Adapting to on-demand consumption

Guests:
Darren Gore CalibreOne
Stephen Knights Commulynx
Itzik Gur Insentra
Nathan Belling Insync Technology
David Norris Nortec
Ray Ng Onel
Jay Newcomb onPlatinum
Shannon Overs onPlatinum
Mark Oh Seagate
Jason McClure Sliced Tech
Karl Thompson StorageCraft
Don Williams Veeam
Moderator: Nate Cochrane CRN

Don Williams, Veeam:
Seldom can you teach the customer because they did their research and sales people can’t fool technical people. Where you may re-educate them is how your solution builds a better outcome. And so before we meet the customer we must have content to lead them to our solution. And other people write the best content: channel partners, evangelists and bloggers.

Jason McClure, SlicedTech:
We found it powerful for our prospects to hear from our customers independently about what we did for them. [Written] case studies are challenging but you get best results if you remove yourself and get an independent to pull it together with the customer.

Nathan Belling, Insync Technology:
We went through that journey three years ago, and wrote a lot of challenging content. But we started with the outcome, looked at the metrics, and how can we challenge that future customer? And then how do we get the named customer in the case study to also use our content? Content is critical to get net-new business, but it’s hard to measure a sale from it.

Karl Thomson, StorageCraft:
We do a lot of live demonstrations, webinars and face-to-face, real world demos so people see us in action. We show how quickly they can recover a machine. We also have a YouTube channel.

Ray Ng, Onel:
We partner with managed service providers and although they like how we build their equipment architecture we found it’s better for us to stay on board. We tell the end-customer we’re building this but we’re going to stay close to the MSP, to the point that they escalate to us. There’s no barrier. And it reassures the MSP because we can re-architect, extend, enhance, and migrate their infrastructure.

Darren Gore, Calibre One:
Our biggest partnership is with Telstra where we have a close relationship with its Northern Territory account-management team and leverage that to their 300 customers spanning about $30 million. Telstra has trust in regional areas that we leverage to build market share to about 65%. So, while IT vendor relationships are very important, our core supplier relationship with Telstra enables us to put solutions in front of customers. It’s one of the key successes in terms of our growth.

Ray Ng:
If we can talk with a stakeholder of a tender, we try to understand why the tender was raised. You learn that what’s in the tender may not be a requirement; they just felt like they had to list something. When you respond, you’re actually more compliant to the business’ need than the actual tender.

Jason McClure:
When we’ve got a better solution we respond to give them an option to choose us. We spend more effort explaining why what they asked for won’t work because they had poor advice internally. This is particularly important with government because they don’t get resources prior to procurement for due diligence.

Mark Oh, Seagate:
Our solutions engineers help our reseller partners win tenders. And we preference partners who engage regularly. End users and government will also approach us and we find a partner who we trust to respond. I look at it and say, “These partners are specialising in this area, and these other partners are better for these sort of solutions”. It also helps to let us know straight away if there’s a big opportunity so we can ensure a pipeline of supply.

Nathan Belling:
So in a scenario where one of your partners has brought that opportunity or worked on it for the last six months and then the government department goes and drops tender on everyone’s lap, do you protect that?

Mark Oh:
Our policy is first in, first served because I have to protect the customer; that comes first. But generally those partners who come to us first, we’ve been working with them for a very, very long time and have done the introduction to those key end-users.

Don Williams:
It is frustrating as a vendor: you see a partner put a lot of work into developing an opportunity. Then the customer goes out, requests quotes and those partners that haven’t done anything say they might as well put it at one or two points margin. At the end of the day the customer decides who they buy from.

Stephen Knights, Commulynx:
Our vendors respect our position and look deeper at any deal brought to them. Because there are a lot of organisations that, at the first whiff of anything, run straight to deal registration. But resellers have to exercise vendor relationships, so vendors will listen when you challenge a deal. Typically, there’s prior activity situation they’re aware of; joint sales activity.

Jason McClure:
We’ve seen it where vendors don’t do the qualification and give best price to the first in. So some parties will deal reg everything on the government’s forward procurement plan regardless they’re in a position to do it or not.

David Norris, Nortec:
We’ve got very good relationships with schools and we introduced a vendor to the school. We proposed a quote. The vendor went back and did a deal reg for us and a day later the school had someone else knocking saying the vendor sent them. I had words with the vendor who apologised. But we had to cut 10 percent margin on that deal. The school was honest with us because we’ve had a relationship with them for 10 years.

Stephen Knights:
We switched from technology-led to leading with sales; our growth is now product-based. The biggest part of the journey was transitioning from me selling to building a sales team. We went backwards for two years, and now three years into transformation I have an effective sales team, and vendors lining up to engage.

Nathan Belling:
We went on the journey with a single product about 18 months ago. That is now 40 percent of our revenue. We launched it with a webinar of about 70 people and before it was over we had four people call us to enquire. That wasn’t selling anything new; it was just selling it in a different way. That was the light bulb moment for me. It was just having an offer that intrigued someone.

Jay Newcomb, onPlatinum:
We provide something that adds value to people in our database. We have an event coming up on business performance in 2017. We connect as many people as we can, because when they are looking for a product they’ll come back to us. Similar to our conference: it’s giving business value to people who attend.

Shannon Overs, onPlatinum:
We leverage the accountant, who is traditionally a business’ trusted adviser. IT reselling is all about transparency and honesty. We’re not a transactional business and we focus on outcomes, are honest and transparent in selling; that’s where we gain trust.

Ray Ng:
The customer wants you to be the first person they talk to, because they don’t want to sit there and whiteboard why they’re in this situation and where they go next. They just go, “We finally have the fund to do this. Give us advice.” Because just that is going to take a long time.

Stephen Knights:
A trusted adviser is he who doesn’t know they’re selling, or the customer doesn’t realise they’re being sold to. The relationship is so thick that no one knows that the sales-speak is happening and the transaction is forming around it. They’re just educating and a solution pops out the other end: there’s a quote, an outcome, and it’s less competitive.

David Norris:
I’m very much about open management. I don’t pay engineers commissions, I simply pay them very well and a lot of my guys have been with me in excess of 15 years. And in every fortnight sales meeting I share sales figures for the whole company and have an open discussion with everyone. I recently took five key members away on a three-day comedy cruise, which they loved. Staff really appreciate open management because they know where we stand.

Itzik Gur, Insentra:
If people understand why we do things, and why we ask them to do things, they are more likely to follow. We also ask their opinion. We include them in the journey in their different roles. And we have KPIs, even for engineers. They’re not about getting a bonus for doing your job, but if you do go the extra mile, then you get a bonus. This is typically around professional development, so if you do more to further your career you get a bonus because we get new benefit. It’s not about billable work because that’s beyond their control.