Make it easy
Sam Mele, founder and managing director of Firm58 (www.firm58.com), a provider of on-demand post-trade management solutions sells by reducing the buyer’s purchasing risk.

“To understand how we reduce buyer risk,” said Mele, “it is important to understand the context of our business. In the capital markets, the vast majority of trades are now executed electronically – so the number of trades has gone up, but the profit on each trade has gone down. This has caused a strain on post-execution. Brokers, trading firms and exchanges need more efficient ways to bill their clients, calculate payouts, fees and commissions and require daily visibility to gross and net, realized and unrealized P&L. That’s where we come in.”

There are significant perceived risks in letting someone else provide software to manage the middle and back-office. Mele says overcoming these objections has become easier because Firm58 can demonstrate the scalability and reliability to manage all these critical functions as a hosted service.

“Our customers are in the “business” of managing risk,” said Mele. “They are initially reluctant to provide third parties access to their transaction data. We overcome this objection by demonstrating our how our software provides cost savings but also can increase revenues in an extremely safe and secure environment. Additionally, we’re obsessed with client service and we’ve based our business model from the perspective of our clients – we don’t require any upfront fees, we charge monthly, and we’re one of the few software companies not looking to lock people into long-term deals. Our feeling is that if we don’t satisfy a client’s business issues and add value to the organization on a daily basis, the client should have every right to terminate our contract and seek other services. All told we make every attempt to mitigate our client’s risk of doing business with us.”

Work with Trusted Parties

Michael Petitti, Chief Marketing Officer for Trustwave (www.trustwave.com), has had the greatest success in working through trusted parties such as banks and payment service providers to reach his end-user clients: retailers.
Despite the high profile security breaches of the past several years that have kept companies in the spotlight with less than flattering coverage, many businesses – especially small-to-medium sized businesses – are not motivated to ensure the security of their systems that handle sensitive consumer information such as credit card data. For these businesses, the relationship with their acquiring bank – their underwriter and principal service provider – tends to govern their behavior when it comes to securing information and complying with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

“Through our relationships with many of the top acquiring banks, we have been able to provide service to more than 40,000 businesses throughout the world,” said Petitti. “In a world in which scams, such as ‘phishing,’ continue to proliferate, trust matters more than ever to business. Not only does working with the banks eliminate the challenge of trying to market and sell to millions of businesses directly, it positions Trustwave as a “trusted” entity to the retailer.”

Demonstrate a clear market advantage…and deliver on it.

Lanworth’s director of sales, John Terzich, supplies hedge funds and large commodity trading firms with advance information on global grain supply. Terzich likes to keep things simple because Lanworth’s (www.lanworth.com) entire value proposition is time and accuracy.

“We provide key acres and yield data in advance of the USDA predictions and reports.,” said Terzich. “Our clients measure our service in a very defined way. It is our job to deliver to a very simple expectation … did our customers gain a competitive market advantage when placing their positions in the commodities we report and did they earn a greater return or minimize their risk?”

Make it worthwhile for your customers to give you referrals

Michael Kiefer, general manager of BrandProtect (www.brandprotect.com), a domain monitoring and anti-phishing service for financial institutions, has integrated referrals into the sales process.

“Our customers benefit by collectively sharing intelligence about phishing attacks. An attack on one bank generally shares unique characteristics with attacks on other banks. In some cases, the same criminals are responsible for both attacks. By encouraging our customers to refer other banks, our customers benefit by having access to better information and ultimately are made safer by banding together,” said Kiefer.

Kiefer believes each Internet ecosystem like insurance or banking or e-commerce, has their own specific Petri dish of problems/opportunities. “By facilitating referrals and community, and bringing together our customers and their eco-systems, we make everyone stronger.”

Stop selling

Coley Perry, sales and marketing manager with Solution Partners has seen no let-up in demand for talented technologists in the financial sector.

“In the technology staffing business, we’re seeing no shortage of demand from financial services,” said Perry. “Financial services is totally driven by the best and brightest. Banks, trading firms, exchanges, or whatever, they all want the best and the brightest. Our customers have a very low tolerance for stupidity and nonsense. So we lead with candidates and don’t try to sell. These days people are way too jaded to be sold.”

