Tag: trusted advisor

Business, channel, Customer Experience, partnership, Sales

What it means to be a trusted advisor

The most successful sales professionals don’t wait for customers to tell them they have a problem—they help customers identify opportunities and challenges before they become business issues. That is the difference between being a supplier and becoming a trusted advisor.

Building trusted relationships requires a balance of proactive engagement and easy accessibility. Proactive engagement means maintaining regular contact with customers, understanding their evolving business priorities, monitoring industry trends, and bringing forward ideas that deliver measurable value. Rather than focusing solely on products or renewals, effective sales leaders initiate conversations around business outcomes, efficiency, growth, customer experience, risk reduction, and innovation. Customers value partners who help them think ahead rather than simply respond when something goes wrong.

Equally important is ensuring customers have multiple, convenient ways to engage when they need guidance or support. Whether through account management, customer success teams, technical specialists, digital channels, or executive sponsorship, customers should always feel they have access to knowledgeable people who can provide timely advice. Trust is built not only through regular planned interactions but also through being responsive and available when expertise is needed.

To support this approach, organisations need access to a broad portfolio of complementary solutions. Very few businesses can meet every customer requirement with their own products alone. The strongest sales organisations recognise this and develop credible partnerships with trusted technology providers and service specialists. These partnerships allow sales teams to solve a wider range of customer challenges without compromising quality or integrity.

Customers rarely judge you by the size of your product portfolio; they judge you by your ability to solve their problems. Having a carefully selected ecosystem of partners enables sales professionals to recommend the most appropriate solution, even when it extends beyond their own organisation’s capabilities. This reinforces credibility and demonstrates that recommendations are driven by the customer’s best interests rather than by a desire to maximise product sales.

An ecosystem approach also positions the sales team as a strategic business partner rather than a transactional vendor. By understanding the customer’s long-term objectives and drawing upon both internal capabilities and external expertise, sales professionals can deliver complete solutions that evolve alongside the customer’s business.

Ultimately, trusted advisor status is earned through consistency, expertise, and genuine customer focus. It requires proactive engagement that uncovers future opportunities, responsive channels that encourage customers to seek advice whenever they need it, and access to a broad range of solutions delivered through both in-house capabilities and trusted partnerships. Organisations that combine these elements build deeper relationships, create greater customer loyalty, and generate sustainable, long-term revenue growth based on value rather than transactions.

Business, channel, Customer Focus

We don’t get asked for that

It’s not unusual to hear a business leader say that their customers do not ask for certain solutions.

So what does this tell us?

Should we rely on our customer to always ask us if we can help? It’s certainly a great place to be when we’ve become a trusted advisor.

But this isnt always the case. Often we’ve been pigeonholed as the network guys, or the desktop guys or whatever else.

Does this mean that they’re not seeing us as capable of offering something else? Probably. It could also mean that they’re engaged elsewhere with someone who has made an approach that’s caught their attention. The threat is that whilst they’re busy building trust elsewhere, they’re not spending time with us building trust.

So do you think you’re going to “stick to your knitting” or segue into positioning yourself as a trusted advisor where you’re always the “go to” guys?

Whenever you’re thinking about HOW TO GROW your business, just consider how you sell more things to more people, and start with those customers who’ve already said we trust you.

Business

Why “we never get asked for that” is a terrible response

Care to join the debate?

When you are considering your business operations, with a thought for your portfolio of offerings and what your prospective customers seek you out for, do you ever find yourself saying to potential suppliers “we never get asked for that”?

Do you also ever stop to consider why that might be? Could it be that it is so far away from your core business activities that it just wouldn’t happen – e.g. are customers likely to ask an IT reseller for HR assistance? Could it be that your business is seen as a very niche provider? Could it be that you seem unapproachable, or that your skillset is focussed?

Whether or not any of these reasons apply, wouldn’t you like to grow your business by helping more customers solve more business problems and you are their “go-to” person for all advice? For me, “Trusted Advisor” is an extremely aspirational position to be in where your knowledge, experience, and opinions are deemed valuable

Agree? Whats your view?

Business, partnership, Sales, Selling

How do I stay on top of the constant changes?

#TrustInPartnership

Whatever your perspective, I think we would all probably agree, that for the IT and Telecoms reseller, things have certainly changed, and continue to do so. The vendor landscape continues to evolve too, with new vendors appearing, with innovative offerings, and many established vendors consolidating as they vie for position in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

For the consumers of the technology (the customers), things are forever changing too. Factors affecting their businesses are arriving at such a pace, and with their business cost base being under constant pressure, many are running on very lean staffing numbers. This compounds to effect somewhat.

What we have is more change and a greater pace of change, more vendors, more innovation, fewer staff, greater challenges and the same amount of time in each and every day.

How does a business stay on top of all of this and remain current with technology that can give them an advantage, or stop them being exposed, as well as attract and retain staff as a great place to work.

In life, and in business, for me, it’s about relationships – building trusted relationships, where over time you can outsource some of this to a specialist or specialists – ensuring you can focus on the business of running your business – and generally, the smaller specialist businesses are more likely to offer you the long term relationship building opportunity, as they are more often than not, owner-run and they are therefore unlikely to leave the business to work at a competitor, leaving you with the what to do dilema.

#ShopLocal #BuyLocal #SupportLocal #TrustInPartnerships

Business

How much do you want to grow your business and what are you prepared to invest?

No really, it’s a serious question. You most likely say that you want to grow your business and that there are barriers to achieving your goals, but what are you prepared to DO about it?

Look at it like this – There are ten frogs sitting on a log and one of them decides to jump off. How many are left?

So you are sharp and you noticed that there were ten frogs STILL sitting on the log, because despite making a decision, there was NO ACTION.

Back to my original question – have you made some decisions but not yet committed the action?

If one of your decisions was to grow your business and yet you are unsure of how, or you know how, but do not have the resources or skills in your business to ACT, you should reach out and outsource – find a trusted advisor.