Whether it’s hosted services or managed services, system integrators struggle selling “Anything-as-a-Service”. There are many reasons that make it a challenge, but one at the top of the list is that they start their conversations with the same perceived benefit. It usually goes something like this…
Salesperson: Instead of paying $80k out of pocket, we can get you up and running with only $40k up front and then $3k monthly payments. We’ll move a lot of your capital expense to an operating expense.
Customer: What? That’s crazy. How much interest are you charging? I’ll have it paid off in about a year – why would I keep paying you a monthly payment?
Salesperson: No big deal. We can still do it the way we’ve always done it with an on-prem system and letting you manage it.
That’s it. From what we can tell from working with our clients, that’s how many of these sales calls go. And it’s not the salesperson’s fault. CapEx to OpEx has been forced onto them by everyone in the space. Manufacturers, distributors, columnists, and other contributors to teaching salespeople how to sell these services have consistently driven home the CapEx to OpEx message because they think it’s what the end-user needs to hear. Security, facilities, and IT can bring this argument to finance and executive management for easy and fast approval. Except that doesn’t happen when salespeople lead with it.
When the first benefit a salesperson makes is about CapEx to OpEx, the customer hears “finance plan”. Once they think you’re presenting a finance plan, you’re done. Pack up the as-a-service collateral and go back to selling the on-prem stuff. There are dozens of benefits many clients get from as-a-service options – higher quality work, scalability, predictable expense, load balancing, etc. – but salespeople don’t get the opportunity to discuss these benefits because their customers think they’re being sold a finance plan.
If you want to improve your as-a-service sales, understand all the problems that will be solved by your service’s benefits. Spark conversation about these problems and walk through how your service can solve them. Hold the CapEx to OpEx benefit in your back pocket until the very end. After they’re almost convinced, then simply say something like “And by the way, you can also save some of that up front CapEx – your finance department will appreciate that.”
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