You don’t have to move away from your core business, your area of expertise; you can find a way to add a broader suite of products into your sales offerings to increase revenue and keep your customers “sticky".

Channel Partners

July 22, 2014

5 Min Read
What Do I Do When My Leads Dry Up?

By Gary Jacobs

The market continues to converge. It seems like everyone is selling everything.

If  you are selling some type of product or service in the technology space, whether it be carrier/network services, premises-based phone systems, IT services, hardware, software, POS, consulting, etc., you are now (or if not, you should begin)  selling as many as possible of the technology services that your customer buys or might buy.

Why? If someone else gets into your account and can sell similar services as you and more, you start to lose your foothold. Your customer becomes less “sticky” and is at risk for churn (in part or whole). One way to combat this is to sell as many of the technology services your customers buy or will eventually buy. This impacts your lead funnel, too.

What does this mean for you and your leads? Well, as your strategic partners (your referral network) take on more services, they may in fact (and are) becoming your competition.

Case in point: I was speaking with a friend of mine the other day who runs a very successful premises-based phone system dealership. We were discussing why he feels that his company needs to place more emphasis on selling carrier and cloud services (including UCaaS). While they’ve always had some degree of success in this area, many of the leads they received for phone systems came from carrier reps, IT consultants, hardware VARs and other types of networking partners. Historically, instead of risking future leads for phones systems by selling these other services themselves, they would pass them off to the appropriate networking partner with the continued hope that quality leads would  to be reciprocated.  The challenge they have now is that their leads have started to dwindle.

I had a similar conversation with a person who runs an IT consultancy who came to me because their leads were starting to diminish, too. They wanted to add the full suite of technology services to their offerings to be able to increase the revenue generated per customer and complement their core business of IT and hardware support, network management and some basic cloud services. They now see the ability to add connectivity, UCaaS and additional cloud services to their portfolio that they weren’t in a position to build, but knew their customers would buy.

Both companies told me the reason their leads are drying up is because many of the networking partners that they had worked with are now selling these services themselves. This is the reason both companies, who sell distinctly different products, began placing a lot more emphasis on selling the full line of technology services. They haven’t moved away from their core business — their area of expertise, but they have found a way to add a broader suite of products into their sales offerings to increase revenue for their business and keep their customers “sticky.”

I have conversations like these every day with individuals and businesses that sell something in the technology space and have decided they want the ability to expand their offerings.

The important thing to remember is that you don’t have to be an expert in the different areas to sell these services. There are ways to acquire the necessary skillset or simply work with those that have it. Here are a few ideas — and there are plenty more out there:

  • You may already have the expertise in-house to add the additional product sets.

  • You can hire someone with expertise in the needed area.

  • You can work with a master agency who has the resources and expertise to help your business sell these services.

  • You can partner/align your company with an experienced agent/consultant and split the commissions/revenue.

Below are a few tips to start uncovering sales opportunities for your new expanded product set:

  • Focus on your existing customer base. Stay in touch with your existing customers and make them aware of your additional product offering. Remind them frequently.

  • Build account plans for the key customers in your base and focus on the different services you can sell them.

  • When prospecting for new business, be sure to look at your new product set as additional ways to “get in the door.” Remember, sometimes you focus on the ancillary products in your line with the hope that it will eventually lead to the sale of your core product set.

  • Make sure your network of referral partners (the ones that won’t compete with you in this space) know that you can sell a lot more services and products than what they may have known you for in the past; it may just result in more leads.

Whatever path you choose to take it can be very simple and very profitable for your business to start expanding your service offering. Before you know it, you will have built a very lucrative and stable recurring revenue stream in a time when everyone sells everything.

Gary Jacobs is the vice president of channel sales in southern California for Bridgepointe Technologies, a master agency headquartered in northern California. He is building the southern California marketplace for Bridgepointe by helping sales agents develop growth strategies that increase their residual revenue streams through the sales of telecom and cloud services. Jacobs has more than 18 years of experience in telecom and has held leadership positions for LCI International and Qwest, and most recently served as a director within TelePacific’s telepartner channel. He is also a member of the 2013-14 Channel Partners Advisory Board.

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