Cloud Sales Strategy How to Master Cloud Sales in a New Era of Digital Transformation

Cloud Sales Strategy How to Master Cloud Sales in a New Era of Digital Transformation

The Cloud opens a world of opportunities to help you scale quickly, enter new markets, and fill your pipeline. But these Cloud offerings have completely changed how customers buy. Gone are the days of enterprise purchases with long-term contracts for high-cost solutions that require an executive signature. Today, customers want a pay-as-you-go model, without a contract, at lower price points. Plus, often, more decision makers are involved from the departmental level in today s purchases. To successfully adapt to this new, and everchanging, buyer s journey, sales organizations need to change how they sell. Cloud-centric sales requires every element of your sales organization including strategy, who you re selling to, the makeup of your sales team, and the technology you employ to drive revenue to re-align to the new paradigm. Here are the specific areas you should focus on to optimize your Cloud sales strategy to drive longterm revenue growth. $390B Global Cloud IT market revenue is predicted to increase from $180B in 2015 to $390B in 2020 Bain & Company $141B Annual global spend on Cloud service is predicted to grow at a 19%+ rate, reaching $141 billion by 2019 Softchoice Cloud Sales Strategy: How to Master Cloud Sales in a New Era of Digital Transformation 2

Think Consumption, Not Just Acquisition The traditional technology sales strategy was aimed in one direction: grab as much market share and as many customers as possible. The creation and rapid ascension of Cloud sales, however, has set that model on its ear: Cloud customers are harder to keep. To adjust, adapt a land and expand approach instead, going beyond acquisition to focusing on continued consumption and expansion. Recognize that real growth develops when you place more attention on building recurring revenue and on each customer s lifetime value. To do so, invest in differentiated sales and support motions to drive Cloud consumption and deepen customer relationships. Capitalize on opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell by knowing the buyer journey inside and out. For example, according to SiriusDecisions, 67 percent of the buyer s journey is now done digitally an important statistic to keep in mind when evaluating the marketing and sales materials and tools you provide to nurture prospects through the journey. By 2018, at least half of IT spending will be Cloud-based, reaching 60% of all IT infrastructure, and 60 70% of all Software, Services, and Technology Spending by 2020. IDC By leveraging unique approaches to workload prioritization and consumption enablement, you can nurture new customers into loyal, growth customers, and reduce the need for marketing teams to buy back market share to replace abandoned customers. Another piece of the consumption puzzle is changing how you determine customer value. Measure customer lifetime value rather than initial contract size and establish the value of product/service adoption and ongoing use. Cloud Sales Strategy: How to Master Cloud Sales in a New Era of Digital Transformation 3

Adapt and Adjust Your Sales Dream Team To adapt to an effective Cloud sales strategy, consider realigning to better leverage Inside Sales to not only drive qualified leads, but also to move them through the pipeline to close. Enable them with the right tools and technical knowledge to truly help your prospects through the buyer s journey. Then partner them with technical sales experts who can help guide your prospects through the technical aspects that might otherwise make them seek other solutions. Specifically, here are the team members you ll need for your updated sales dream team: Lead Qualifiers: The first point of contact for trials and handling inbound opportunities. They should make up about 20 percent of your sales team. Opportunity Nurturers: A hunter and a farmer at the same time, responsible for nurturing relationships and new business. They should make up about 25 percent of your sales team. Large-Deal Reps: Go after the whales, determines lifetime value and decides how to engage and move the account forward. They should make up about 20 percent of your sales team. Customer Success/Renewal Reps: Identify up-sell and crosssell opportunities and ensure they re actively pursued for extra revenue. They should make up about 10 percent of your sales team. Technical Team: Engages during presales to remove technical blockers and risk factors, and post-sale to support adoption and utilization. Sales team members must be able to talk tech, and technical support should know how to facilitate the sale with a customer-oriented approach. They should make up about 25 percent of your sales team. To support your team, invest in communication methodologies that not only enable customers to contact you with questions whenever necessary, but also help your sales team maintain continuity in the sales process so they can more effectively address customer questions and concerns. Make the process as seamless as possible and offer many different channels for communication. Being able to understand exactly what the customer needs are in the very moment they are trying to make contact will increase the chances of creating a favorable experience. Cloud Sales Strategy: How to Master Cloud Sales in a New Era of Digital Transformation 4

