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IT Sales: What is Your Unique Offering?
By Joshua Feinberg
What benefits you can give your clients that will be different from the average Joe Consultant? In this article, you'll learn some ways to differentiate yourself from your competition to increase IT Sales.
XYZ Consulting: A Case Study
XYZ Consulting moved into a new location in a 27-story building full of high-end firms. There are a number of other such buildings within a two-minute walk. They asked me if they should play up the close proximity?
Positively yes! They can effectively own that neighborhood. What is their unique benefit? They are right there. They can get things done better, faster, and cheaper than anyone else who is not right there.
Sell Your Unique Benefit
Sell service agreements and lead up with a response time guarantee. When you're right there, you can afford to make bold promises like you'll be onsite within 60 minutes of a server down emergency during regular business hours. You can even back that up by offering something like $100 off your bill that month if you're even a minute late.
If you have enough clients in that area and your staff is located right there, too, it's almost as if you're working on a corporate campus. Obviously there's no travel time involved. Staff utilization rates should easily increase by 10 to 30 percent. There will be no hassle with driving, traffic, or parking.
IT Sales Case Study: How To Identify These Businesses
What should XYZ do to identify these local businesses? Do a survey. Mail something out to every owner or CEO in the building and in the neighboring buildings. You might even bribe them that if they return the survey, you'll give them a gift certificate for a dozen bagels at the coffee shop across the street.
IT Sales: The Survey
The survey should have really basic questions like:
o How many PCs do you have?
o How many employees so you have?
o How do you get your IT support today?
o What do you like and dislike about it?
o What's your number one business challenge today?
o What's your number one IT challenge?
It's really a response vehicle. You're getting people to tell you not only what they want, but you're basically going to get people who are at least marginally interested.
This should produce a very good response rate and canvassing should be a breeze. It should be as simple as hanging out in the local coffee shop and getting to know the regulars and the people that are in and out of those offices all the time.
IT Sales: Get To Know The People Who Know Everyone
Befriend the local shoe repairperson, the person who's delivering Chinese, pizza or the deli, the mail carrier, the UPS and the FedEx driver. Get to know everyone so you can gradually network yourself into all the offices in the area. These people are already in and out of these offices all the time, and they can often point you in the right direction as to who to call on for IT sales.
The Bottom Line about IT Sales
If you really want to sell based on your guarantee and your proximity, brand everything around it.
Copyright MMI-MMVI, Computer Consultants Secrets. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance}
About the Author
Joshua Feinberg has helped thousands of computer consultants get more steady, high-paying clients. Learn how you can too. Sign-up now for Joshua's free Computer Consultants Secrets audio training at http://www.ComputerConsultantsSecrets.com/blog/
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