Will It Take a Miracle?
I’m looking for a miracle! A couple of weeks ago a company contacted me for some assistance with a proposal that they had received for a “phone system” for one of their 20+ remote offices. I told them I’d look at the proposal and give them my thoughts. When I saw the proposal, my first thought was “What the heck is this reseller thinking?” My second thought was, “Don’t they ever learn?” Will it take a miracle to get resellers to act as sales professionals instead of used car salesmen?
More than ten years ago, I began working with data VARs and telecom dealers who were interested in changing their business models to address the new opportunities being offered by “CTI” (computer telephony integration)….. then VoIP…. and now “UC” (unified communications). One of the areas we focused on over the years was the sales process for those in the reseller channel. It’s well documented that too many resellers sell product, not business solutions, contributing to low margins and low revenue overall. Oh, some of these resellers claim they’re selling VoIP or UC “solutions” because they integrate several products to create a “solution” – but we know this isn’t solution selling. It isn’t focused on addressing a customer’s specific business needs – it’s focused on selling products. And too many reseller proposals reflect this product focus, to their detriment, not to mention to their customers’ detriment.
Here’s the perfect example of a product-focused proposal that is a lost sale in the making….follow me on this one. The proposal looked professional and had lots of info about why a customer wants to do business with this particular reseller. It talked about relationships and trust. It talked about excellent service. It described the product/phone system that the reseller recommended for this customer. It gave a bottom line price for the system. And all of this from a reseller that I had recommended because I considered them to be way above the norm in professionalism and understanding consultative/solution selling.
But what the proposal didn’t do – and should have in a true consultative/solution selling environment – was address the customer’s specific issues and questions. Nowhere in the proposal did the reseller indicate that they understood the customer’s business overall, much less their communication strategy. Nowhere did the reseller indicate why they were proposing this particular product to this particular customer. Why not product A or B instead of product C? Nowhere did the reseller talk about how the end-users would actually benefit from having the proposed product in their office, or how management would benefit by selecting and installing the product? Needless to say, the prospective customer was left with a lot of questions and a lack of confidence in the reseller, which is too bad because that prospect was looking to the reseller to help them develop a long term voice and data (UC) strategy that would address all of their remote offices plus their headquarters.
On my own website, in a more recent White Paper directed to vendors, I discuss the economic prospects for those resellers who have committed their business to consultative/solution selling versus the prospects for those resellers who still insist on focusing on product.
Was the situation described here a blown opportunity? Probably! I’m still waiting for the miracle that will turn low margins into higher margins and small sales into bigger sales….. the miracle that will only come when the reseller channel learns how to perform even a basic consultative sale.