Product Selling and Dinosaurs – Both are Extinct

How often do we resist change – dig in our heels to avoid it – only to find out that a change has brought such positive results that we wonder why we didn’t do it sooner? For VARs, MSPs, and integrators there are amazing opportunities being created by advances in our technology as well as changes in why and how customers are buying today. But these new opportunities require some changes to your business model and strategy. “Even if you’re on the right track, if you’re sitting still the train will run you over,” wisely noted Will Rogers, the cowboy philosopher. 

Times have changed! Due to changes in the economy, the impetus for customer purchases has fallen back on some very traditional business drivers and fits primarily into the following categories:

1. Reduce expenses and provide a fast ROI


2. Provide measurable business efficiencies that keep a company competitive


3. Enable a company to maintain or improve its position with customers while functioning with fewer resources and reduced manpower


4. Increase sales/revenue

And now there is one more impetus – address changes in the workforce (i.e. an increase in remote and mobile workers plus the technology-savvy generation now entering the workforce). Nowhere in this list of motivators will you find “Purchase leading edge technology.”

According to Jim Collins in his book Good to Great, “… good-to-great companies faced just as much adversity as [other] companies, but responded to that adversity differently. They hit the realities of their situation head-on.” Those VARs who are thriving today are doing so because they have found opportunities and capitalized on them by making changes in their own business model and strategy.

Many of today’s VAR opportunities center on solutions which enable customers to address their specific business issues. Some of the strongest business solutions currently come out of unified communications – an area of vast opportunities for VARs. However, leveraging these opportunities requires change in your business. What factors will drive your future success?  

• Management has a clear vision for the company’s future and a roadmap for implementing that vision


• Management invests in the growth of the business and the development of its collective personnel skills and expertise


• Management works to develop close relationships with primary vendors


• The entire company embraces and practices solution/consultative selling


• Professional services accounts for a significant portion of revenue


• The company develops specific areas of focus and expertise while it leverages strategic partnerships to expand its expertise and geographic footprint.

So embrace change and don’t get hit by that train!

Pam Avila is founder of the Sierra Summit Group and chair of the new CompTIA Unified Communications (UC) Community. She has more than 11 years of experience in the converged technology industry and provides channel strategy consultation for companies such as ShoreTel, Cisco Siemens and 3COM. Contact her at pavila@ucstrategies.com.