Even more important…stop selling the technology

According to Darren Schwartz, CEO and founder of SureSpeak, LLC, (www.surespeak.com) one secret to selling technology in a volatile economy is to stop selling the technology.

“We sell a training platform to call centers and trainers in the financial services industries. Our technology helps call center reps practice and model sales conversations and customer service scenarios they encounter on the job,” said Schwartz. “While the technology itself is important, what our customers are really buying is improved productivity – more time to manage, more time to capture, distribute and archive best practices, more time to coach and mentor the most promising employees. That’s where we focus our message.”

If possible, solve more than one problem

J. Schwan, senior partner of Solstice Consulting (www.solstice-consulting.com), sells by trying to solve multiple pain points with one solution.

“Financial services companies tend to be faced with three common problems; data throughput, data quality and regulatory compliance,” said Schwan. “If you can help solve any one of those issues while addressing the other two, you’re going to have an interested buyer.”

Beware of “simple implementations”
For Peter Tapling, CEO of Authentify (www.authentify.com), selling out of band authentication technology into financial services firms means you need to talk the talk and walk the walk.

“Financial services companies operate under a host of regulatory and compliance constraints. This means there is no such thing as a “simple implementation,” said Tapling who advises companies to be aware of these constraints and be ready to help address them on two fronts: 1) contracting (be prepared to be “vetted” as a 3rd party to these compliance efforts) and 2) project (review and testing cycles are greatly increase as everyone who needs to in their organization has their say).”

“There are no simple implementations. Build dealing with these complexities into your pricing and forecasting cycles. Otherwise, you will be frustrated with all of the extra effort that you will end up providing for free,” said Tapling.

Be trusted (and in the right place at the right time)

Mike Flannery, a VP of Sales for Business Only Broadband (www.bobbroadband.com), returned to selling after a ten year hiatus. “Back in the 90s, selling technology was a much different game than it is today. Back then it was easier to make a phone call into a company, and set a meeting with buyer provided you had a reasonable value proposition.”

Today, says Flannery, it is challenging just getting in touch with someone by phone. The phone is a difficult way to sell. Selling is becoming more about networking, joining associations, talking to others, leverage existing customers and ask them for referrals.

“What I have found is that there are so many different technology offerings being put in front of buyers, no one has time to manage all the information. It doesn’t matter how compelling your value proposition is,” said Flannery. “You need a trusted relationship to make any traction.”

Ben Bradley is the managing director of the Bradley Wiltjer Marketing Group — a B2B marketing, lead generation and PR agency for companies with complex sales cycles. Want to be featured in an upcoming article? Feel free to e-mail bbradley@bradleywiltjer.com with your suggestions.

People adopt habits by choice or by accident, but generally, the more complex the habit, the more on-purpose it is formed. Avid runners get into a running habit usually by setting aside a time to run and then keeping to that time, day after day, week after week. Not-so-avid runners are those who have not made running a habit. They get in a couple miles once every one or two weeks. The avid runner has cultivated a running culture. The casual runner has not.

The same is true for organizations with strong marketing cultures and those with weak cultures. Organizations with weak cultures throw marketing into the mix every now and again when they feel the effects of a lack of marketing. This practice has no long-term effect but relieves only the temporary burden of an empty pipeline.

Marketing should not be a part-time thing; it needs to be a full-time thing.

In the absence of your voice, your target audience will listen to whoever is doing the talking, said Michael Davis, president of Savid Technologies, (www.savidtech.com) a technology solution provider located in Tinley Park, IL. There’s no doubt your competitors are doing some talking, so developing a full-time marketing habit is more critical than ever. Companies that employ the part-time marketing strategy are going to see part-time results.

Davis believes most companies are dissatisfied with their own marketing because they are poorly prepared. Think of a casual runner trying to run a marathon last minute. They are poorly prepared and will struggle through every step. Most will fail. Some will die. Marketing isn’t just sending out a newsletter. It’s doing the prep work by defining the strategies and the intangibles that define value in that marketplace.

