How To Sell IT In Tough Times

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In many cases, solution providers have been selling "green" for years, through server consolidation, virtualization, etc., but highlighting the environmental aspect of a solution helps the marketability of a solution, VARs said.

"We see the movement largely starts in the data center. It's all about real estate and floor space, air conditioning, cooling, power consumption," said GTRI's Smith. "A lot of what we see going on [with] green initiatives are rack-oriented, server-oriented. We incorporate that into our data center practice."

The solution provider held an open house for customers earlier this summer. GTRI invited a few vendors to showcase their technologies and talk about how they address environmental issues. The event generated some great leads that will keep the company busy into the fall, said Sam Anderson, manager for marketing programs for GTRI.

"It's something our customers have been talking about and they were interested in what we were doing from a solutions perspective," Anderson said.

Melillo Consulting also works closely with major manufacturers to generate proof-of-concept solutions around new technologies on behalf of its customers. For example, the solution provider may drop a blade enclosure into a test environment and do a proof-of-concept demo to drive home the long-term value in infrastructure consolidation, Paetow said. Other new technologies the solution provider showcases include management consolidation, storage strategies for archiving, backup and recovery, disaster recovery and business continuity.

"You don't need to implement immediately," Paetow said. "Now is the time to do the planning, to get customers and their IT departments educated on new technology."

Melillo Consulting provides customers with a road map to appropriately budget and implement a cost-effective solution, Paetow said. Taking that approach will benefit solution providers when the wallets do open up again, he said.

If customers already understand what they need, it translates into a quicker sale and a more loyal customer.

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