Upskill to keep pace with technical and sales changes

Maintaining the balance between technical skills and business requirements is crucial amid IT complexity, as Brian J Dooley finds

By Brian J. Dooley, Auckland | Thursday, 03 June 2010
“For sales staff, the biggest weakness is not taking a consultative approach to selling. A level of technical sophistication is required to be competitive, but more important is understanding how technology impacts clients. We add subject matter expertise to support sales as we drive into detailed solutions. Most sales people in the market are too focused on technical selling. The focus should be on the ability to understand a client’s problems and strategic initiatives. This enables staff to translate how our capabilities can make initiatives a reality.”

Hodgson believes there is still a skills shortage in New Zealand, but it is relatively focused. “There is definitely a shortage on the sales side, specifically those who can take a consultative selling approach,” he says. “This particularly applies in the value-added reseller and services environment where the technology itself may not be the differentiator. In the post-financial crisis marketplace, we must be able to translate solutions into client business initiatives and client value – in most cases, providing hard cost savings and additional business benefits that CTOs and CIOs can report on.”

Rapid changes in IT are also providing new requirements for technical and sales staff. “In future, it will be individuals that command an understanding of multiple disciplines who will be most in demand,” says Hodgson. “For example, a person who understands datacentre operations, enterprise security, network architecture and application convergence will be in high demand for cloud computing. Similarly, individuals with strong application skills across multiple platforms, and a real creative flair, will be in high demand for creating the next generation of solutions.”

PeopleCentral is a national recruiting and training organisation, with a number of IT industry clients. “Training can help to prevent technical staff from trying to sell features of a product rather than benefits to the buyer,” says director Steve Evans. “If the buyer doesn’t see a return on investment for the product or service, the sale will fall over. Sales staff need to learn to adopt a systematic approach to the way they prospect for new business, and make consistent sales presentations that uncover needs and make the return on investment clear. Good sales professionals can obtain better results when backed up by technical expertise, either their own or from the back-office team.”

For technical staff, Evans recommends selecting candidates for product knowledge and expertise, plus the personality traits associated with success in sales environments. “These people are likely to respond well to sales training and consequently perform,” he says. “At the moment, a skill shortage is not evident, with sales people still losing jobs; but there is always a struggle to attract and retain talented sales teams.”

Upcoming sales opportunities are likely to appear in the social networking areas. “Although these sites are growing exponentially, few people who have signed up to social networking sites such as Linkedin have really grasped how to exploit them for business purposes,” he says. “Emerging professionals who can address this issue would, I suspect, be in very high demand in the next 12 months.“