Lack of confidence in marketing skills is often the single bottleneck that prevents companies from taking that first step into the marketing abyss and beginning the necessary prep work.

Defining objectives, strategies and tactics and doing competitive analysis is one a way of stretching out your marketing skills before you go to take that first run into the marketplace.

Bad habits can be just as detrimental as good habits are beneficial. Companies that poorly define or that create overly complex and unmeasureable marketing projects are reinforcing negative habits that hinder success in the long-run.

J.R. Samples, president of AccountabilityPartners.com - a management consulting firm acknowledges that marketing is a complex habit to develop. Part science and part art, every company markets itself differently.

“We’ve all heard that doing something 21 times in a row will turn that behavior into a habit,” said Samples. “The hard part is sticking with it long enough to make it a habit. If you work on developing a marketing habit and build the proper marketing mindset– you’ll soon find that you’re going above and beyond your marketing minimums.”

Most companies, unfortunately, quit before they hit the magic 21 times. Samples advises companies to start small and work their way up into complex campaigns. Simple marketing programs have a higher likelihood of success. Over time, many small successes build marketing into a successful habit.

Break your commitment into smaller pieces, if necessary, so that business development is always a to-do on your calendar even when your schedule is completely packed. At the end of the month, assess what you’ve accomplished. Did this system work for you or do you need to try something different? Once you’ve found a system that works, stick with it until it becomes automatic.

Change is a habit, too.

Being able to effectively change gears is not something that generally comes naturally. Change is an uncomfortable process. However, companies can learn to do it effectively.

In marketing, nothing ever goes completely according to plan, said Dan Neff, president of Aquent-IT-Solutions (aquent-it-solutions.com). “People’s reactions differ; areas of anticipated resistance don’t come to pass; the external environment shifts; or one of many other variables. This changing situation requires a marketing organization to be nimble and adapt to change as a matter of course. An iterative, agile approach to execution is a valuable habit to develop giving you the opportunity to make course corrections at each iteration based on your discoveries from earlier iterations. Our strength is our ability to rapidly adapt to change. It is part of our culture.”

A series of tiny improvements instead of a single sweeping change is often a better way to build a marketing habit. Neff believes starting with a simple but workable foundation that a company can build off of is a better strategy than jumping full-force into an over-the-top marketing scheme.

Marketers need to think in terms of iterations that remove risk from their programs and use these iterations to validate the program and refine the program before committing the rest of the budget,” Neff said. “A series of iterations gives the marketing team experience at crisp execution and builds good habits. Once the marketing habit is in place, marketing becomes much more natural to execute. Developing the right habits is essential for organizations that want to survive in an ever-changing marketplace.”

“We have a good reputation. Other ERP and CRM vendors want us to sell their products,” said Kania. “But by staying loyal to the Sage family, we receive a high percentage of new leads, lots of help when we need it in the sales process, and healthy margins.”

A trusted and loyal relationship is the holy grail for every channel marketing manager.

Yet, vendors/VAR relationships are wrought with distrust. Inevitably, there is conflict between the direct and the indirect sales force. Trust is difficult to establish, especially when the vendor’s executives don’t completely understand the value VARs or distributors bring to the table.

Lee Levitt, now a sales productivity analyst at IDC, (http://www.idc-slb.com) has designed, built and managed channel programs at three different companies and has built and managed strategic partnerships at several more.
Levitt suggests everyone in the channel recognize a simple fact: companies enter the channel to pursue business that is too small or too difficult to reach with a direct sale.

“In most cases, what you have are resellers with an existing book of business who generate between 10% and 30% of their total revenue from the sale of third party products while the rest of the revenue comes from services. So most VARs are loathe to risk the relationship because they own the only throat that gets choked. If a vendor’s tech support doesn’t live up to expectations, the VAR has to fix it. That is why the reseller moves a lot more slowly than the vendor. They want to reduce risk for themselves and for their customer. The vendor’s timetable is generally not the reseller or the customer’s timetable.”

Levitt says the keys to trusted channel relationships are common business interests, a clear identification of the overlap or conflict, a clear definition of roles/responsibilities and investment requirements for both sides, and a well developed action plan to move forward on.

