How (not) to do business in IT
Obsah
If we are talking about B2B sales, especially about infrastructure, then we are looking at relatively large changes in recent years.
Since the advent of cloud services, selling IT infrastructure has been a piece of cake for a while.
Not literally, but companies were buying ready-made products, commodities that were generic. They allowed for a choice of sizes, but no room for customization – just like the cake.
But the days of pre-configured, rigid virtual servers are also over. The hype has passed, because this type of infrastructure was more like a money vaccuum cleaner than it brought benefits.
So how did we, as a cloud infrastructure provider, deal with these changes? Here are our lessons learned from years of turbulent change.
No to online advertising 🚫
Direct sales using online billboards and ads are great for B2C offers. But if we are talking about cloud infrastructure for corporate purposes, then it is just a waste of money.
The basic problem is that quite often IT decision makers in companies are managers who are not technicians. So if they are shown a direct offer of some type of cloud infrastructure, then it will not appeal to them at all.
Companies must choose IT infrastructure according to their needs, according to their way of functioning, and IT people, not managers, have an overview of this (that is, most of the time, let’s not throw everyone into the same bag).
Of course, I do not want to discourage anyone from trying different types of promotion, but from our experience we can see that if advertisements are focused directly on selling some infrastructure, they do not work because they communicate in a completely different way than their target group.
Not a sales website 🛒
When you look at an online store that sells products, you see the main characteristics and options to choose from. Everything is clear and concise. Now let’s try to imagine what it would look like if such a website were to sell IT infrastructure.
Main characteristics? Of course, we will be happy to provide you with several pages of technical parameters. But who among us would want to read them? When we buy a T-shirt, we are interested in what it is made of. But when it comes to infrastructure, the list of items is very long, deeply technical and boring for a non-techie.
Variants? We have them. Do you want a server, a computing cluster, a VPS, a VDC or a hybrid solution? The first problem. In order for a company to choose one of the variants or a combination of them well, it needs expert advice. And few companies have the budget for a full-fledged IT team that can evaluate it.
It is absolutely fine to point out the benefits and highlights of a solution on the website, but an e-shop with infrastructure is a difficult path.
No to just a sales team 👥
We need salespeople, B2B cannot move without personal contact of human intermediaries. But I mean, when it comes to communicating with potential customers, it is always much better when the team includes a tandem of a salesperson and a technician.
Although they both speak different languages, and sometimes this causes misunderstandings and problems, this combination is necessary for the best result. The salesperson understands how to communicate with potential customers in the initial stages, and the technician will help them find the best solution. Each has their own professional insight.
No to just one advantage ⚡
Every company is certainly well aware of the benefits that its solution can offer to other companies. But not every company is looking for such benefits. That is why a sales website is unusable in many cases.
IT infrastructure, although it has various forms with specific parameters, adapts in its variants (almost all of them). Sometimes this adaptation concerns finances, sometimes specific functionality, and sometimes efficiency. And because every company is different, it is not possible to generalize too much.
Individualization 🎯
I already mentioned customization in the previous point. Globally, companies are moving towards the hybrid infrastructure trend, although it does not look like it on the Czech market yet.
This trend fits well with the no’s I mentioned in this article. If the new direction of the IT infrastructure market is a move towards full customization, then the only possible way to achieve it is personal contact and individual solutions.
