Case study: Regal IT

It wasn't always like that. Until 2006, Regal had been all over the place, targeting everyone including small to medium sized businesses.

Despite the growth in that sector, the company wasn't getting anywhere so it decided to focus. Instead of trying to be all things to all people, Regal defined its market and business poured in.

Regal managing director Mark Gluckman says: "When we decided to stick to our knitting, our business took off by 20 percent, just by focusing on what we do best, focusing on the market that appreciated the value that we offered and by partnering with other companies that do what they do best as well.

"The amount of work you put into a $10,000 deal is the same as the amount of work you put into a $100,000 deal."

With a workforce of just 25, and a four-member sales team, Regal is punching well above its weight. It has a long list of partnerships that includes such companies as software provider Citrix, Cisco, Symantec, Novell and Brocade. Regal is also a Microsoft gold certified partner.

The company offers IT solutions, services and, most importantly, consulting for the banking and finance sector, government, utilities, healthcare, non-profits, the agriculture and resources sector, call centres and education (it was the core integrator in the virtualisation of Macquarie University's  labs enabling their global access by students and staff.)

Part of the key to its sales success is the ability to walk away from a sale. While some competitors will say yes to everything for fear of losing a sale, Regal sees more value in focusing on the long term.

"When a customer is just shopping around for pricing, we walk away because we know we add no value and we would rather focus on the customers who appreciate the value of our service and who are prepared to work with us as a partner,'' Gluckman says.

"It's very much on the basis of us becoming a trusted advisor.

"We work on the premise that if you have a good accountant and a good lawyer, you need a good technologist to advise you on your infrastructure as well.  It doesn't mean that with every conversation you are going to make a sale but when something does come your way you become the advisor.

"So for example, you work with universities to take a solution to tender and help them save $100,000 on their hardware infrastructure. We will be the advisors to take them and help them evaluate the infrastructure and help them install and implement and save money on the hardware. We build a relationship.

"Then they come to us and say, you did for that for the library, can you do that for another department?

"We are the trusted advisor, we are part of their team," says Gluckman.

This creates a business model that includes consulting services, level one support and maintenance agreements, all ensuring recurring revenue is coming in each month. It is a model that delivers in a climate when projects are scarce.

"You have a good model that covers your costs and the project becomes the cherry on top,'' Gluckman says. "If you have a support contract, you don't worry as you have recurring revenue coming in through the door."

Apart from the rigorous focus and expansion of the reseller model into areas that keep the money coming in, the company also works hard training its sales staff. Teams are rewarded with good working conditions, commission and base salaries at vendor levels.

Sales people are trained to target executives at the top, at chief information officer and chief financial officer level. Specialists are trained to approach sales differently. Sales work requires a completely different skill set, not just product knowledge.

"They always want to tell people how clever they are," Gluckman says, "whereas you go to a doctor and you know how clever he is and he won't tell you anything. He'll ask you a whole lot of questions, diagnose your problem and put you on a course of action. We train our people to have the same approach with customers."

Part of the new skill set is asking the right questions. That includes the hard questions.

"Under the old model, we will give you a show and tell, we will give you presentation, show what we do and give you features and benefits,'' he says.

"We won't get into a features and benefits discussion until we have worked out the problem, whether it is worthwhile us getting together, do they have a budget, how important is it to the company, how long have they had the problem and what are we going to do about it. We take the customer through all these questions before we get to a presentation."

So how hard is it to retrain specialists and experts? "It's painful,'' he says. "These technologists are just so used to standing there telling people how clever they are. You have to use shock therapy."

That shock therapy has Regal working with their behaviour, attitudes and techniques, letting them make mistakes by sending them into customers and debriefing them later.

It also means having everyone in the company selling and constantly assessing the business model, seeing how to make it work better