It’s time to stop talking about the Cloud like it is something in the future.
It is here and now. It’s like how we used to talk about the internet like it was a futuristic tool, and now we’re shocked if we can’t access the internet at 30,000 feet. The cloud is here and part of almost every company’s strategy at some level. And if it’s not a part of your business planning now, you’re missing opportunities for your customers and growth.
Which leads us to Hybrid. What does that mean? Hybrid is the combination of the cloud and premise based locations for the solution. The two work transparently together but are based in both the cloud and traditional premise based locations. The larger enterprises certainly have embraced the cloud at some level, but very few have been able to migrate all their applications to the cloud or plan to do so any time soon. In fact, well-known tech company Airbnb was all “in the cloud” and is now migrating away. They determined that it was not as flexible as it needed to be for their fast growing organization.
So, as a reseller in today’s world, what does this mean for me? The key takeaway is to continue to evolve. Just as it is hard to be strictly a voice organization today, you need to have your sales processes optimized for today’s customer needs. You need to support cloud deployments. That might be selling a solution that is deployed in a cloud location. But that also might be focusing more of your offering toward a monthly recurring price rather than a one-time purchase.
Resellers need to focus on the ability to provide a solution that fits this hybrid approach. Most organizations probably do offer this solution, but to ensure the solution fits your customers’ needs, you must ask yourself a few questions:
- How easy is it for my sales organization to configure this solution?
- What does the proposal and contract look like that we will present to the customer?
- If the cloud is here to stay, is our reseller organization ready to maximize the opportunity?
- Does our sales team have the tools necessary to succeed in this environment?
- Do we have a sales process designed for this new world?
- Do we have a scope of work that supports it?
These questions are designed to help you understand how to optimize your sales process when considering Cloud and Hybrid solutions and the unique challenges they pose. At CorsPro, we can help you optimize your presales process to ensure that you maximize every sales opportunity.
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