You need to make sure that your IT sales campaign is about sales and not countless free consultations.  Your job is not to prove you intelligence or your technical expertise and ability to pay for and sit through certification exams.   Your job in an IT sales meeting is to see if you have good chemistry with a prospect and if the prospect is ready to move to the next step – paid work.  

Can You Work with the Prospect?

An IT sales call is about checking to see that you and your prospect are on the same page and that the prospect will be a client your company can manage.  Does the prospect look like other successful clients?  You should have already asked the important questions about company size and platform.  The IT sales call is about gauging personality and willingness to work with your specific solutions.

For most good IT sales opportunities, you should spend about an hour getting to know their needs and giving away very controlled free advice.  Be ready to cut the free advice off at some point and start discussing the possibility of hiring your firm for an IT audit or tech assessment.  

“Free” is Not a Living

If you keep offering prospects things for free, you will never realize a profit.  There are plenty of small businesses that will take advantage of free advice indefinitely with no intention of helping you make IT sales.  

What Do You Want to Sell Prospects?

Don’t give away your business for free.  Instead, assess your clients’ various needs – both immediate and long term – and know what they are before the IT sales call.  How will you be a solution?  You need to be ready to be a solution to their worst problems and be prepared to offer a half-day audit for a couple hundred dollars at a fixed rate.  

If you see a greater opportunity during the IT sales call — $50,000 - $100,000 in services – you can afford to give away more than an hour as part of the IT sales call, but make sure to know where you are going before you even enter the door.

Blogged By:  Joshua Feinberg