Contents
Anna Stepanova, director of educational projects at VK, talks about how to start a career in sales of IT products for business and what skills to develop for those who plan to enter this area
Who is suitable for selling b2b products in IT
While developing the VK internship program for b2b sales in IT, we realized that the ideal base for starting a career in this area is either b2b sales experience in any other industry, or experience in IT as a specialist. The first candidates have the necessary soft skills – primarily communication and negotiation skills, and the second – the professional skills and abilities that are necessary to perform specific tasks (hard skills).
People who have experience in b2b sales are interested in entering interesting and promising industries, and the IT industry is just that. It is very dynamic, there are companies in this market, partnership with which is an impressive case in the portfolio of any salesperson. But there is an important point: to become a good sales specialist in IT, you need, if not to understand, then at least be interested in technology. Even with super-pumped sales skills, if a person is not immersed in the digital products that he sells, he is unlikely to succeed in this area.
As for IT people who want to retrain as sales specialists, they are often driven by the desire to have more contact with the world. These are proactive people for whom programming, analytics and other IT areas are not so exciting. They want to add more communications to their work, but at the same time stay in their industry – and choose b2b sales in a market they know well.
What market players teach their potential employees
Until recently, the b2b sales segment was somewhat undervalued. But now the situation is changing – IT companies are increasingly developing this area and launching various educational programs and internships. Because it is rather difficult to find a good b2b sales specialist in the IT field on the market – it is more efficient to grow him in your company.
IT professionals who want to switch from working with code and analytics and promote complex products, work in a team, communicate a lot, will be taught how to sell. And those who, on the contrary, have sales skills, an understanding of how to work with CRM systems, how to interact with customers, but do not have specific knowledge in the field of IT, will help to gain this knowledge.
So a specialized education is not at all a prerequisite for building a successful career in b2b sales in the IT field. It gives a certain advantage at the start and allows you to significantly reduce the adaptation process, but it is not some kind of standard. I will say more, in VK only 15–20% of b2b product sales specialists have an IT education. And when selecting for an internship in this area, we do not check the programming skills of candidates.
A set of competencies for an effective IT product sales specialist for business
The flexible competencies map of a successful b2b sales specialist for IT products consists of four blocks:
If a person decides to build a career in b2b sales, you should take care of your development in these areas. Fortunately, today there are many opportunities for this – online lessons, trainings and others.
In the internship programs of IT companies, these skills are given a lot of attention. Interns are taught how to search for information when preparing to communicate with a potential client, identify their pain points, work with objections, correctly convey the benefits of a product, explain how to act if a transaction does not go through, and much more. All this, of course, is practiced in practice, including on real business cases. And even for interns, key indicators (KPIs) have been set to achieve.
Leonid Anikin, VK Development Director Digital Technologies:
“In general, sales to corporate users are no different from any other – in the end, it is always specific people who buy.
But in b2b, the purchase decision is not made by one person. The customer from the company is one employee, chooses the product – another, negotiates with the vendor – the third, and the fourth allocates money. The sales specialist must know all these people, interact with all of them.
If we talk about hard skills, you need to study the company’s products that a person plans to promote, and at least superficially – the history of the company itself and market trends. Such awareness always sets the candidate apart from others. There is nothing complicated here either – there is a lot of information in the public domain about IT companies and their products, as well as about the IT market as a whole.
These are the very skills that a sales professional needs. Of course, in the internship programs of companies, more than one module is also devoted to their development. For example, in our case, this is everything related to cloud technologies. However, it is good if at the start the candidate already has some basic information. Then he has a better chance of qualifying.
Compliance with the cultural code of the company, loyalty is also of great importance. Because, as a rule, it correlates with great motivation, which is very important in sales and in some cases can even compensate for the lack of soft and hard skills.
Catch the moment
b2b sales of IT products is a promising direction. More and more specialized educational programs appear on the market, including those from IT companies themselves, which are interested in training highly qualified specialists. And there are many vacancies on recruiting portals with salaries ranging from ₽50 thousand to ₽500 thousand. The direction is well suited for both university graduates who are just starting their professional path, and for experienced professionals who want to restart their career.