How do you get "something new" talked about in the boardoom and raise curiosity?

I was researching the value of Cloud Computing. It's still new in boardroom parlance.

I’ve been working with a global IT supplier who, when introducing new advanced technologies, met many issues in getting value, trust and inspiration across to its customers. Here are the issues they encountered:

1. Only a small number of salespeople knew how to generate trust, articulate value and inspire action with senior executives in “big clients”

2. The rest avoided selling the new thing because they didn’t know how to do 1.

3. If customers aren’t even curious you don’t get invited to the planning table.

Now if we apply all the above principles to the SME market and Indirect Channel Sales, the whole picture gets economically fraught. In this market space people no longer sell on price and brand – and haven’t done so for years. They sell what they know how to sell.

So how do you give anybody the motivation, confidence, competence and curiosity to go sell something that’s new to the customer and new to them as well? How do you maximize cross and up selling opportunities?

Answer: You make it easy for them (and the customer).

That’s a line of business I’m now in. The sort of results my colleagues and I are getting include clients with 20% sales growth above current rate in weeks, 33% reduced sales cycle times, pre-sales support costs reduced by 66%.

The approach we use does require a shift in mindset. For a large organization to take it on, it has to be sponsored from the top. The traditionalists will either freak or believe they can do it for themselves. Well, they can't.

I leave you with a thought. I’ve checked out quite a bit of IT and IS vendors' collateral on Cloud Computing and the like. It’s mainly inside out. Which means the customer has to be interested in how it works first, to see the value. Top selling these years is outside in.