Learning everything you can about your customer’s needs:
- Helps you recommend the best solution.
- Helps you differentiate your recommendations from the competition.
- Helps your distributor build a custom proposal for you to sell and close.
Learn the “process of discovery” to:
- Identify customer needs.
- Position yourself as their best IT consultant.
- Nurture the prospect toward a successful sale.
Process of Discovery
Start with the big Picture:
- Get a clear picture of their business and what the company does. (I go out and research their company and information they require for their customers.)
- Learn about their high-level business needs and pains.
- Talk about the competition.
- Discuss their view of how IT solutions could help drive their business.
- Review their current IT assets, licenses, and infrastructure.
Get the details:
- Confirm the number of desktop PC users.
- Inventory current licenses, including OEM, retail, and volume licensing agreements.
- Inquire about payment preferences, and their interest in financing options. (Would it be helpful to minimize up-front costs?)
- How do they typically develop their IT budgets?
- Is their purchasing centralized, or do many employees order IT equipment and licenses?
- Get their “wish list” of software they need – or want.
- Talk about their ideal level of maintenance and ongoing support.
Take the long view:
- Encourage your customers to rely on you as the single, most well-informed source of information about technology products and services.
- Reinforce that IT investments can top more commonly listed corporate assets, lay the groundwork for a Software Asset management service agreement.
- Help them plan for the future – by communicating how this solution can be the first of many solutions that you can provide to solve their business needs.
- Walk them through the strategic steps they needs to take as an organization so that their employees have the tools they need to do their best work.