Outsourcing major business processes to major providers, especially offshore outsourcing companies like Wipro and Mahindra Satyam, has been a common fix for decreasing IT budgets in a struggling economy. As these providers support more and more Fortune 1000 and Global 500 giants, many of who are direct competitors, the issue of overuse, and consequently, security, come into play. While working with a more experienced and renowned company may seem more safe, companies like Credit Suisse, who are dealing with very sensitive, private client information are turning to smaller, “less risky” providers to work on their projects.

Especially in a struggling economy, business needs are at the crux of what ultimately closes a deal and ends in a successful sale. As a sales rep selling technology, understanding your prospect’s business needs enough to align your solution with their specific plights is the key to closing business. As it turns out, sales reps aren’t the only ones that might be overlooking these broad, strategic business pains in the process of their efforts to sell technology.

With tech spending finally on the rise again, business needs that may have been pushed aside due to cost cutting initiatives are finally starting to be addressed again. This, of course, means that companies, especially large enterprises and the Fortune 1000, will be investing in solutions that may not be crucial for the day-to-day functioning of the business, but that may increase profitability or ease a (less crucial) business pain.

Before you start the relationship building process with prospects, you need to identify which of your prospects are hot and which ones are not. Using BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and Time) criteria, you can better qualify what leads you should go after. Originally developed by IBM, BANT criteria can help you determine if there’s a [...]

Sales forecasts can be helpful for time management for sales reps, as they can highlight which accounts they should spend their valuable time selling to, and which accounts are not highly likely to buy.