a sales problem. If I were in you shoes, I’d start with the objections hear from prospects who do respond to you, along with with questions/complaints you hear from existing customers (either directly or via account managers).

Translate those objections into questions a would-be buyer is likely to ask and work with your marketers to create different types of content that addresses each of them in-depth. These assets will become part of your team’s inbound marketing operation as well as any LinkedIn or other targeted outbound you continue to do. You can use the core insights and messaging for posting on your own LinkedIn page or in forums like these or wherever your target buyer actually lives and plays.

The upshot is that for as much emphasis as everyone puts on pipeline and opportunity creation, they continue to ignore the fact that pipeline today was created 2 quarters ago, not two weeks ago.

TL;DR get really good at understanding the buying questions different stakeholders are asking themselves at various stages of the customer lifecycle and create messaging around each one that positions your org as the superior choice come renewal decision time.