5 Predictions for IT Sales Strategies in 2013

Traditional sales strategies do still work in some limited capacity. Everyone who touches the sales process for your organization—this is everyone—needs to understand what it is that you bring to your audience, what makes that audience tick, and how the sales cycle works. During the course of 2013, this is going to become more obvious, and you’ll need to make sure that you’re:

#1 Moving Away From Transaction-Based Marketing and Sales

Transaction-based marketing and sales are still relevant to a few products—apps for instance—but if you provide services or are looking for repeat business then embracing relationship marketing and sales is necessary.

#2 Taking On More of a Mentoring / Coaching Role

If your goal is to be an outsourced CIO or CTO for your clients, then you have to be the go-to resource, and there is no better way to engender this than by adopting a mentoring/coaching role with them.

#3 Adopting a Value-Based Pricing Model

I’ve covered the need to adopt this pricing strategy before; it’s time to reevaluate the basis on which you set your rates.

#4 Aligning Your Value Proposition, Business Culture, and Key Messaging

All of the above need to align or you will confuse your audience, your staff, and undermine your marketing and sales efforts. This is the key to becoming a customer-centric social business.

#5 Personalizing Your Messaging

Segmenting your lists is more important than ever. Inundating people with bland, irrelevant, and general marketing and sales messages is not going to get you anywhere. You need to tailor your messaging to make it relevant to the reader. The CRM that you use must allow you to do this; if it doesn’t, you might want to look at changing it. 

To resonate with your audience in 2013 and beyond you have to make sure that your IT sales strategies embrace the relationship rather than focusing on the transaction. The five suggestions above will move you in this direction.

If there’s one book this year that will help you to move your sales strategies forward even further it’s To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others by Daniel Pink. Not only does this book cover the big idea, but it also drills down to the actions that you need to take to embrace relationship marketing/sales. 

Are you moving your business in this direction already? If so, share your experiences with us in the Comments section. 

And to follow-through on the tips introduced in this short article, be sure to download your free copy of the special report on 7 IT Sales Secrets for Attracting High-Lifetime-Value Clients.  

Creative Commons Image Source: flickr tiswango