Whatever the size organisation, the reality is technology buyers plan strategic investments at least a year in advance of their budgets being allocated.
They start building their knowledge base on potential suppliers long before they're ready to buy and yet, many vendors favour quarterly based activities such as telemarketing and event registrations, because that's the only way they can tick 'ROI' boxes.
The result? A spreadsheet of names representing only a snapshot in time where -
- the buyer - is mercilessly hunted down by phone, email, and now LinkedIn to commit to a meeting because they happen to be on a database.
- the vendor - encourages poor engagement by the reseller so they can "measure" results.
- the reseller/MSP - starts from "cold" (even with existing customers) 6-8 weeks before an activity and has to complete in a quarter
There's no end-to-end visibility for anyone involved in the sales cycle and a whole bunch of potential buyers turned off by oppressive sales techniques.
We're not saying any of these tactics are wrong, just that they need to be done in a different order and backed with intelligence and analytics to build relationships rather than fulfill a speed date.
The answer, Amigo? Multi-disciplined resource, automated systems and analytics as an end-to-end managed service.
