Who We Are and How We Operate – Part 2 The Sales Team
Last week we looked at a general overview of the company, our background, and what CompleteCloud offers that no other competitor on the market does. If you haven’t read that post you can do so here. Although it isn’t necessary, the first article will help give you some context as to what we are going to be going into today, our sales process.
How People Purchase Has Changed
How individuals and businesses buy products has shifted and changed a number of times over the last 30 years. Consumers are more educated on any given product than ever before. With the explosion of the internet consumers have so much more knowledge going into a purchasing decision and have thousands of resources available that have already tested, reviewed, and vetted a product or service that they are looking to utilize.
Take buying a new car for example. In the 90s you still had to go to the dealership and get a salesmen to give you information about what vehicles were available and what would be the best vehicle for your family or situation. All the power was in the hands of the car dealership, you trusted they would give you trust worthy and reliable information. Now a 16 year old kid can walk into a dealership and provide a list of vehicles, trim levels, package options, model years, etc and can have a good idea of what they want and why; with stats and thousands of reviews to back up their purchasing decision. Car salesmen now know this is how consumers buy today and provide a much more consultative approach, lending their expertise as needed because their clientele is substantially more knowledgeable than years prior.
How Business Buy IT Today
How businesses buy new products and services is no different. Businesses might not know all the nitty gritty details of what they need in an IT environment, but they know enough to understand what their current needs require to keep their business up and running. Too often businesses make IT a technical decision, when in all reality they should be making a business decision about technology. Technology shouldn’t be an afterthought or just a small piece of the puzzle to keeping their business running. Technology should be a foundation for making their business run smoothly and efficiently, helping grow your company or scale it down as needed.
IT Purchasing Shouldn’t be a Technical Decision, but a Business Decision
That is one of the core principles of our sales process, helping businesses understand that you should be making a business decision about IT. Our sales consultants work to help you understand the role technology plays in your business and if properly leveraged, how it can transform the success of your company.
At Avatara we understand the role technology should play in a company and for almost 15 years we’ve been helping businesses understand how to radically improve the efficiency, scalability, and in turn the profitability of their company by leveraging technology to their advantage. Now we’ll look at the 3 steps our sales consultants take to walk a prospective customer through our entire sales process.
A Consultative Approach to IT
The Sales Process
Step – The First Meeting
The first focus our solutions consultants dive into is what existing IT pains you are experiencing, if there are any upcoming hardware purchases or software upgrades that you considering, and what types of enhancements to your technology could make you more productive as an organization.
From that information if your business looks to be a good fit for our CompleteCloud solution we’ll move forward to presenting the solution. While we want every business to experience the incredible advantages of CompleteCloud, some business just aren’t a fit and we’ll let you know up front so not to waste any of your time.
They will walk through a 30 minute presentation that goes into the details of CompleteCloud, add on products, and how leveraging CompleteCloud can lay the foundation to reaching your business’ specific needs and goals.
Step 2 – Comprehensive Assessment
If CompleteCloud looks to be a solution that can a help alleviate a current pain, purchase, or productivity problem, the next step is our comprehensive assessment. This assessment goes through every aspect of how your business uses technology, including a Total Cost of Ownership to help understand what you are spending today, and what your specific needs would be from us. As our solutions consultants are walking you through each section, they’ll be discussing recommendations for what would be best for your business and listening to your feedback and questions.
Many technology providers will just give you what you want, but what you want may not necessarily be the best solution for you. We aren’t afraid to push you and let you know that what you want, we can provide, but after thousands of users, we know it’s not going to accomplish what you’re hoping it will.
Once your consultant collects all the information they need they will spend the next couple days putting together a tailored solution and proposal specific to your business.
Step 3 – Proposal
The next meeting you would have after going through an assessment would be the proposal meeting. Your sales consultant will present our proposed solution and the reasons behind what we included. This meeting combines pieces from each of the first two conversations to provide a detailed summary of the solution, how it addresses your specific needs, and how our pricing compares to the Total Cost of Ownership calculator we have put together with your help.
After going through the proposal with your internal team and deciding you want to move forward with CompleteCloud you will likely want to speak with customer references, experience a demo environment or visit St. Louis to get to know our team. From there, you will sign on the dotted line and we will immediately start working on migrating your business to CompleteCloud.
People only do business with those they know, like, and trust. Our sales team puts in the time and energy to really get to know you and your business and our consultative approach provides you with the room to ask as many questions as possible and become comfortable working with us. This approach allows you to see how much we want to help see your business thrive.
In our next post we’ll go through our migration process and how we help new customers transition their business to CompleteCloud.
