Misconception #1: All Service Providers were created equal Reality: All Services are different. Consequence for sales. Only spend your sales efforts on those SPs who can combine/include your Value Proposition to strengthen/enrich their own Value Proposition and the combined Value Proposition is relevant and meaningful to SP’s target customers. Misconception #2: Service Providers know what [...]
What’s the difference between Change and Transformation? Aren’t they really the same thing? Let’s start out by defining Change and Transformation and understanding where they are, I believe, fundamentally different. Change Change is moving from an existing state to a new or different state. The challenge with change is to avoid returning to the initial [...]
Sell the Problem, Not the Solution. Sell the Disaster, Not Disaster Recovery. This may seem counter-intuitive, misguided or just plain wrong so let's start out by asking a more fundamental question. Why do people buy? Answer. For 1 of 2 reasons: To avoid Problems they don't want. (PAIN) To get Results they don't have. (GAIN) Where [...]
When I first read that Microsoft was making it easier to develop, test, and deploy blockchain applications on Azure, I was excited. Here is this new, transformational technology being made more accessible. Immediately, however, I realized that applications and services using blockchain faced some of the same pitfalls of cloud services, at least where sales [...]
“Successful people start before they feel ready.” - attributed to Sir Richard Branson I like to ask groups that I am working with which is the more important: Strategy or Execution? This always results in a highly animated discussion about why strategy is the more important of the two. If the strategy is not in place to [...]
In the massively expanding world of virtualised services how can Cloud Service Providers stand out from the crowd and demonstrate that they are materially different? And secondly, how do you explain that your material differences are vital and critical for customer success? This is the dilemma today facing Leaders and Senior Executives at Cloud Service [...]
• Your channel is an extension of your sales capability, not an extension of your marketing department • The channel supports, services and fulfils customer demand • Channels rely on the Vendor to invest in the brand, develop brand awareness, create demand, generate sales momentum and develop new market opportunities • Building buzz, creating a Tipping [...]
“The future ain't what it used to be.” - Yogi Berra We are in a period of massively disruptive and unprecedented change. One of the first victims of massive and disruptive change for many businesses today is certainty. There just doesn't seem to be enough certainty left in the world to go around. More than ever before we are [...]
Customer Adoption is the ultimate measure of Return On Investment. Period! I hear a lot of people talking about ‘Time to Market’, but I don’t think that this is what they really want to achieve. “Great, we have our new offer in market, but the channels aren't familiar with it.....yet", or "customers cannot find it [...]
The old rule in sales ABC “Always Be Closing” has passed its use by date. Today ABC would serve us better if it stood for “Always Be Changing”. And this rate of change has never been more challenging for Sales and Marketing because business as usual has come to a sudden end as power has [...]
