In the new era of internet marketing, the problem of severe competition comes into the first position.
If you look back into 1990-th you will find high tech companies using traditional sales techniques: purchasing local and regional business contact lists, making cold calls and then trying hard sales closing techniques, such as “selling to the top” – IBM style, selling to VITO (very important top officer), etc. It did work in those old days. We would dare to announce that these days are gone and these techniques are now obsolete.
We launched Microsoft Business Solutions VAR business nationwide without any money/investment in 2002 and now we are present in major US business metros, have international satellite offices in Brazil, Russia and Europe.
Below we would like to share our techniques
1. Internet Marketing – in contrast to the old believe that you can cheat out internet search engine and place your web site on the top position, we state that this is virtually not possible. But the paradox is in the fact that internet is the major marketplace. So – you have to spend most of your sales efforts on the internet. There is no direct answer about the preferred method – all the methods should contribute and be tried out
2. Concentrate on your product line – your customers and prospects should see and recognize the expert in you, reading your publications. In our case – we stake on Microsoft Business Solutions Products: Microsoft Great Plains, Microsoft CRM, Navision and Microsoft RMS. We are publishing ezines on the weekly basis and trying to keep our forum answered on the daily basis.
3. Create your partners and subcontractors network – when you are small and short of resources the best you can do to speed up your expansion is to partner with other market players who could help you open the door to new prospects and close the sales.
4. Pay your people and subcontractor – There was popular technique of trying to negotiate down the price and do not pay in time. This game is not good, but it is acceptable in the case of huge corporation. When you are small – you can not play this card – your partners will not do business with you in the future.
Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, based in Chicago, California, Texas, New York, Georgia and Florida and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.
