Selling IT Consulting Services – Why Hiring Asher Consultancy Services Will Help You Sell More

Selling IT consulting services can be very lucrative, but it is very complex and dynamic field. This is being made more so with clients increasingly choosing cloud-based solutions, placing control of networks further away from internal IT personnel and more into the hands of third parties.

As a result, salespeople in this field have to navigate IT footprints which are spread far and wide across several vendors, and include rapidly developing technology for the enterprise such as mobile devices, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), virtualization, open source, and hybrid cloud networks.

Challenges in selling IT consulting services

Apart from the complexity of the IT landscape itself, another challenge for salespeople is that the benefits of IT consulting are often intangible. You cannot physically touch “reduced cycles” or “improved latency,” for example, yet these are very important in an ever-connected enterprise.

Because of this, customers might not understand how IT consulting services provide value, especially when comparing managed IT services to the old break/fix model still in place in many firms (“when it breaks, our IT guy comes and fixes it”).

To combat this, there are several things which can be done when selling IT consulting services:

• Raise awareness on the ramifications of network down time and latency issues, especially for businesses working with Big Data
• Offer a trial, and generate a monthly report giving a broad, high-level overview of actions taken and the health of the network, making your service and value quantifiable
• Take over the IT pie a slice at a time. For example, offer a MDM (Mobile Device Management) tool first, then move into bigger parts of the business once you prove your competence
• Demonstrate the peace of mind that comes with having a corporate network monitored and kept free from intrusion by an external set of eyes
• Show how a subscription-based IT consulting service provides a fixed, predictable outlay, compared with paying for data recovery in the event of a catastrophe, and possible legal claims should customer data be compromised due to lax security monitoring

Another challenge in how buyers view IT services is their suspicion that they willbe tied up for years with any solution they buy — which is often true. This makesthem cautious when choosing a vendor, as they seek to avoid a wrong solution that will potentially cost millions of dollars and be difficult to extricate themfrom.

• Salespeople should be prepared to hear fears of being “locked-in”, and tailor their offering to minimize the risk in the eyes of the prospect

Finally, effectively selling IT consulting services requires a degree of technical knowledge. For the non-technically minded salesperson, this can leave them feeling outmatched by the buyer.

• Sales consultants should team up a technical person at sales meetings and in designing sales presentations, as this can be a great way to avoid being caught flat-footed when the buyer asks technical questions

Asher Strategies helps firms selling IT consulting services discover and close more opportunities

When training salespeople who sell complex IT consulting solutions, Asher emphasizes the importance of being a trusted consultant throughout the sales process.

An IT services salesperson’s approach should reflect a keen ability to listen and problem-solve, and in fact often reflects directly on the service the buyer will be getting by the technical staff once signed up. In other words, IT consulting service salespeople become walking examples of the solution they are presenting to buyers.

This makes the consultant approach that Asher Strategies specializes in the perfect way to train them.

Asher’s training methodology stresses solution-based selling and formal sales processes to gauge the best approach to selling complex solutions like IT services. With these, your sales team will approach each deal prepared with a comprehensive plan to walk away with the contract.

This matches the way most firms buy IT services — a careful, measured approach which ensures all angles are covered before a commitment is made.

With Asher training, your IT consulting services salespeople will be able to better integrate into the buying process and provide the right answers to buyer concerns all along the way.

Contact us today to tailor-make an effective training solution for your IT consulting services sales team.