8 Ways IT Companies Can Kill Themselves By Responding To RFPs

April 23rd, 2013

The old Chinese proverb says, “Victory goes to the one with superior forces at the point of contact.”

In the movie Braveheart, at the battle of Stirling, the Scots used very long spears to receive the English army’s heavy horse attack. That was the first and most powerful step of attack of the English army.

Since the Scots successfully annihilated the heavy horses, the English army was basically defeated on impact, and the rest of the battle was “mere” formality. Well, all right. A bit more than that.

What that means in business development is that you have to create a powerful point of impact to meet buyers the first time. But, unlike the Scots in the movie, you may want to keep your buyers alive, because this impact will define the fate of your whole sales process.

This first impact can go two ways and that will define the outcome.

One option is that your buyer meets a street peddler representing a fungible vendor type company trying to hawk some lukewarm commodity.

The other option is that your buyer meets a respected expert representing an industrial authority type company offering some unique products/services.

And whatever the government says, when the connection between buyer and seller is the RFP process and the bidding war, that seller gets pigeonholed as a peddler, representing a fungible vendor type company and hawking some lukewarm commodities.

And this is what we discuss this month’s brain-fryingly exciting episode of Tomicide Solutions, entitled, “8 Ways IT Companies Kill Themselves By Responding To RFPs”.

Hope you finds it valuable.

Enjoy!

Posted in Client Work, Market Positioning | No Comments »

How Do You Recognise Super-Busy Deadbeats In Your Business Development Team

March 29th, 2013

Have you heard that in a 1997 interview in Cigar Aficionado magazine with Arthur Marx, actor Peter Falk (Lieutenant Columbo) said…

“I remember once in high school the umpire called me out at third base when I was sure I was safe. I got so mad that I took out my glass eye, handed it to him and said, ‘Try this.’ I got such a laugh you wouldn’t believe.”

Although you may be hampered with the total lack of a glass eye, but with a little luck you too can recognise deadbeats in your business development team.

There are both good and bad news here.

The good news is that, provided you run a business development team and not a business development work group, you don’t have to recognise them, because your team has already identified the person and most probably is about to request his removal.

One piece of bad news is that if you don’t remove that person, then you have the mass exodus of your best people on your hands.

The other piece of bad news is that in many IT companies the slacker is a friend of some high-ranking people, which by default makes him a sacred cow who can’t be reprimanded let alone being fired.

So, as time goes on, and team members realise that the deadbeat stays on the team, so gradually the best team members start quitting, usually taking some of the other best team members with them.

Sooner or later the team consists of the bottom-feeders (from mediocre to plain useless) that don’t have the courage to leave, because they know they wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell to find other jobs based on their low competence levels.

So, how do you recognise those loafers, considering there are some really gifted people who can appear to be impressively busy while doing nothing useful?

This is what we discuss this month’s heart-stoppingly electrifying episode of Tomicide Solutions, entitled, How Do You Recognise Super-Busy Deadbeats In Your Business Development Team.

Enjoy!

Posted in Team Development, Uncategorized | No Comments »

3 Reasons For Automating Business Development

March 11th, 2013

Do you k now that Richard Milhouse Nixon was the first US President whose name contains all the letters from the word “criminal”. William Jefferson Clinton was the 2nd.

I’ve mentioned this spine-chillingly interesting fact because running your company’s business development manually is equally criminal. Although this crime is committed to your bottom line.

The sad reality is that when workload increases in most IT companies, leaders and managers start hiring people, because they think this is the only solution to achieving more.
But it’s not surprising when we consider that some sales trainers still teach their clients that if they want to increase sales or when they see a dip in their sales figures, they should instantly hire more salespeople.

Imagine you’re driving and horse-drawn cart and the horses are really struggling to pull the cart. To solve the problem all you need to do is to release the handbrake and grease the axes. But instead, you go to the market and buy two more horses. A truly expensive solution, which is not even a real solution.

It’s the same as hiring more people to do manual business development and ignoring all the great things automation could bring to the table.

And this is what we discuss this month’s mind-numbingly electrifying episode of Tomicide Solutions, entitled, 3 Reasons For Automating Business Development.

Enjoy!

Posted in Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing | No Comments »

The Mysterious Ins and Outs of Decision-Making

January 28th, 2013

Do you know that the longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds?

The reason why I mention this interesting fact is that if your follow-up is out of alignment with your prospects’ decision-making process, then many prospects will flee your sales funnel in less than 13 seconds after entering it.

Sort of, enter the chicken and then quickly exit the chicken. And soon after the feeling as though you’d never had a chicken.

And since when prospects flee your sales funnel, that’s a rather miserable situation, so I’ve decided to go into the decision-making process in some detail.

And this is what we discuss this month’s hair-raisingly electrifying episode of Tomicide Solutions, entitled, The Mysterious Ins and Outs of Decision-Making.

Enjoy!

Posted in Marketing, Sales | No Comments »

5 Vital Components Of Successful IT Client Interviews

November 26th, 2012

An old Chinese proverb says, “Victory goes to the one with superior forces at the point of contact.” In the age of the knowledge worker, superior force really means superior knowledge. More precisely, superior applied knowledge.

But not superior knowledge to close the sale, but superior knowledge to establish whether or not there is a mutually beneficial reason to do business together.

In normal peddler-type sales situations, since the goal is to loosen the buyer’s purse strings and take as much of his money as possible, the first meeting usually is brutal and forceful in order to get the money.

But IT companies that want to operate as respected industrial authorities have to change their approach from the traditional rapport building, presentation, objection handling and close sequence to a process that has a close resemblance to a visit to a doctor.

And how this is done is what we discuss this month’s hair-raisingly (I assume you have more hair than I do) exciting episode of Tomicide Solutions, entitled, 5 Vital Components Of Successful Client Interviews.