For Norm Dumbroff, CEO of WAV, Inc., (www.wavonline.com) a value-added distributor of wireless, security, RFID, VoIP and portable data-collection products, tapping into common business interests is the number one way his organization builds trust between vendors and VARs.

“Vendors recognize that solution providers are delivering multi-vendor solutions. VARs know they can’t get multi-vendor support from a single vendor. That’s our sweet spot. Certainly we ship boxes but at the end of the day we do the things that both sides can’t do – we sell and support multi-vendor solutions.” said Dumbroff.

Overlap and conflict are a fact of life. Yet in a trusted relationship, it is important to not buy into the idea that the partner is a competitor, said Dumbroff.

“The true value occurs in the channel when there is quid pro quo between the vendor and the VAR. For example, a good VAR understands that simply providing excellent services implementing the software solution is less important to the vendor than the ability to create demand. After all, the vendor sales person is compensated based on the success of the VAR,” said Dumbroff. If you think you are competing with your vendor partner, get out of the relationship because it is already dysfunctional. That’s no way to build trust. In our position as a value-added distributor, helping both the vendor and VAR win builds trust and profitability.”

When discussing trust in the channel, it may be that the root cause of the tension is a chicken or the egg dilemma in so much as each side is waiting for the other side to fully commit to the relationship. Once someone makes the first move, trust is easier to achieve.

“If you value the relationship with the vendor, if the relationship is important to you, you’ve got the make the first move and demonstrate your commitment;” said Rick Toth, EVP for Pepperweed Consulting (www.pepperweed.com). “There are a lot of great VARs all trying to partner with the leading technology providers. To get noticed, you need to carry the ball in sight of the vendor so they can see how much value you add to the relationship.”

Pepperweed is an INC500 provider of ITIL, ITSM, and ISO 20000 consulting and implementation of complex, large-scale, global IT deployments for HP (2007 US BTO Partner of the Year), CA and distributors such as Arrow.
For Toth, building trust means treating vendors as customers. Toth believes clear definition of roles and responsibilities are an essential part of strong relationships.

“No matter who they are, and no matter how mature their channel organization, we look at our vendors as customers. We address them with a business plan and we work to understand them, their motivation and their drivers, and which behaviors they are trying to incent,” said Toth. “The sooner we get the vendor involved in the plan and the sooner we work together to make it real, the sooner we both see success.”

Ray Green, Managing Director for Focus Data Services (http://www.focusgroup.uk.com), seconds the idea of making the first move. “The simple answer is that you don’t give your partner any reason to distrust you. If you’re open and honest, give as well as take; are loyal, then, slowly, trust builds. The actions are louder than the words. You start to believe that the people in your partner’s organization are on your side as well as their own. And the sum of the two organizations is greater than the individual parts. More importantly, the sum of your business is greater,” said Green.

At information security VAR Anchor Technologies (http://www.anchortechnologies.com), CTO Peter Dietrich says: “our partnerships with vendors span all size organizations from the massive Cisco and EMC to smaller companies like HighTower and Tripwire. Each vendor seems to implement their channel a little different. The bottom line for us is the relationship. The vendor that has a good product, local presence, makes face-to-face contact regularly and truly recognizes that their channel reps are important are the most successful with us.”

Dietrich says his vendor relationships share three common components. First, the vendor has to have a vetted and quality product. Second, the vendor has to be willing to provide some real technical training and demo or NFR product for free or at an insignificant cost. Finally and most importantly, the vendor needs to have a “channel rep that wants to build a relationship with the VAR sales staff. Without this relationship the other pieces do not matter and the relationship will not bear fruit,” said Dietrich.

Jim McManus, VP Channels and Alliances for Dataupia (http://www.dataupia.com) emphasizes open communications as a foundation of a trusted vendor/VAR relationship. “I always ensure that partners are an integral part of the business conversation and process and keep all communication above board, including conversations with potential partner competition. While we believe in open communication as a way to establish trust, we also recognize the value of putting in place programs that compensate partners for representing our company. At the end of the day, partnerships must be financially beneficial for both organizations. Follow through on customer initiatives in a joint manner is critical to the success of partnerships between vendors, VARs and distributors. I have seen a lot of people give lip service, but actions speak volumes.”

