Back from a week on the road – my last stop was at the Grand Geneva Resort & Spa in Lake Geneva, WI.  Saturday night I met with over 30 sales people and their guests to talk about industry trends and sales relevance in the coming five years…If you’re watching the trends you know that Big Data, BYOD &Mobility, Cloud Technologies, and Social Business are all growing in popularity.  My message centered around these topics and what kinds of presentations, data, and ideas are attracting CIOs and CISOs right now.

You can’t just sell disk…you must be able to talk Big Data!  You don’t necessarily need the application to have the discussion.  You do need to understand the applications and need within the organizations you call on.  If you still don’t hear you clients talking about big data – chances are you are stuck at the IT/influencer level.  In my talk I encouraged sales people to do 5 things:

1. Start thinking in terms of reducing risk and enabling greater productivity – not negotiating on price.

2. Seek out the asset owners – find the people who are shareholders or big producers and discover their needs.

3. Market through education – not manipulation.

4. Become an expert in either risk or operational efficiency – simply by learning the sound bites (discussed in an earlier post).

5. Propose results – not products.

These are simple things to do – things that every technology sales person should be doing.  You can read more about them in my book  titled: From Vendor to Adviser…available right here in my store or available through Amazon in soft cover or kindle.

© 2013, David Stelzl