The Importance of Business Value in Selling to Tech People

When you’re in the business of selling tech solutions to tech people, having an innovative product on its own isn’t enough. It might get some focus and attention in the short term, but that can soon fade when the next innovative product comes along.

What’s more important is to communicate the business value of your offer, not just its innovative features. Innovation for its own sake doesn’t increase profit margins – value does. People want to know how it’s going to make their business better or their lives easier. 

That means you need to sell ‘impact’ not ‘features’. Here’s why. 

You need to appeal to resellers 

Communicating the value proposition of any product or service is a general marketing challenge. It’s not exclusive to the tech industry, or even the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. But when tech people are selling to other tech people, there’s a tendency to focus on (you guessed it…) the tech itself rather than the broader business value. 

In a B2B marketplace aimed at IT professionals, it’s easy to see why vendors have a tendency to emphasize features and functionality. Often that’s because IT professionals need a solution for doing something (or doing it better) so they’re usually shopping for features. 

With so many companies offering those features, the challenge for vendors is how to differentiate their offer by marketing the business value of those features. This is especially true for companies that are looking to build a reseller network on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

You need different kinds of innovation

No matter how innovative your product or service may be, it’s likely that potential resellers have seen it all – or something like it –  before. Therefore, the challenge is how to interest resellers in working with you over one of your competitors. 

For that reason, it’s not just about having an innovative product, it’s about how you innovate when executing your go-to-market strategy, and how you demonstrate a clear and worthwhile value proposition to resellers. The bottom line is that it needs to be straightforward for resellers to see the value of your offer for their clients, and their business.  

You need to innovate to elevate on the marketplace

Every marketplace has its own nuances. Understanding what those nuances are and how to navigate them is the key to marketplace success. The Azure Marketplace presents a few clear opportunities for Microsoft Partners. 

First, having Microsoft co-sell status means partners work alongside Microsoft sales teams on joint selling opportunities. That’s why at WeTransact we help companies tick all the boxes needed for partnership with Microsoft. 

Second, our industry insights enable us to direct companies to the right resellers, those with a high propensity for buying on the marketplace, which in turn opens up further opportunities to work more closely with Microsoft.

On top of that, we remove the technical barriers to getting listed and transacting on the Azure Marketplace, including education around resellers, the identification of suitable main sellers, how to extend an offer to resellers, and making transactions happen.

At WeTransact, we also help resellers understand how to generate revenue from the marketplace so they can build a commission and a margin in line with their business goals. We do this by providing expert guidance and support on co-marketing opportunities. 

Explore our innovative approach to doing business with resellers on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. Talk to us