If you are feeling the adverse impact of this recession with a lack of sales in your technology business  the reason may not be the recession, it may be your fault entirely.

More specifically, it may be your marketing and sales. You see, as you know we have (and are) going through a seismic event in our economy. Traumatic even. It has changed and continues to change how we buy, how we do business, how we evaluate the people we do business with.

Take for example our driving habits.  Just look at the price of gas. Its back down from the highs of just six months ago but the miles that people drive haven’t gone back up. Its because the emotional strain of the economic crisis has changed the habits in this country (maybe even forever).

BUYING HABITS & PRIORITIES HAVE CHANGED

The same is true with our IT customers. They have changed how they buy, what they buy, and most importantly their priorities. And dealing with this all comes down to one simple but profound question to your business and sales: What do you do when your customer’s buying priorities have changed?

Simply put, their priorities are now all about solving their problems.  This may or may not involve buying your products, services, or solutions but where IT solution providers, tech companies, and VARs screw up, is that they start the conversation (via your marketing and sales approach) from a product, service, or solution standpoint.

HOW TO MARKET & SELL IN A RECESSION

I’m not telling you something you probably don’t already know or feel from your experience in the field but how you may be dealing with it concerns me. And I truly want you succeed.

With this in mind, here are a few things you should keep in mind when performing your marketing and selling activities:

1. You message should be about solving problems, not pitch product or solutions. If product, solutions, are not your customer’s priorities than don’t approach them with marketing material that is product centric. Sorry vendor’s but IT folks aren’t gonna buy more because you keep pushing in on them. Make sure your marketing material is focused the problems they are facing.
2. Use marketing to create conversations and share value. Call it the internet or social media effect or whatever, but people want an exchange of informaiton. Its called sharing. They want to know that you are the expert. And the only way they know that (prior to buying your services) is by you sharing some of your valuable knowledge.  You don’t have to give away the farm, but provide value upfront and their trust yo more.
3. Humanize your sales approach. Don’t pressure them. Don’t try to control them. Don’t try to put them through a process. IT folks like many Americans are going through real problems. For lack of a better term people are emotional. They are worried about their job, their futures, their responsibilties.  They won’t respond to the same old sales techniques as before instead if you start to pressure them they will shut down. In short, be real, authentic, and try to humanize the very act of working with clients. Don’t sell them, help them. Help them solve problems. They’ll appreciate it.

For more information on the changing buying behaviors of IT folks read my post: Survey Results -  Why Prospecting for New Business is So Difficult Today?

There is more to share but I think even if you keep the above in mind, you’ll start to see results. I’ll be conducting several Webinars in the next month that will go into more detail on what is working in marketing and sales, how to implement these activities and strategies with specific directions included.

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter.com/ramonvela for new updates, marketing and sales ideas, and business insights.

Let me know what you think. Send me an email at RVela@StreetSmartVAR.com.

You can also get more specific info by subscribing to our online marketing course go to www.StreetSmartVAR.com or if you are reading this on our Blog site see the right hand side of the page for a web form.