Please remove my handcuffs they hurt (my sales)

Understanding your customers needs, challenges and objectives is the first step to selling a solution.  I am not sure how many times we, as an industry, forget that.  


I have been asked to give a talk several times that focuses on how to increase the solution sales traction in a company.  The presentation is universally well received.  The reason, I believe (based on the feedback I have been given), for the success of the message is this:
"The challenge has been identified over years of research, the message is clear, concise and in terms the target audience can understand."


This has lead me to the recognition that the most important thing we can do to sell solutions is understand our customers needs completely.  Not partially, not kind-of, not almost 100%, but completely.  I realize this is easier said than done but it is not too hard either.  It's not as though you need to understand every aspect of your customer as well as they do, but you do need to demonstrate your understanding of the aspects of what you impact well enough so your customer can trust you.

What we have found in our research is, most of the time the challenges to doing boil down to the same thing...

A Matter of Responsibility

I was reading an article today that said layoff's in the tech sector have reached a 3 year high for the first half of this year.  This is a trend I hate to see continue.  I know many people affected by these layoffs and I am hopeful for their speedy entry back into the productive job force.  Now onto the actual post...


For those companies who make money the old fashioned way... Your sales people are your channel to market, without them there are no sales.  I see so many tech companies laying off their sales people right now and I wonder, how do you reach the customers those reps reached?  I know, so reps under-perform and some hit incredibly difficult dry spells.  That's the nature of sales, not everyone can be a rain-maker.  But still, if those reps are your channel to market and they are no longer there, how do you maintain or grow your market penetration?

Things go better with cloud

I just read a thought provoking blog post about the impact of cloud computing.  The gist of the article is that the more jobs that get outsourced to the cloud, the worse the job market and thus the economy will become.  At face value this kind of doom and gloom prediction is understandable.  In my opinion the article takes a single non-evolving viewpoint and tries to turn it into reality.  The truth is people adapt and change and those who don't become extinct.  Clinging to the old ways is a recipe for failure.  Learning from the old ways and improving on them is the only way we can make real progress.  I can cite a very solid example of how outsourcing to "The Cloud" has created more jobs and opportunity for the the majority of the world, read on to see it.