What's next for Technical Sales?

As per a recent Gartner forecast1, IT spending is supposed to grow 5.1% to USD 4.5 trillion in 2022 as economic recovery coupled with high expectations for digital market prosperity will continue to boost technology transactions between businesses and technology vendors. With this huge opportunity coupled with disruption in the existing selling models, technology vendors are re-looking their go-to-market model and evaluating the skill sets and professionals who would lead this next phase of growth.

Traditionally, sales and selling used to be mostly focused on building solid relationships that created trust with customers which led to revenue and deal closures. However, providing them with solutions and outcomes for their most pressing problems had always been an integral part of the selling process, though it never took its deserved place, until recently.?

Increasingly, customers research most of the product/solution themselves and are almost 50% ready in their purchase decisions before getting in touch with a sales-rep, raising the bar for sales professionals. In the present time when we talk about business models such as B2B, B2B2C, and a variety of B2C industries selling high-ticket items, technical sales professionals are the key differentiator in charge of proving a product’s value and technology capabilities for each customer in a unique way.

Over the next few years, organizations will continue to increase their own capabilities to buy and adopt technology, as the greater urgency and accelerated pace of change continue to broaden the gap between a companies’ digital business ambitions and their existing internal capabilities and resources. Technical sellers acting as the trusted advisors by their customers, augment existing relationship focused sales reps and will continue to take center stage and would be key to growth for technology vendors. They are the professionals responsible to guide businesses and organizations towards successful digitalization and drive adoption of technologies the right way.?

Cloud has changed and revolutionized the tech sales world?

With all its inherent benefits, by 2025, the cloud market is expected to be double the size of the non-cloud market3. Cloud is responsible for nearly all of the 11% spending growth within the enterprise software segment in 2022. With the rise of cloud computing and the intrinsic need for helping customers go live, technology vendors are also rethinking how sales reps should be measured and incentivized, from an upfront contract signing to actual consumption and usage by the customers. This means reps should be constantly providing solutions to customers and driving customer success, a job that cannot be done without technical sales professionals who have the right skillset and know-how to drive this next phase of growth for technology companies.?

The craft of technical experts and engineers playing a role in sales goes back to the very beginning of the technology revolution. As technology has evolved from on-premise hardware to software and self-serve SaaS packaging, so has the titles of these technical sales professionals, some of the most common ones being Customer Engineer, Solution Architect, systems engineer, Pre-sales, sometimes even technical specialist etc. As organizations focus on upgrading their software solutions stack to software-as-a-service (SaaS) to support continued flexibility, availability, accessibility, and agility, technical sales professionals are and will continue to play a major force in driving this change.?

Technology Sales professionals are gaining visibility in the new virtual business world?

The pandemic has put a screeching halt to the way sales was carried out, be it in-person client meetings, business travels, conferences, events, or dinners, none of it is happening anymore. Making customers realize that vendor relationships can be effectively managed remotely, even as the world returns to normal, it will be hard for vendors' sales professionals to justify the need for travel and to justify the related costs. This new digital and remote customer engagement model is here to stay. In this scenario, Technical sales professionals again play a key role as buying conversations and discussions become more directed towards subject matter expertise and problem solving than relationship building. Increasingly these virtual conversations with customers have become more straightforward and demand to the point discussions, well suited for technical sellers. As the business world goes hybrid, digital channels become the new hunting ground for business and thought leadership and social selling emerge as the top prospecting and upselling tools, an area again quite apt and well suited for technical sellers who are taking center stage by providing novel approaches to solve customer problems through technical know-how and thought leadership.?

What the future looks like

As the technology sales ecosystem goes through this radical change in their go-to-market approach, in the coming years and technical sales professionals take center stage, it is time for C-level executives and technology business leaders to build a solid technical sales capability with additional investments and tools supporting technical seller productivity workforce that will drive their growth in the next decade.?

Given how important it will be to accelerate time to value for customers while continually solving their problems in a hybrid world with cloud, SaaS driven technology solutions, I am quite confident that the technical sales profession is set to take an even more center stage in the technology world.

No matter if you are new to tech sales or have lived through the time when we were all called "system engineers" , there is tremendous potential to reinvent and further contribute value to clients and drive them to success.?