SalesTechStar Interview With Jim Lampert, Vice President of Service Provider Sales at OpsRamp

“Any successful organization in 2020 needs a strong channel strategy,” says Jim Lampert in this latest SalesTech Star interview series. Given the current world situation and challenging marketing/sales environment, what sales and marketing needs more of is creativity and structured messaging!

Catch the excerpts from this interview to grab more insights that can help overcome common technology sales challenges:

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Hi Jim! Good to have you here! As a start, tell us why you chose technology sales as a career option?

I had a great opportunity out of college to work for this young emerging company called EMC. They were at the time hiring lots of young people and providing them with great financial and professional opportunities so I decided that was where I wanted to begin my career. I started in Massachusetts at EMC headquarters and did sales training and then spent the next 15 years in San Francisco before returning to Boston.

What is the one thing you love most about being in B2B tech sales?

What I love about it is that there is a short distance between your deal and their direct top and bottom line.  If you’re selling the right product you can have a pretty significant impact on the organization and how they run their business, which can have a huge impact on their competitive nature, cutting costs, innovation and speed to market. It’s exciting. But you have to really understand the business and where your technology fits in so you can help them.

What are some of the most common challenges facing B2B tech sales teams today?

The top challenge is getting to the right level, to the right executive. Most enterprise tech sales require an executive sign-off and most sales teams have a hard time getting that. People get stuck calling the same people—the guy who will take your coffee meeting but he’s not advancing your cause and he can’t sign your deal. Getting out of your comfort zone to move up the stack is really critical. Another challenge is understanding your prospect’s business and how it runs, and how you impact it and then how do you articulate that message. We’re not selling features and functions. It’s really about, what can you do for my business? Nobody cares about the tech behind it, especially with the cloud. And more CIO jobs are being taken over by business people, so you have to understand the business.

How would you advise Tech salespeople to overcome some of the most common challenges seen in tech sales?

There are multiple ways: leveraging your network, which is easy to do now with LinkedIn, leveraging your own execs, your venture and investment partners and leveraging the folks beneath that executive. Ask for their sponsorship as to how to get in front of the right person in their organization. A lot of people surprisingly don’t do this because it’s uncomfortable. Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may elicit a no.  And I always say to my team, subscribe to the Wall Street Journal to understand what is happening in the business world.  Know when your prospects announce quarterly earnings. Understand what the company does so you can talk about it in your next interaction or meeting.

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What are some best practices every tech team’s sales outreach should consist of?

Have a business message and structure your message regardless of level, as to how your technology fits into that. Take a multi-faceted approach with your business development representative hitting one level, yourself hitting another and the solution architect reaching out to their counterparts. If you have had your first meeting with several people at the prospect, create multiple touchpoints and maintain that communication. Be always thinking of excuses to reach out to someone. If you see that they are in the news, send the link and say congrats about their recent announcement.  Take the time to learn about their family or little things like their favorite drink. You really need relationships because things are going to break. Problems will happen down the road, and you’ll need to lean on that relationship.

How do product companies like OpsRamp capitalize on channel partnerships more successfully?

Any successful organization in 2020 needs a strong channel strategy. The best way is to create great programs, outreach and connections with the right channel partners to give us more reach into the marketplace. That in turn will help reduce our cost of sales and time to close. All enterprise tech companies need to have a great channel strategy because no company wants to hire 150 salespeople. You need a channel to go after the midmarket and commercial accounts and have reps manage a bunch of partners. That’s where everyone is moving today.

Given the dynamics in salestech and martech today, how will the role of tomorrow’s B2B tech sales person evolve?

Future salespeople will be more tech-savvy. There are simple things, like using Zoom more often for meetings and knowing how to use all the different ways to reach the customer. You’ve also got to know your product well from a business impact standpoint.  Technology will help us if we know how to leverage it. Take Account-Based Marketing or ABM. We can now approach these accounts with a really good understanding of the company, the organization, the people and who they know.  But you need to be able to ferret through that fast to figure out who you need to reach and the right message. The good salespeople will take that data and pull out the nuggets they need and get to the right person.

I’m old fashioned in a lot of ways, however. What we are selling is a big sale that requires face-time and relationship building. Don’t just check the box after you send an email. It’s not one and done. You need to get creative. Use a LinkedIn email or get an introduction from someone else. You can still do cold calling but it’s hard because very few people answer an office phone anymore. So you need to send out emails on Sunday night at 8 pm when people are online getting ready for Monday—and maybe they will respond.  Don’t rely on one way to reach people; use them all.

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