Change Who You Sell To Don t assume that enterprise is the only way to go. Today, SMBs may represent larger value over time. In fact, small businesses are moving to the Cloud at an even faster rate with predictions that 78 percent of U.S. small businesses will fully adopt Cloud computing by 2020. This is because a major advantage of Cloud computing is financial. The solutions require little to no upfront expense and offer more flexible financial payment options. SMBs, who financially operate very fluidly, can pay for what they need when they need it, providing the flexibility to adjust cash flow quickly. Don t miss out on the revenue opportunity they present. Many software companies are having difficulty selling to SMBs, given their different processes and needs compared to enterprises. Consider outsourcing to an expert who knows SMBs inside and out, to help support customer growth in this area. Also, add a focus on line of business leaders so that you re speaking to the expanded pool of decision makers in different departments at a single company. Your sales team must understand the needs and decision-making criteria of business teams, like Marketing, Finance, and HR. These customers think differently. Whereas products and feature conversations are the territory of IT, you re now talking about how things work. You want to show them the business value, including how the Cloud holds the key that unlocks a door to a new way of doing business, one that can grow with the business and continue to pay dividends going forward. Keep in mind an account based marketing (ABM) strategy, which, according to Marketo, concentrates sales and marketing resources on a clearly defined set of target accounts within a market and employs personalized campaigns designed to resonate with each account as one way to accomplish this. The greater Cloud opportunity will exceed $500 billion by 2020 IDC The cloud will affect more than $1 trillion in IT spending in the next 5 years Gartner Cloud Sales Strategy: How to Master Cloud Sales in a New Era of Digital Transformation 5

Employ the Right Technology To ensure your adjusted sales team is successful, arm them with the right tools to do their jobs effectively. Provide training on technology, offerings, and sales techniques. Drive certifications and continuous education, and train your team to learn a mix of both sales and technical skills. Determine the buyers journey, tactics, lead score and lead assignment, and white glove handoff. As you ramp up a team, identify how all of this is going to help accelerate the sales cycle. Additionally, an effective marketing automation platform (MAP) coupled with well-defined demand creation and account-based marketing strategies, can drive the right actions at the right time, automate marketing activities to gain efficiencies, track customer behaviors for refining targeting, and provide lead scoring for providing maximum value to the sales organization. According to Marketo, a solid MAP includes a central marketing database, an engagement marketing engine, and an analytics engine so you can test, measure, and optimize marketing ROI and impact on revenue. Consider employing MAP technology that encompasses these components to support your new team. The average organization uses around 1,400 cloud-based services Skyhigh Networks Develop Solution Relationships Post-Sales If companies employ proactive strategies to ensure customers are properly trained and have some business strategy help to use the software best, it helps with adoption and reduces the risk of the customer switching to a competitive solution. Further, when a satisfied user shares their experience, it speeds adoption across an organization, underscoring the importance of providing responsive customer support through the technical team you ve developed. Internal advocates are more trusted by their peers and become your strongest sales force. Work to identify your advocates and nurture them. Provide ways for them to voice their opinions or give suggestions. Develop post-sale training materials, like videos and tutorials, that quickly help users understand the solution features, and use Marketing Automation to monitor for potential customer issues. If users are frequently hitting how-to or community pages, you may have a problem you need to address. Cloud Sales Strategy: How to Master Cloud Sales in a New Era of Digital Transformation 6

Consider an Outsourcing Partner Traditionally, sales outsourcing was thought of as a way to save cost. But with the right outsourcing partner, you can also gain incremental revenue, increasing effectiveness of prospecting and lead generation, and quickly penetrate new target markets. Look for a partner with a proven performance-based approach, in-depth industry insight and technology, platform or solution-based expertise. The Cloud has changed everything for technology sales, with the days of the big enterprise sale and long-term contracts in our rearview mirrors. Sales organizations must evolve in structure and strategy to address new targets. Focus on customer lifetime value to level the playing field for SMBs and enterprises, with land and expand as the new driving force. More than anything else, success in the Cloud world demands your sales team remain nimble and flexible, with the right technology and tools at their fingertips. Nearly 80% of U.S. small businesses will be fully adapted to Cloud computing by 2020, more than doubling the current 37% rate Emergent Research and Intuit Inc. Cloud Sales Strategy: How to Master Cloud Sales in a New Era of Digital Transformation 7

How N3 Can Help As a global leader in selling Cloud solutions, N3 accelerates revenue by converting adoption into long-term consumption. We deliver $1.2b+ in Cloud revenue for leading technology providers, including Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, SAP, HP Enterprise, and Salesforce. Find out how N3 s modern Inside Sales model can transform your pipeline and drive real revenue results for you. Contact Us!