IT service providers are big on talk of innovation these days—except when it comes to their own sales practices. It seems as if many vendor sales teams have been pulling from the same bag of frustrating and ineffective tricks to try to win deals since the dawn of IT outsourcing.
We narrowed the long list of the offending outsourcing sales techniques to the ten least-effective and often-offered suggestions for how IT service providers can reshape their peddling processes for the benefit of their potential customers—and themselves.
1. Can You Hear Me Now?
Some outsourcing sales folk have a knack for selective listening. “Customers have specific requirements, needs and objectives that they expect to accomplish through outsourcing,” says Marc Tanowitz, prinicipal with outsourcing consultancy Pace Harmon. “However, we frequently see [outsourcers] packaging services based solely on their own business needs and approaches.” It’s the most common customer complaint about outsourcing sales, says Ron Walker, principal for KPMG Advisory Services. Michael Engle, managing partner at outsourcing consultancy HfS Consulting, calls it the “hammer looking for a nail” technique: “They simply bend the client’s needs to better fit their [own] proposed solution, and then delude themselves into thinking they have a winner.”
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Alternative for IT service providers: Take time to listen to customer needs before launching into a standard pitch. “This approach enables providers to align better with what customers are actually looking for and to present solutions in the way that is most meaningful to them,” says Tanowitz
via 10 Worst Sales Tactics of IT Outsourcing Companies CIO.com.