High Tech
With innovation occurring at breathtaking speed, the high tech sector is experiencing continuous and rapid change in the customer and competitive landscapes. Product and service complexity has increased steadily in response both to technological advances and heightened customer demand for value. At the same time, the emergence of global competition and new business models has caused a major shift in the capabilities required to develop and execute effective sales and marketing strategies. High tech sales and marketing organizations are challenged by:
- Customer sophistication: Sophisticated buying groups are demanding that sellers quantify ROI on technology investments through a well articulated business case. Driven by complex and lengthy enterprise IT projects that have delivered questionable returns, companies are looking beyond price and carefully scrutinizing the value derived from the products, services, and programs that comprise the market offering.
- Competitive environment: Globalization, consolidation, and the speed of innovation have transformed the competitive landscape. Low cost providers from emerging markets are competing and displacing incumbent technology providers. Consolidation has created competitors that can cost-effectively deliver an end-to-end portfolio of offerings. Selling in this environment places higher demands on the skills and competencies of high tech sales forces.
- Market coverage: Technology companies are deploying hybrid sales forces to support complex offerings encompassing products, services, and solutions. Combinations of global, channel, and key account managers, field and specialist sales, telesales, e-channels, and business partners support the cost-effective delivery of tailored value propositions to different customer groups. Achieving the best structure, sizing, deployment, and targeting of sales resources within these hybrid models requires significantly strengthened sales capabilities.
Our high tech practice group has worked with hardware manufacturers, independent software vendors, value-added resellers, system integrators, IT products and services distributors, and telecommunication companies. Our consulting engagements focus on creating sustainable competitive advantage for our clients in a dynamic global marketplace, and support a broad spectrum of sales and marketing capabilities. We work closely with our clients to:
- Create growth strategies based on customer insight, competitive assessment, and market opportunity quantification
- Develop go-to-market models built upon detailed customer segmentation, value proposition definition, and customer-to-channel alignment
- Design and optimize hybrid sales forces, including sales force sizing and deployment, and the streamlining of sales processes
- Build operational capabilities through effective sales force infrastructure and systems that guide hiring, training, and coaching practices; align and integrate performance management and compensation programs; and provide decision support grounded in rigorous sales and marketing analytics
ZS provides a dedicated team of experts who bring industry knowledge and thought-leading sales and marketing issue expertise. ZS is both a strategic advisor for the long-term and a resource that can help with the detailed implementation of new strategies.
If you would like to learn more about our experience within the high tech industry, we would be happy to discuss our insights regarding key challenges, critical success factors, and proven approaches.