When a computer business owner has decided to save money on IT sales leads by bringing inside sales in-house, the other big issue that needs to be consider is who’s going to coach and managed the inside marketing agents?  Once you have hired someone to make outbound calls for you then they will need to be coached and managed.  If the correct training is in place then someone in your company will have to coach your telemarketers to success.  Some important questions you might want to ask before moving forward would be, who is going to be the coach and what type of coaching will be required.  More importantly before you decide to in-source IT services marketing take a minute to consider what sort of time investment will be required. (more…)

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”  This is a quote from the most famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, who has ever been written about.  The one thing that really sets him apart is his innate deductive powers…  When it comes to marketing IT, employing the reasoning powers and logic of Sherlock Holmes might aid in finding the right path forward.  If you’re a computer business owner, then you have been faced with a blinding array of choices for IT services marketing.  The question is, what is the one  marketing avenue that remains after all the others have been eliminated?  The one IT lead generation service that remains,  has also been regarded as improbable.  Yet it must be the Truth!

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When you’re sitting around in the country during the summer time in the evening, you can usually hear the sound of the bug zappers going off  periodically ZAP, ZAP, ZAP!  When you look at the bug zapper you can usually see a swam of bugs hovering  around the bright light.  They almost seem as if they are hypnotized by the light and drawn into their deaths,  like a moth to the flame.  This makes me think about all the marketing calls I take with computer business owners looking for IT sales leads.  When they tell me the stories about how they have had so many failed telemarketing campaigns without getting any leads or sales, I can almost hear that same ZAP, ZAP, ZAP!  It’s the sound of IT services providers being drawn in by the lure of Cheap marketing services! (more…)

Imagine you’re lost in a scorching desert and your mouth is bone dry as the sun beats down on you.  All you can think about is getting some water when suddenly the heat exhaustion over comes you to the point that you begin to hallucinate a beautiful Oasis off in the distant sand dunes.  You race over to the Oasis and begin to excitedly ’splash’ water into your mouth until you realize, as you choke on sand, that this was just a mirage.  This is very similar to what managed services providers often experience as they search for more IT sales leads that have pain through various marketing strategies.  Most business owners don’t realize that there isn’t more prospects that have become fed up with their existing technology services, until after that conducted extensive search campaigns.  Some computer consultants are still chasing after this Mirage. (more…)

Recently I have a fascinating conversation with a computer business owner that was outside of the United States.  The reason I felt this was such an interesting conversation is because this computer consultant had received our pricing information before we had a conference call.  Normally, prospects that feel our pricing is too high simply either never call us back or just don’t come on the conference call that we have set up with them.  However, this owner did come on her conference call even though she felt our marketing prices was too high.  This tech was willing to listen to see if we could explain why our price was higher than expected.  As a result I gleaned some important information about how IT guys view how much they should pay for IT sales leads and how to help them change that view! (more…)

I heard a wild story a few years ago about some investor’s that got together to make money in the stock market.  Their investment strategy was simply hanging stock symbols on the wall and throwing darts blindly to see where they landed and then putting their money in those stocks.  This was reported in the news because these guys came out huge winners.  Now I am not advocating this extreme blind marketing concept however I am saying, “The best laid plans of mice and men often goes astray.”  In other words when you have a clear organized plan that you execute in an orderly fashion the world doesn’t always cooperate with you.  Unfortunately the world is not orderly but it’s completely random.  Therefore sometimes the best IT services marketing plan is to incorporate some randomness to reflect the world!

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I have been riding along with computer services providers all through out 2010 and have seen many different marketing presentations.   Some sales presentations have been spectacular while others have been dismal in nature.  One meeting that stands out in my mind was amazing because the prospect was literally shacking her head ‘yes’ and even clapped when these IT guys finished their pitch.  After we left this meeting we were all doing high fives in the elevator.  The one thing that I am sure we can all agree on is that how you present is just as important as what you’re presenting e.g. your model.  If you’re planning on getting higher results from an IT sales leads campaign, then you need to improve your presentation, no matter how good it might be now.  The big question is, what would constitute a killer presentation that could help you close 20% of your technology sales leads.

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One day, at a company I used to work for years ago, I bumped into one of the salesmen who was getting ready to go on of his closing sales leads.   While I was asking him some details about this potential sale, he let me know he had his ‘closing’ suit on and that he was going to use a certain ‘close’ to get the prospect to sign the agreement.  This is something I have even heard from IT salesmen… they have all these different closes.  They have even categorized them like the three question close, the alternative close, assumptive close etc…  While there might be some benefit to these tactics I think it takes the focus off what is most important and it has caused these closes to take on a mythical status. What is the most important element that a computer business owner should focus their attention on to close a technology marketing opportunity?

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Yes I know that Hieroglyphics and Greek are two different things, but I think both represent things that are incomprehensible to most people.  So the question that I wanted to raise is something that most computer consultants have probably asked themselves, “Should I use ‘tech talk’ on my IT services marketing calls?”  I think it’s a really good question because some IT guys may think that talking “geek speak” might impress upon their prospects that they really understand technology.  Others my come to the conclusion that talking over the heads of their potential customers might hinder the sales process.  I might be able to shed some light on this controversy because I recently went on one of our IT sales leads with a customer who was solidly in the camp that  believes in talking geek speak to prospects.

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“This company just doesn’t have the budget to afford our services!” This is a comment I hear from time to time from computer business owners after they have run one of our appointments, were they were marketing IT services.  I often ask if the prospect directly said that they didn’t have a budget and most of the time computer consultants respond that they could just ‘tell’ from the look of the end users building or by how the employees looked at that company.  I often wonder if they have x-ray vision to see into the books of the businesses they are visiting or if they can read minds.  One time I had a technology firm refuse to pay for a sales lead because they said the prospect didn’t have a budget.  Therefore I ended up giving this exact same lead to another computer repair business, who reported back that they had sold the account! (more…)