An important element in IT sales and marketing is targeting. With targeting, you can basically be where your customers are at. And today, with many businesses across both B2C and B2C sectors going online, everyone is scrambling to locate their market on the digital frontier.
Obviously, IT sales professionals should be at the head of this game. They are in the business of tech which is the heart of the whole internet revolution. When it comes to things like social media and internet marketing, you should be in the cyberspace as your customers right?
What Knowing The Customer Means For IT Sales Professionals
In reality, not all IT sales reps understand their customers as well as they believe. You won’t generate many B2B leads if you select a medium just because you think it’s what your customers use. For instance, you might think that since everyone is on internet forums or social media groups, you can boost your IT sales by joining those same circles.
However, once you sign up an account or start ‘engaging’, you are beset by the following obstacles:
- Low participation – The forum is not as lively as you hoped. Your IT sales and marketing teams are feeling frustrated by the slow or few replies they receive. This happens because you didn’t check if your market actually engages as much as you thought. Take SCM professionals, for example. If your IT sales leads focus on manufacturing management software, trying to connect in online forums might not be the best approach since the people who could help with your IT sales are likely too busy with their work!
- Feeling out of place – On the other hand, maybe you just feel out of place. This ties with the bad reputation of IT sales not being fully in touch in terms of expertise. A forum with a high amount of activity will still be hard to participate in because you have no clue on what is being discussed. At this point, both IT sales and marketing researchers should really do their homework. Both parties should dedicate an appropriate amount of understanding how their market thinks.
- Not seeing success – Here is the tricky part, just because you did not generate the IT sales you hope does not mean your approach is instantly flawed. What it could also mean is that you cannot identify proper signs of success. Sure, your company page boasts a lot of Likes on Facebook, but how do those translate into IT sales? How much of a reputation must you establish on a forum before feeling more hopeful about getting leads from it? How can you be sure that the people viewing your land pages will convert into acceptable prospects for your IT sales team?
Going back to the SCM example, thinking that you know your customers does not mean that you do. The best way to find out is still to research and put yourself in their shoes before trying to make IT sales out of them. It is not enough to just go to the same cyberspace. You have to be in that space at the same time and have something of the same value to discuss with them. Only then can you get your SCM software leads.
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