The Art of Selling Cloud
Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman - not the attitude of the prospect, William Clement Stone. When we started selling biometrics solutions more than 10 years ago, we glorified Internet marketing to market our solutions globally without incurring exorbitant marketing costs for the activities. Marketing biometrics solution this way has been proven successful, putting us on the global map at par with other renowned brands of the industry. Now, selling cloud solutions poses us with another challenge of how to push these software products to the market effectively and sustain those customers for the longest time.
Who would be (most likely to be) using our cloud solutions? Do we anticipate small medium enterprises to start deploying cloud or MNCs would be the better potentials to take the bait? Identification of the right customers is paramount to determine how we focus and channel our resources to the target group. From our limited experience in the cloud business, the consumption of cloud is focused on companies around 100-3000 employees having multiple branches that require automation in attendance and a system that can handle staff mobility effectively. Knowing exactly what the right customers want, the tailoring of the marketing activities can be focused and carried out suitably.
So what do they want, and how to identify the requirements? Selling cloud, unlike regular software, shouldn’t be tailored to each customer’s whims and fancies on customizations. However, it doesn’t mean that things get simpler, as the challenge would be to determine features that are beneficial to majority customers. For TimeTec TA for example, the appeal is the accessibility, connectivity, scalability and ease of use, definitely. And with ample great features in the solution such as scheduling and roster management, the price USD2 per user per month justifies the investment. Selling cloud is consultative; where a salesperson should spend time with a customer to understand problems they are having and advising solutions from the software that can solve those problems effectively. While doing that, perhaps the salesperson can also identify some other problems that do not have the solutions yet in the product but could be developed in the next upgrade for the purpose of customer retention. In short, with cloud solutions, the progress never stops.
Cost of customer acquisition is getting higher as we speak and it’s only wise to tap on the existing customers to cross sell and upsell our cloud solutions. TimeTec itself comprises of 8 cloud solutions covering 5 for the workforce management with TimeTec TA, TimeTec Hire, TimeTec Leave, TimeTec VMS, and TimeTec Mobile Workforce and 3 for security industry with i-Neighbour, EpiCamera and TimeTec Patrol. There is a high chance that if the customer is pleased with TimeTec TA, that they are going to move on to another solution that could ease the workload for example TimeTec Leave. Cross selling solutions to a client does not only cut the cost of customer acquisition but it also creates customer loyalty that goes a long way for a cloud brand.
TimeTec is at the beginning of this journey and we are taking careful steps when walking on cloud business. We believe strongly that our solutions could make the working world a better place, and the only direction we have to go is up with TimeTec. With the support of all our global customers and resellers that have been with us all these years, we are confident that we could. Perhaps, we have not mastered the art of selling Cloud yet but with enough knowledge and practice, we are confident we’ll get there.
Cloud management is also gaining popularity in Bangladesh.
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