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More advice for resellers and consultantsThis particular article is addressed to consultants, vendors, resellers, reps, and account managers. I'd like to help you do a better job of developing relationships with your clients and prospects. And for you clients, this piece will give you some hints on further evaluating the various vendors who are trying to lift a few dollars from your wallet. Listen! In a previous article, I strongly urged salespeople to talk during the meeting with the customer. Impress them with your wonderfulness. Knock their socks off with your knowledge and capabilities. Remember, they don't want to do all the talking...you've got to give them some value for the time they've invested in making it easier for you to sell them something. You've got to impress them. However, I don't want you to get the impression that you should do all the talking. You have to listen to what the customer is saying, what they want, what their "project rules" are, etc. If you don't, you'll blow it. I was working with a client on a Web project, and we met the representative for one of the vendors. He appeared to do a good job of paying attention. He asked the right questions, and he did a creditable job of selling us on his company. However, when we got his proposal, he blew it spectacularly. First of all, he used more technology than was necessary. While the customer didn't explicitly say it, a competent listener would have figured out that he wanted little client-side technology used in the Web site. He wanted no Java, no Active-X, and no Javascript. He wanted a clean, basic implementation. The customer mentioned several times that many of his clients used very old, hand-me-down technology that wouldn't support these newer tools. Of course you know what happened. The rep included just about everything but the kitchen sink in his proposal. And accordingly, his offer required a bigger investment than that of his wiser competitors who actually removed some earwax before they arrived for the appointment. The second mistake he made was to include over two pages of information on how wonderful they were at getting their Web sites placed high on search engine results. The client didn't care one iota about search engine placement. His product is so unique that almost all of his customers don't even know they need his product until they get his advertising in the mail. While the first mistake could have been simply a matter of not listening carefully, this second failure could only be the result of major softening of the rep's gray matter. When we sat down to talk about the proposal, the client asked me if we were all in the same room during the sales meeting. The proposal was stunning in its lack of responsiveness to what the client wanted and needed. Needless to say, a polite call and letter was sent to this vendor and he lost the sale. Beware of boiler plate One other thing tripped up the aforementioned less-than-intrepid account manager. He used a standard proposal template. This template had a whole lot of superfluous verbiage that was pretty much automatically included in every proposal. The rep evidently wasn't paying attention, and the comments about search engine submission wound up in the proposal. Although I might be giving him more credit than he deserves. With the exception of any legal stuff, avoid including boiler plate in your proposals. Marketing material should be either carefully reviewed or culled altogether. By the time you're presenting a proposal to a prospect, they should already know the generic stuff about you. If they don't, you're doing a pretty rotten job of presenting your company, product and service. The proposal should address the issues raised in the customer-prepared scope, define what you'll accomplish, offer specific information that will answer questions the prospect may have, and provide a cost. If you try to throw in hype, you'll be wasting time and paper and possibly screwing things up. Speaking of price There is a tendency among technology vendors not to provide a lot of detail about the pricing of services, hardware and software. In fact, if they had their way, they'd show only one price for an entire, 500-component project. They don't want to give the customer enough information to shop their proposal around to their competitors. Now you customers out there...you would never do that, right? While providing the price of components down to the printer cable and tape cartridge is generally unnecessary, you should provide sufficient detail so that a customer can compare the proposals they receive and make sure your prices are competitive. The customer should be able to compare apples to apples and not apples to oranges. In addition, the customer may decide to defer the purchase of certain component groups. Having sufficient pricing detail will give them the ability to make intelligent decisions. If you're making a proposal to one of my clients, failure to provide enough pricing information is simply going to get a request for more detail. And you won't make a good impression. What are the lessons to be learned from this epistle? First, listen to the customer. Be sure of what they need and what they want. Give them useful information on the proposal, based on what they've asked for and what you've observed. Don't be coy about pricing and alternatively liberal with the hype. And for you customers? Make sure you communicate clearly to the rep. Describe what your needs and wants are, the parameters of the project, and lay out the format and content that you'd prefer. Make sure they know how much detail you want in the pricing. If you're thinking ahead, you'll have a project scope already prepared to guide the rep. There. Doesn't this just make you feel good? We at The Gadwall Group have a mission of spreading peace and goodwill throughout the land of customers and technology vendors. Go now in peace, and spread TCP/IP to all mankind.
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