Enjoy!

Posted in Client Work, Sales | No Comments »

Selecting A Winning Business Development Plan For Your IT Company

October 29th, 2012

Do you know the most dangerous country for women?

According to both Forbes and Reuters, it’s Afghanistan.

It’s due to the barrage of threats of rape, violence, non-existent healthcare, forced marriages and “honour killings”.

And do you know the most dangerous external professional an IT business owner can hire?

Well, the first one is the motivational speaker, but the close second is the old-fashioned sales trainer who wants to teach your people how to cold-call, how to trick buyers into appointments, how to ace competitive bids in response to RFPs, how handle objections and how to close sales.

Realistically, making the sale is the just foregone conclusion of good business development.

If you have a good business development plan, and execute it well, then you don’t have much selling to do. Buyers come to you for help.

And by good business development plan I mean a plan that is some 80% inbound-based and 20% outbound based.

Inbound business development is when buyers seek you out for your help and support

Outbound business development is when you reach out to buyers who have never contacted you.

Although here I write 20% for outbound effort, I prefer to keep it to zero. Yes, that’s the ideal situation, and it may be just a pipe dream, but it’s inspiring to pursue such a dream.

Anyway…

As an IT business owner who’s been in business for some years now, you’ve probably contemplated about what makes a good business development plan and how to approach client acquisition in the most effective manner.

And this is what we discuss this month’s excruciatingly euphoric episode of Tomicide Solutions, entitled, Selecting A Winning Business Development Plan For Your IT Company.

Enjoy!

Posted in Marketing, Sales | No Comments »

18 Criteria To Define Whether Your IT Business Is A Sought-After Authority Or A Replaceable Vendor

September 26th, 2012

As IT buyers have been becoming more and more suspicious of sellers’ real motives, the best sellers have realised that the only way they can handle this new buyer behaviour is by changing their approaches to business development.

In the 80s and 90s hunting was the prevailing approach. Hunting down buyers, pinning them to the ground and taking their money almost by force. Companies hired armies of hyper-aggressive salespeople, trained them to be even more aggressive and manipulative, and let them loose on the market.

But that approach doesn’t work anymore. Buyers hide behind multiple walls (procurement departments) to protect themselves. So, there must be a pretty big shift in how sellers have to sell in this new environment.

And while it’s a pretty big shift, it’s necessary, especially if we consider that while in the pre-internet age buyers relied on salespeople for product/service information, today, in the internet age, buyers can obtain all the information they need without ever to meet salespeople.

Over the years, products/services have become much more complex and sophisticated, which also means that with every purchase, buyers take on higher levels of risk.

And this is what we discuss in this month’s brain-fryingly exciting episode of Tomicide Solutions, entitled, 18 Criteria To Define Whether Your IT Business Is A Sought-After Authority Or A Replaceable Vendor.

And the accompanying podcast.

Enjoy!

Posted in Market Positioning, Sales | No Comments »

10 Business Development Thoughts That Could Liberate Your Sales

September 5th, 2012

If you’re in business, first and foremost, you’re in the marketing business, and your marketing determines your success. Some experts say you’re in the sales business.

Maybe.

Personally I believe that good marketing can reduce or even eliminate the need for selling as we know it. That is, the well known, typical, manipulative, labour-intensive drudgery of mentally and emotionally twisting people’s arms in order to grab their money for something they neither want nor need.

If you want higher gross revenue, be a good seller and don’t worry about marketing.

But if you want higher net profit per employee (the real measure of success), then be a good marketer.

With good marketing, high-calibre buyers come to you and ask you to accept them as new clients. But with good sales and poor or no marketing you still need a bunch of salespeople to chase after buyers… who desperately try to out-run and out-hide your salespeople. So, the exercise is pretty futile right from the start…

And this is what we discuss this month’s brain-fryingly exciting episode of Tomicide Solutions, entitled, 10 Business Development Thoughts That Could Liberate Your Sales.

Enjoy!

Posted in Lead Nurturing, Sales | No Comments »

Who Is In Charge Of Business Development?

July 1st, 2012

For most IT companies it’s always a dilemma whom to appoint as head of business development. Should it be someone from sales or marketing?

The problem is that marketing people tend to play down the importance of salespeople, and salespeople do the same to marketing folks.

Marketing people accuse salespeople of being too aggressive and scare prospects away. Salespeople accuse marketing people of being passive and all they do is writing cute brochures and designing fancy logos.

And now the war is on. And who suffers? The company and its clients.

So, let’s have a short discussion on who should be at the helm of business development, entitled, “Who Is In Charge Of Business Development?”.

Enjoy!

Posted in Marketing | No Comments »

Eight Advantages Of Premium Pricing Strategy And Eight Disadvantages Of Economy Pricing

May 23rd, 2012

Setting up its pricing model is a crucial part of every IT business. Or at least it should be.

While IT bits and bobs are getting cheaper every day, pricing IT based products/services on purely technology, as opposed to the value to the client, would lead to financial disasters.

In this article we’ll take a closer look at some pricing options, and why a solid premium pricing strategy always beats economy pricing.

We have to accept the fact that many clients don’t need IT support, but what they need is an external entity to take the blame for the mess management has created.

For instance, the client’s security has been breached, but the breach is still contained. So, the company desperately wants to hire an IT firm, and then blame the breach on it, even to sue the IT company.

This is why IT companies must be careful about which clients to accept and which clients to reject.

And this is what we discuss this month’s mind-menglinlgy stupendous episode of Tomicide Solutions, fiendishly entitled, “Eight Advantages Of Premium Pricing Strategy And Eight Disadvantages Of Economy Pricing”.

Enjoy!

Posted in Market Positioning, Pricing | 1 Comment »

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