Late last year, Spiceworks released a study that shows organizations are getting ready to go on a technology spending spree. IT budgets are going up in 2018, and one of the solutions many companies are eager to spend on is cloud-based office productivity solutions.
For G Suite resellers, this is welcome news. Google’s office productivity solution is already used by more than 3 million businesses, and adoption is poised to grow even more. In fact, Gartner reports that Google G Suite is approaching 50 percent market share of companies with revenue less than $50 million. Once an upstart challenger to Microsoft’s Office 365, G Suite is being used by a wider variety of companies of all sizes.
However, just because companies have more money to spend doesn’t mean that they’ll spend it with you. In fact, today’s technology buyers have more choices of where to buy from than ever before. Here are some best practices that can help you win more deals in 2018 and beyond.
Best Practice #1: Solve for Why
If businesses can go directly to Google to get G Suite, why should they buy from your company? This isn’t a trick question, nor is it an easy one to answer. But it’s critical to get it right because it sets the stage for everything that follows in your go-to-market strategy.
For instance, let’s say your company’s value proposition for selling G Suite is the combination of your deep experience in the retail sector and your proprietary mobile app for that industry. Your go-to-market strategy would accentuate your company’s strengths and might include aspects such as creating integrations between your app and some of Google’s apps.
For some companies, the answer won’t be as straightforward. If that’s the case, don’t be tempted to skip this step. Without a strong value proposition, your leads won’t be as qualified, and your prospects may just be skeptical bargain hunters. In contrast, a well-articulated value proposition can give you leverage to charge premium pricing and help you turn more qualified leads into loyal customers.
To solve for why, ask yourself these questions:
Why should customers buy Google G Suite? How does it solve their business challenges?
Why should they buy G Suite from my business? What do we do differently and how does that help the customer?
Why should customers trust us? What can we offer that proves we’ve successfully helped other companies like theirs?
A well-articulated value proposition allows you to charge premium pricing and can help you turn more qualified leads into loyal customers.
Best Practice #2: Focus on the Solution Sale
Today, there are tens of thousands of business apps on the market. Unlike consumers, businesses don’t have time to try out many different apps to see what works best for their complex environment. They also can’t afford to make the wrong decision.
Prospects and customers need help and guidance to make the right choice and they look to trusted advisors to help them do that. That’s why selling G Suite is part of a solution sale. Your sales teams need to engage business buyers with conversations that focus on how Google cloud apps deliver benefits to the business.
Van Murray, chief executive officer at NeoCloud, a services provider in Raleigh, North Carolina, offers this advice to companies that are considering selling G Suite: “Moving to the cloud is a drastic change for many businesses. There’s a significant amount of education and change management required to help your customers take best advantage of apps such as G Suite. Everything from your selling process, to onboarding and customer service, must be based on minimizing business disruption while helping customers successfully move to the cloud.”
"There’s a significant amount of education and change management required to help your customers take best advantage of G Suite."
Best Practice #3: Invest in Sales Enablement
You can’t rely on prospects being able to understand the value of G Suite and other cloud apps for their business without your help. Instead, you need to empower your sales teams with tools to help them efficiently and effectively move through the sales cycle to close more deals.
This doesn’t mean arming them with data sheets full of technology “speeds and feeds.” In a modern solution sale, it means giving sales teams content and tools that help them add value to conversations with the customer. The point is to prepare them for working collaboratively with customers to determine the best solution for their needs.
Consider developing the following to support your go-to-market efforts for G Suite:
Sales training
Buyer personas
Elevator pitch
Sales deck
Sales cheat sheet
Vertical and/or horizontal use cases
Customer case studies
TCO/ROI tools
Objection handling tips
It takes time and money to develop training and enablement tools, but they can end up paying big dividends as you ramp up your sales efforts.
To read the rest of our best practices for G Suite resellers—they cover the critical areas of onboarding and customer support—click here to download our strategy brief, “Five Best Practices for Going to Market with Google G Suite.”
Ideas @ AppDirect is a leading source for trends, statistics, best practices, and other information related to the digital economy.
Original Article: https://www.appdirect.com/blog/spend-big-g-suite-best-practices-win-their-business