By Larry Kesslin Evolving any company is a challenge, but the transformation that the average transactional channel partner is going through is even harder. It seems evident that over the next few years more and more clients will be moving their IT and communications technology to a virtual environment. This transformation will cause some upset to the "box pushers" and "circuit slingers" that can’t adapt. The biggest change will be for the executives and employees who can’t reposition their thinking to meet the new customer demand.
In the hardware/software channels, thousands of industry salespeople who are used to selling gear or software don’t understand the shift to recurring revenue and selling business solutions that are operationalized, not capitalized, might not make it through this wave of change. Selling large capital projects is much different than selling recurring contracts. First of all, the commission structure is much different and the drivers for success are much different.
On the network side, there are equal numbers of agents that are used to being order takers for ever-greater bandwidth or selling voice and data plans at an ever-widening discount. Selling complex solutions like UC or cloud that supplant existing business productivity tools is a very different exercise.
In either case, the conversation with the buyer turns from a technical conversation about a point product or service to a business conversation about solving a problem or need. Many current salespeople are not ready for that transformation. The employee of the future needs to be “bilingual" — fluent in both techie and business speak.
Before you put up the want ads, work with your existing teams and help them see the future of the marketplace and your company's desired role in that future. However, if your existing team does not see the future, you might need to drag them there. One way to do that is to recruit people who do see this future and plant them within your organization to inspire others.
It is hard enough to recruit and integrate new employees into your current environment, so trying to recruit the “employee of the future" will be that much harder. For greater success, you'll need to:
- Define your new business model
- Identify the key skills and attributes that your new culture will require
- Develop a solid recruiting strategy
The first step is to define the future you see for your business. What is your product/service set moving forward? How will clients purchase your products and services?
