5 Sales Strategies for IT Service Companies to reinvent in the crowded place!

Rising competition is a major challenge for IT services industry. Every CTO has roughly 11-14 emails from different vendors trying to pitch their services or asking for a call. Talking to CEO from IT services companies, we get 4 reoccurring stories:

1. The growth is stagnated
2. Acquiring a new customer has become tough
3. Majority have ended up using all their references
4. No creativity in the sales tracking Process

  Globally 1.1 million companies are working in IT service sales, and all these companies are trying to compete against each other to win business.  80 - 85% of these companies fail to differentiate themselves. With the world going digital and all these companies failing to be unique, every business have to ask themselves "how are we different?" We've come up with 5 outbound sales strategies for IT services companies https://youtu.be/oSt9G9vi3Vs

1. Constant rework on your positioning

It’s not about coming up with a fancy statement and saying you will focus here, instead you should be re-evaluating your position every 3 months. Have a very broad focus at the same time, solutionize yourself for each vertical. Go deep, and rework on this even though this takes time. Invest your time in this because, in the end, it all comes down to how well you are positioning yourself.  

2. Pick your Key Accounts

Understand your Tier 1, 2 and 3 accounts and go towards these accounts with a Content-First Strategy. Most companies make the mistake of trying to produce extra content. Instead, we suggest companies take all the existing content, and create multiple smaller pieces of content from a really large e-book. Cement all your efforts by creating a 6-month content plan and start working on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter.

Every CTO has roughly 11-14 emails from different vendors trying to pitch their services or asking for a call.

3. Partner with an Established Product

Start partnering with well-established companies, like for example Salesforce, or Splunk. Once you have identified your accounts, you’ll understand what ecosystem typically prevails in those particular accounts, and you’ll start noticing what kind of products fit the best for them. Research about these products, and start offering packages particularly tailored for the industry of the accounts you’ve selected. Your in-roll is going to be different.  

4. Avoid building Products to improve your service business

I run a product business with account based sales, and its a 10-15-year-old game requiring at least four full-time employees. And you should know, It’s not that easy if you are trying to balance your service business by building products. When their service business is not getting enough business, a lot of people create products to go along with their services. This happens because businesses are confused. It might sound like a good idea, but it will end up taking more time than you originally thought. Generating revenue from product takes a lot of time.  

5. Stop the usual email and Linked-in approach

80 - 85% of companies fail to differentiate themselves

Be different than just asking for a call when you are on a lead. That’s exactly what all these 1.1 million companies are spending their time and resources on. If you are different there is a lot of a market that you can capture.   The strategies we mentioned here are more suitable for smaller businesses, and doesn’t apply to the tech giants or people working in bigger companies. Let us know how you liked these ideas.