At Dara IT, we are constantly researching new products, seeing what is available for our clients and also finding solutions for problems we have in house. You might have a brand, a product, a service whatever that thing is, there is a good chance we want to deploy it in house or for our clients.
We consistently have mixed experiences when trying to learn a new product, speaking to sales teams or hearing horror stories from clients about how much of a night mare it was to deal with brand x. At the same time we might discover a company or a product that is so amazing, we want to tell everyone about it, we use it internally, we recommend it to our clients and we really stand by it with a positive recommendation.
The techie in any company acts as a very powerful filter for business decision makers in choosing the right product or service, why would you not want to have a marketing plan in place to reach this influencer? How powerful an ally would you have if they were in your corner championing the product inside their own organisations?
How to make a techie buy _______? Fill in the gap with what you have to offer. Let me play out 1 scenario for you below.
** A live chat entry appears on your website **
Potential client: “Hello I’m hoping to learn more about product X”
Sales: “Hello, yes my name is Bob, what specifically would you like to learn?”
Potential client: “Well I was wondering if you did trials of product X so I could get a feel for it”
Sales: “Yes that’s certainly something we can talk about, can you give me your contact details and I can have one of our team book a call with you so we can discuss your needs?”
** Chat disconnects **
Can you spot the mistake?
Two lines into the conversation, you’ve asked me to commit to an ask, you want me to give up my details and in return, I need to book out a slot of time when I can talk to someone in sales. Key suggestions would be:
• The customer chose to talk to you via email/chat/phone – Moving them from their preferred choice of communication to another is already working against what they want on a subconscious level.
• At this point, they might know nothing about your product but you are already asking them to find the time to listen to a sales pitch, why would they give up what is likely 30 minutes of their time, just to get what they wanted initially which was a product trial?
• Tech guys tend to be detail focused people, they could have easily read reviews, looked over the website, even watched videos which you have on the product, so if they are close enough to saying they want to actually test it, you are already ahead of other competitors but if you put a roadblock in the way, they’ll go somewhere else.
Remove the roadblocks! Don’t lose out on a sale to a competitor
This week I received a mass mail out from a business which stated that they had produced a personalised e-book tailored just for me. It sounded awfully nice of them but when I clicked on the link I was taken to something which can only be described as an info wall.
The basic principle, you have something people want and for them to get that something, they give you their contact details and you then give them the prize behind the wall. On paper this works brilliantly for sales teams, you get to harvest all these contact details just for giving away something you already have.
That something could be, here is a trial of our software, here is a PDF about the product. Perhaps you even have a video which is going to sell the product to a potential client and all it takes for the client to get it is to fill in a simple web form, easy trade right?
What every technical person out there expects to happen in 2016, after years of this happening, is for their details to go onto a list of “leads” probably 1 of hundreds of names and we’re going to be fielding emails/phone calls chasing us and trying to “help” us into a buy.
So what we’ll do instead, they might look at the form and skip the product and move onto a competitor, who bizarrely has every piece of content they have available for instant download and usage, yet they seem to be making money.
Then there is the sad truth that a lot of people will lie on these forms and fill them in with bogus details. Sure you could put in systems to verify it is a genuine lead but are you just putting in more road-blocks?
The best way I can describe to win over a techie can be summed up in 3 easy rules.
• Help them get what they want, as quickly as possible. Roadblocks are bad. We feel the jaws of the sales funnel closing and we’ll simply break sideways out of it and do something else, leaving you wondering where that promising new client went.
• Be honest, be open, if you are asked questions and you don’t know the answers, get someone who does but don’t lie/bluff about the product, we’ll find out sooner or later and when we do, we will never trust you or your company again.
• Forget the client in front of you now. Don’t think about the size of the order in front of you, think about where that relationship might lead to, if you leave such a good impression on someone, if ever they get asked in the future “We have 3 products to pick from, who should we go for” wouldn’t you love to be the product they recommend and talk about?
Finally and this is a very controversial biggie. Give frank guidelines about pricing. If I have to go through a 2 hour process to discover that your product is a 500K completely out of my SMB budget product, you’ve wasted time for both parties. At the same time if I hear that your product is in the price range, I’m more likely to want to spend time on a possibility.
I’m Breffni, I run Dara IT, I’ve been a techie for years and years constantly trying out new products and researching new ways of doing things. In my mind I have a select few companies who I would completely recommend to clients in a heartbeat as a sure thing. Do you want me and other tech guys to be that ambassador for you?
The market is getting more competitive, don’t wait until it is too late. You’ll notice the title says how to “make a techie buy” – That’s not a mistake or a typo, that is how quite a few companies are going about it “How do we MAKE this happen” when actually, re-read the article, think about what happens when you remove the roadblocks, listen and respond honestly, instead of “making” someone do something, the story is very different.
