Transitioning to Cloud Sales: Does Your Team Have What It Takes?

Imagine for a moment that you’re shopping for a new car. You go to the dealership, test drive a few of the new models available, experience each vehicle’s unique features and, eventually, pick the one that best suits your needs.

Then, just as you’re about to sign the paperwork, a salesperson stops you in your tracks and asks if you’ve considered the newest model—a car that won’t be stocked at the dealership, but promises to deliver incredible performance. The salesperson shows you pictures of that car and explains that it’s revolutionary engineering will actually save you money in the long run. But, because you can’t actually see the car, those benefits are mostly left to your imagination.

Sure, the car sounds incredible, but would you really invest that much money into something you’ve never seen or touched? Probably not. Instead, you’d likely choose a car you’ve actually driven. After all, at least doing that allows you to truly grasp what you’re buying.

Sound familiar?

As a sales leader, you’ve probably experienced similar resistance from sales reps during your company’s transition from selling products to selling cloud services.

Yes, you know that break-fix or premise-based telecommunications aren’t really that much different than their cloud-based counterpart, and the business need is similar. Furthermore, the end result of switching to cloud services actually promises to deliver a more flexible, stable solution to your customers. The value proposition seems obvious and compelling.

Yet, for some reason, your sales reps don’t understand the switch, and they struggle to articulate the value of the cloud offering over the value of the “thing”—the products that they (and their customers) can more easily see, touch, and experience.

To be fair, I can sympathize with this hesitance. After all, just like its name, cloud services are cloudy. They require reps to sell prospects on what’s possible, as opposed to what’s tangible. It’s a conceptual sale, and many reps just don’t understand how to sell something they can’t see or feel.

The problem with that, of course, is that if your reps don’t understand your cloud offering, there’s little chance your prospects will, either.

Truthfully, some salespeople won’t ever grasp the conceptuality of selling services. It’s just too far out of their imagination. And, for the most part, that’s just fine—provided you recognize that for your business to survive the transition to selling cloud services, not all of your reps will make that transition with you.

As a sales manager in charge of a team selling services, it’s critical that your team is capable of thinking and speaking in conceptual terms. Reps must be able to envision the solutions their prospects need to accomplish key business objectives, and possess the capacity to think outside the box to deliver those solutions. Some of your reps will possess that capability, others will not.

Importantly, the salespeople who most commonly succeed at selling cloud services are the ones who are able to grasp the significance of a prospect’s strategic initiatives to his business, and then propose a mix of services that will help that company achieve those initiatives. When your sales reps can do that, prospects will finally (and fully) understand the potential of those services—and their willingness to buy them will follow.

Sound a bit nebulous? Trust me, I know. Welcome to the world of selling cloud services.

Kendra Lee is a top IT seller, prospect attraction expert, author of the award winning books “The Sales Magnet” and “Selling Against the Goal” and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the Small and Midmarket Business (SMB) segment.