10 Steps to Helping Your Customer’s Weather Market Turbulence

Chances are better than not that customers are or have told you that end of year and 2009 IT purchasing and projects may be scaling back.  Here are my thoughts about coping with the present market challenges.

• Audit your customer’s IT infrastructure to help them prioritize IT spending for the next 14 months
• Identify best practices in your customer’s industry to help your customer understand opportunities and challenges with particular focus on where IT can create productivity gains in the business
• Look for opportunistic buying.  As we move through the last calendar quarter with uncertain and possibly sluggish demand, IT manufacturers and publishers will need to move products through the supply chain, so now is the time for deal making.  In other words, don’t be shy about asking for special pricing and other incentives.  If you can’t get it with your primary vendor brand, looking at other brands cost savings and margin profit opportunities
• Have a heart-to-heart chat with your distribution account representatives.  They need to move significant volumes of products, particularly in CQ4:08 and into CQ1:09 and they are great resources to find options and possibilities
• Talk with your top three IT manufacturers and software publishers to ensure you are taking advantage of and receiving the maximum benefit of every program they offer or subsidize
• Look at financing tools to help customers finance IT products and services through leasing, extended payment plans, deferrals, and trade-in allowances.  Finance companies are still in business and, in some cases, are being paid by tier 1 brands to wraps financing opportunities into sales programs.  With access to credit challenging in today’s market, financing experts are more likely to lend based on the strength of a customer’s balance sheet
  
• Evaluate the services that you provide to determine if you can provide them to customers at a lower cost than they are currently paying for them through other 3rd parties or employees.  Whatever the project, providing the customer with a lower cost option could be the beginning of a long-term or expanded relationship
• Assess the value you deliver to your customers.  I know that most partners don’t have the time to think about their business, but this is the time to make certain that you are not just delivering value, but you are delivering the right value that will make your customer’s more successful, profitable, and drive costs out of their business
• Bone up on what your competition is doing.  Very few partners have the time or resources to evaluate how they stack up against competitors.  Now is the time to make certain you are competitive in your offerings and pricing.  And, you don’t want your competitors to snatch your profitable customers away from you
  
• Now it the best time to roll-up your sleeves and build a trusted partner relationship with your customers.  You want to give your customers an on-going reason to pick-up the phone and talk with you even when there is no transaction or project on the table

Just remember, the strongest relationships are started and stopped during times of stress, so make the market chaos a silver lining for your business plan and customer retention and growth strategy.