Software-Link’s Stan Kania sums it up nicely: “In any relationship, trust is earned by taking chances and communicating openly and honestly. We treat Sage as part of our business and Sage treats us as part of their business. We share sales forecasts, keep them up to date on sales and marketing efforts and vice versa. That’s what makes the phone ring.”

Ben Bradley is managing director of the Bradley Wiltjer Marketing Group (www.bwmginc.com). He writes about the intersection of technology and business. His primary interests include the role of marketing and engagement in the channel, innovation, entrepreneurship, collaboration, networks and groupware. He can be reached at benbradley@bwmginc.com.

You’ll see fear of switching from the evil they know (their existing VAR) to your business. You’ll see the natural doubt any buyer has against a new (and untested) sales person. You’ll see uncertainty from the misinformation your competitors use to cloud the buyer’s mind and get a foot in the door. Spend enough time inside your prospective customer’s brain and you’ll see that FUD is the direct result of not having enough information to make an informed buying decision.

So how do you overcome the FUD? How do you remove FUD from the transaction? We spoke to VARs and buyers of IT services about these questions and we’re delighted by the overwhelming response we received.

According to Tiffani Bova, Research Director at Gartner (www.gartner.com), Worldwide IT Channel Sales, Programs & Alliances, “one way to remove the FUD factor in the sales process is showing prospects that you understand their business better than your competition, have done similar work for other companies like theirs, use the technologies internally yourself, and build a strong reputation around ’service after the sale’. These activities go a long way especially in the SMB space.”

Michael Davis, CEO of Chicago-based Savid Technologies (www.savidtech.com), removes FUD by offering a pilot program for all projects. “If it doesn’t work, we will take it out and charge them nothing. This forces us to test products internally before we sell them, that’s why we don’t have 500 products partners. They don’t all work and we only want to sell what will work.”

But FUD also exists beyond the sales call. Any new engagement has elements of FUD in installation, integration, support and service. Towner Blackstock, software services manager for CIS Consulting (www.cisinfo.com), a Charlotte, North Carolina VAR of Sage Software, reduces installation and integration FUD by emphasizing the importance of training. “Classroom instruction is essential to a successful implementation and rapid ROI. When clients neglect training on new software, frustration builds, confidence lags, and they spend more money on onsite support,” said Blackstock.

Blackstock also believes operations software can’t succeed without good hardware and networks. “That’s why we started our own IT group that specializes in software installation. This eliminates a lot of finger-pointing between vendors and allows our application consultants to focus on implementation. Even if a client doesn’t purchase our hardware, we have the in-house expertise to troubleshoot system issues.”

In the support role, having someone who is always available can minimize problems. Although it seems overly simple, Savid’s Michael Davis provides clients a contact list containing complete contact information for all employees. “Everyone in our company understands they must be available to all clients whenever they need them. All of our clients understand that not only are we available to them whenever they need, but we have an open door policy. You don’t like the way something is heading/running, call me or meet with me and let’s figure it out. In the end, the client is not always right but they are always right about what they want and how they want it.”

From a buyer’s perspective, Fred Held, a Los Angeles, California buyer of IT services in his role as principle of a private equity and management company, believes the VARs who focus most on overcoming relationship FUD are the ones most likely to succeed. “As someone who has hired many VARs in his career, I’m looking for the little things such as VARs that cost slightly more per day but the number of days they work is much lower. VARs that are available by telephone any time of day any day of the week and they are happy to hear from you. VARs that check to make sure what they installed is working well and the front line is happy.”

While removing FUD from the transaction is a good strategy for getting in the door, it remains a viable sales tool once you have established a relationship with the customer. Coley Perry, sales manager for Solution Partners (www.solpart.com), a Naperville, Illinois-based technology staffing and consulting firm, wants his customers to have just the right amount of FUD. “I want our customers to be so happy that the thought of switching to a new vendor causes fear, uncertainty and doubt.”