Storage conversation in the mid-market
Terry Beale gives his view on how to sell storage to the mid-market
For many VARs, the mid-market is the backbone of their sales business.
The technical skills of mid-market customers can vary from the highly competent to the enthusiastically amateur. So no one sales approach will work every time.
Understand what type of customer you are dealing with – an experienced buyer of technology, or an inexperienced one. It is a basic point that can make the difference between a deal won and a deal lost.
An experienced buyer will have been involved in a fairly large-scale enterprise IT procurement before, whether it be storage, networking, applications or whatever.
The key is that they understand the complexity and intricacies of the offerings you are discussing with them, including how to optimise application performance within the enterprise.
The sales process for such buyers is specific; they must be able to demonstrate an understanding of their application needs – whether they want to use storage to reduce the cost of their applications, increase their speed or enhance their security, for example.
Sales staff must learn how to take an application-specific approach with the tech-savvy buyer, and of course the vendor can help here.
For inexperienced buyers, the approach is completely different. Such buyers typically want an easy to use offering that will help them fulfil their business needs.
Resellers need to demonstrate they can deliver this. A great way to do this is through demo centres or virtual product evaluation – creating a space for self-service, hands-on experience with products.
Often, a less experienced buyer will buy storage at the time he or she buys a server. This is more likely to happen with a partner they trust.
The importance of resellers developing strong relationships locally cannot be overstated. It is often the major deciding factor behind a sale.
The right vendor partner will be able to provide resources to help fulfil the sale, such as consultancy, testimonials and reference cases, as well access to labs and demonstration events.
Vendors can sometimes provide a full work profile analysis to learn where the main application challenges are at the customer, and show how they can improve performance.
The main pitfall for resellers in the mid-market is, in my view, misjudging your sales pitches. If your audience is not technical, do not try and sell feature sets; in my experience, the prospect will shut down the conversation and go to a reseller that talks on their level.
A prospect with a more technical background must be convinced, on the other hand, that a reseller understands his or her business challenges. But the reseller should only talk about relevant feature sets, as veering off on a tangent may also lose you the customer.
If resellers take the time to understand customer technical knowledge and business challenges and have the vendor support where needed, cracking the mid-market should not be difficult.
Put the customers at the centre of the sales process and converse with them on the right level, and engage early with the vendor, setting out who will be responsible for what.
Terry Beale is UK channel director at EMC