Technology vendors must evolve their sales focus, and market messaging, to sell software in a market that is facing severe disruption from both extreme volatility in the global economy and the dramatic and growing impact of A.I. Many of the enterprises that vendors sell to are making radical and rapid changes to:
- Reduce their cost base;
- Increase top-line growth and
- Accelerate their use of A.I.
Disruption on this scale is unprecedented, and timescales are short. McKinsey describe the impact of A.I. in this article: The State of AI: How organisations are rewiring to capture value.
Three tactics are required to rebuild sales pipeline and forecast strength, in the new market:
- Customer attention – has your sales messaging been updated and shortened? Does your website messaging reflect the challenges and priorities that your prospective customers face today?
Each market sector and account plan needs reviewing. Existing messaging is often pointed at customer issues, which are no longer relevant.
Customer feedback gathered by sales in real time today, must drive marketing content, rather than vice versa. - Customer business case – do you have a powerful business case that defines the value to the customer of using your solution – which is driven from the customer’s data, and justifies the investment in your solution?
These three KPIs are at the core of an effective customer business case:- Cost reduction, efficiencies and risk reduction;
- Topline revenue growth;
- A.I. business acceleration.
- Andreessen Horowitz describes the need to show your customers why you are valuable to them here
- Fast implementation – shortening the time to value that your solution delivers to your customer is critical. Decisions on new solutions will be postponed if they take too long to deploy.
Technology vendors will also need new management techniques to sell software in a tough market.