16 Feb How do you approach sales as a Cloud Solution Provider?

How do you approach sales?

Is your cloud business fighting fit?

Welcome back to GlobillCSP – it’s great to see you again! If you’re new to our blog, you can click here to catch up on last week’s introduction* and first steps to self-examination as a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP). We’ve been dissecting some of the most common challenges for CSPs and today we’re focusing on your sales approach as a potential sore spot.

It’s worth making notes for your own reference so that you can identify all the symptoms and work on fixing the causes thoroughly at the end of this blog series. Click here to draft an email to us, with all of your notes, ready for you to select which items need priority attention.

Does your target market understand Cloud?

A common mistake made by many CSPs is assuming that customers know what they want, in order to leverage the benefits of Cloud. What customers want may not actually be what they need, especially for more complicated Azure services. Simpler subscription-based services are quite easy to explain to customers but still require an element of customer education prior to closing sales. There’s also the minor issue of explaining this new world of subscription billing models to your customer. Terminology like ‘billing-in-advance’, ‘pro-rating’ and ‘monthly bill cycles’ may be common for us in the cloud world but very new to many of the customers you are targeting.

How do you assist your customers in understanding cloud?

Our experience shows that CSPs with more intense focus on customer education and consultancy close more deals than those who leave customers to their own devices (sometimes, literally). Cloud sales is still very much a hand-holding process for many customers, especially with the myriad of options available to end customers.

How will you differentiate?

With many CSPs playing in each market, you need to think of how to differentiate your offerings. While strong relationships and good service go a long way in creating customer stickiness, any other value-add will boost sales in a competitive market. Most customers look for a complete solution from a service provider – so it’s key that you are able to offer bundled solutions.

Our GlobillCSP team is always ready and willing to help treat any CSP ailments, so don’t hesitate to email us your questions or find out which of our offices is closest to you, to set an appointment with one of our experts.