How well do you know your customers’ industry and market pressures? Are you vaguely aware? Do you just mumble “recession” when questioned? Technology salespeople need an indepth awareness and understanding of their customer’s industry and the pressures they are under in order to effectively align their sales stretegy and solution to the customer’s needs.
With the ever increasing availability of information, we take it for granted that we now have easy access to a plethora of information within seconds, on any customer or their industry segment. But this doesn’t mean that it is valuable to you as a salesperson or a company selling into that sector. We also don’t analyse the data to understand what this means for us as a vendor, we take the obvious points such as falling profits to give us a generic view on the customer’s issues that we could have probably guessed at.
We need to look beyond basic financial reports to get an expert view on industry motivations, then we can really become a trusted advisor to our clients.
For instance, at the moment, retailers are going on the offensive despite the recession? why is this? How come they have such grand expansion plans? Well, tricky times offer larger, more stable players the opportunity to pick up cheap acquisitions when their less lucky counterparts go under. Secondly, real estate prices are at an all time low, allowing retailers to snap up bargains, and no one drives a again like a retailer.
Looking beyond the obvious information allows us to start to see market conditions from our clients’ perspective and make a call even before they have decided their next steps or growth strategy. We can start to guide and offer our expertise in their own industry segment, spotting opportunities for them to grow, as their growth and expansion will ultimately create more revenue and opportunity for your own solutions. Go beyond the competitor’s salesperson who thinks he is doing a stellar job by reading up on their customer’s financial statements.