IT Sales: It?s All About Relationships

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 28th, 2010

Developing the bond and the relationship with your clients is very important. In this article, you'll learn how your relationships are your assets with IT sales. It's not about the size of your customer list necessarily. It's not even about the revenue. It's about the longevity and the long-term relationships you build with your customers.

When you're talking about your ideal clients, the lifetime value could be well in the six-figure range, so it's well worth your time to really get to know the owners and the partners of the companies you want to work with. The time you invest in this relationship-building is well worth it in the long run.

IT Sales: Managing Customer Expectations

If you handle sales initially, you don't have to worry that the salesperson you're sending there will change a couple of times a year and you're starting all over again. Receivable experts often report how salespeople often grossly misrepresent the capabilities of an organization just to get the signed deal. And of course that comes back to bite you much later because you have a huge problem with managing expectations. Building a personal relationship with your customers at the beginning of the IT sales process prevents this.

Personally Train your IT Sales Staff

Typically, most of the consultants that we work with get very actively involved in generating the leads and closing the sales in the early stages of growing their consulting and their services business. Once this becomes more routine, once you have five or 10 really good solid clients on your roster that are generating together anywhere $5,000 to $15,000 a month in services, then it may be time to start having someone tag along with you to some of these IT sales calls. Only at this point should you consider delegating it. It's time-consuming, but it's a really important part of the future of your business with IT services

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