What's the best way to sell to IT execs when they're not interested? Any great stories out there?
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The most important aspect is to first try and understand what the pain point of the person is rather than direct selling. Once we know the pain point, then we should understand what sort of approach they’re taking to resolve that pain point. Is it repetitive in nature? Is it non-repetitive? Once we have a fair idea with regular conversation, rather than a selling or a sales-oriented conversation, you can tell them how you can solve this because you have some data that can address their pain point and that’s a way for us to be on the same page.
The vendors typically have a hard time, because we tend to be a little conservative. We want to make sure that the vendors abide by certain regulations and laws: HIPAA, PCI, FDA, etc.
I believe most vendors have to really look into the security aspect of their products. Does it provide the compliance and regulations that we need?
Secondly, if it doesn’t really fit into our business model or goals, I don’t see a reason to bring a vendor to the table. Whenever you change systems inside the healthcare industry, the labor in redesigning workflows can be a monumental challenge. Even an otherwise excellent product would fail if it doesn’t resolve my immediate need and is quickly adopted.
Business / $$$ value of your solution.
It pays to have patience. It typically will take time and repeated trys. Be sure to show the costs benefits as well as other benefits (such as resources gained back, with time and how that helps with moving towards, or more of a proactive approach (and tie in to automation of processes and tools) and giving time to teams to work on more fun items as well as work life balance and overall team morale improvement).
Another item is to help show how this helps aligns to management/leadership/C suite goals and strategy as well as overall business alignment.
Spend more time listening to what they're saying than trying to tell them what your product can do.
You may have the best whizzbang product in the world, but if it doesn't solve a problem the client has then it's worthless to them.
The only way you'll identify that problem is by asking questions, listening, and not trying to show how smart you are.
I heard an anecdote a few years back about how one of the big four aproaced the managing director of the largest construction company in Christchurch, NZ. Their opening line was "we know all the problems your industry faces".
His response was quite simoy "most if the problems the industry faces is that we are the biggest player in town".
There is a store