Joshua Feinberg discusses a trend where client-facing roles, mainly account executives and sales development reps, are evolving to act more like consultants, providing valuable insights rather than just selling and servicing clients.
He emphasizes the need for these professionals to offer so much value that clients seek them out for their expertise.
The challenge is for companies to develop their staff to deliver this high level of value through learning and development, ensuring a uniform knowledge base and continuous skill enhancement.
This video is excerpted from the podcast Ep. #44 Viggy Hegde, Vice President of Marketing at Compu Dynamics | Data Center Go-to-Market Podcast.
Action Items
- Explore ways to have client-facing roles, such as account executives, SDRs, and account managers, be seen more as consultants or advisors rather than just focused on selling and servicing.
- Identify learning and development opportunities to help client-facing roles build a uniform base of knowledge and upskill to deliver valuable insights to prospects and clients.
Outline
Client-Facing Roles Evolving Towards Consultancy
- Joshua Feinberg discusses a trend where client-facing roles, particularly account executives and sales development reps, are shifting towards a consultancy-like approach.
- He emphasizes the need for these roles to provide significant value to prospects and clients, making interactions desirable rather than something to be chased.
- The goal is for clients to seek these professionals for insights on infrastructure exploration, similar to how they seek advice from Big Four advisors.
- Feinberg highlights the importance of making interactions feel valuable, where clients initiate meetings due to the perceived value provided by the account executives.
Developing Skills for Consultative Roles
- Joshua Feinberg raises the challenge of how companies can support this shift in client-facing roles through learning and development.
- He stresses the need for a uniform base of knowledge across the team to ensure consistent delivery of value.
- Continuous professional development is crucial to help employees upskill and maintain the high level of value they provide to clients.
- The focus is on enabling employees to deliver insights that make clients want to engage proactively rather than aggressively pursuing meetings, which is the traditional approach.
Resources
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