Selling Cloud Services in the Digital Era

Sales teams need to move on from past hard selling techniques to one in which the customer is put at the core of the selling process.

Over the past few years, an increasing number of companies have started to go through changes to modernize their business inside out. Digital transformation is intensifying in the business world, and the sheer volume and pace of the technological change already occurring is pressing more businesses to introduce new digital capabilities in order to address the emerging challenges they are facing.

In this context, Cloud computing is becoming the standard way of doing business, and is widely utilized by companies to drive innovation and achieve their digitalization goals. However, companies soon realize after starting their modernization journey that taking a digital-first approach is not just about incorporating new technologies that their teams can use to digitize old processes. It is a profound organizational shift that also requires adapting to a new way of selling.

Cloud sales as a revenue accelerator for IT vendors

If you are selling IT services, transforming your business by making the digital move is an opportunity to respond to the market evolution and the changing needs of your existing and future customers. When looking at growth rates or target achievement throughout the industry, the same picture is typically found: traditional IT sales are on a downwards trend and a growing number of IT vendors are already reinventing their businesses in order to take the digital journey, adopting the Cloud to raise their profile above the pack.

Cloud sales have become a revenue accelerator for service providers. This involves changing the overall value proposition and the sales approach, which is not easy. When a company has a great portfolio of Cloud solutions, it needs to learn how to produce real sales growth from it to accelerate revenue.

For your company to achieve this, ensure this approach is included in your preparations. Your sales team should do more specialized ongoing training, be more proactive in using digital services to interact with customers, become an industry expert, and start incorporating Cloud-related topics in your “traditional” sales conversations. Many of your clients and prospects are eager to learn more about how the Cloud can help them.

Digitizing the buyer-sales relationship

IT sales opportunities have exponentially increased thanks to digital innovation. However, the mechanics of complex buying and selling IT services has also changed significantly, making outbound selling insufficient to address the needs and expectations of the modern Cloud buyer.

If you want to drive purchase and adoption for your Cloud services, one of the first changes you will need to undertake is to embrace the digital transformation journey across your sales organization. This means that your sales team will need to shift mindset, moving on from past hard selling techniques to one in which added value is given to the customer experience and the relationship, through a variety of digital channels.

Lately, there has been a tendency towards the digitization of the buyer-sales relationship online, which has resulted in a lot of buzz around “social selling” as a way to leverage the seller’s social network to find the right prospects, build trusted relationships and, ultimately, achieve sales goals. If you are new to this sales technique and would like to find out more, you can check out this LinkedIn guide.

Seamless selling across the broad organization

Being a social seller is an important part of the B2B sales story, but there is another interesting concept that talks about “seamless selling” throughout the organization, in which traditional department silos such as Marketing, Sales, Product or Customer Service are aligned and proactively use digital to meet customers wherever they may engage with the organization.

Digital enables seamless selling. However, creating this buying experience for customers in the digital era is not an easy task. As the report The Transformation of Selling (Alimeter, 2017) cites, historically almost every company divides the complex selling process among departments with specialized skills that results into silos that are hard to break. To create this digital transformation, organizations must undergo transitions in three areas: platform integration, organization, and culture.

While digital technologies may drive the transformation, the strategic focus for sales teams and the broader organization must include a change in culture, a new type of leadership and the willingness to question the status quo of the company at many levels. All of this is aimed at enhancing the relationship with the client providing real value through various digital channels and transforming every sales, marketing or services interaction by putting customers at the core of the selling process.

Would you like to learn how the DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND THE CLOUD OPPORTUNITY is changing the IT business world? Are you interested in understanding how to transform your customers’ datacentre with AZURE INFRASTRUCTURE and close more deals?

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