Selling Data Protection Requires Consultative Approach, Networking


Carolyn Schierhorn


Although magnetic tape still plays a vital role in long-term data storage, records and information management (RIM) companies need to offer customers new technologies and services to remain competitive, said Tom Fetters, who chairs PRISM International’s Data Protection Task Group.


“If you’re going to compete in the industry, you’ve got to be willing to expand your portfolio of service offerings,” said Fetters, the head of data protection services for Norcross, Ga.-based Recall Holdings. “Tape is still a great medium for backing up data and will be for some time. But the marketplace is changing, and customers are seeking more options.”


As more customers consider backing up their data to the


cloud, RIM professionals must be able to say, “I can help you with that. Let me tell you what your options are,” Fetters said. He will moderate a panel discussion on selling data protection solutions at the 2014 Prism International Data Protection Conference September 18–19 in Rosemont, IL.


To sell effectively, companies need to find out what their competitors offer and listen to their own customers. “We have to be willing to be advisers. We have to be willing to embrace the new technologies that are out there,” Fetters said.


“The biggest thing that has been working for us is just being present.”


—Bill Palisano, Lincoln Archives


What Works, What Doesn’t During the conference, panelist Bill Palisano plans to share some of his firm’s successes and mistakes as it ventured into data protection services.


“One thing I did wrong was assume that our existing


clients, who use us for such services as records storage and document shredding, would automatically embrace us for data protection,” said Palisano, the president of Lincoln Archives in Buffalo, NY. “We found that it was not a slam dunk.”


When selling data protection services, commercial records management firms must win over their clients’ information technology departments. “IT specialists don’t care whether you’ve established a relationship with another department in the company,” Palisano said. “They’re going to use whatever vendors they want to use—ones they’re familiar with.”


Palisano discovered that a hard sell doesn’t work well with these individuals. Trust and confidence take time to build.


18 “The buying cycle with this type of service is much longer


than I was used to,” Palisano said. “It was a real culture shock.” To raise his firm’s profile with information technology


professionals, Palisano became active in a local IT professional association and now serves on its governing board. Last year, he chaired the organization’s annual conference. The intense networking has paid off.


“We have to be willing to embrace the new technologies that are out there.”


—Tom Fetters, PRISM International Data Protection Task Group chair


“The biggest thing that has been working for us is just being present,” Palisano said. “The IT people keep seeing us, and they are now reaching out to us and asking us for information. We’re acting more like a consultant.”


Customer-Specific Solutions Clients often bring strong preferences and biases to their search for data protection solutions, Fetters said.


“Although we still see tape as an excellent medium for


long-term storage, and even Google and Yahoo still back up their data to tape, some clients don’t want to deal with tape at all because they think of it as a dinosaur,” Fetters said. RIM firms need to provide such customers with viable alternatives.


Just as tape has undergone innovations that allow it to


be indexed and data to be retrieved much faster and more precisely, disk systems are also evolving and encroaching on tape’s advantages. “Researchers are working on how to make disks capable of doing what tape does for long-term archiving,” Fetters said.


Smaller PRISM member companies can expand their


services by partnering with cloud providers and other IT companies, Fetters suggested, noting that a huge capital investment isn’t necessary. But it is essential to have the right sales professionals in place.


“You’re going to need a sales staff that can communicate


with large customers’ sophisticated IT staff,” he said. At the same time, when calling on small- to medium-sized customers, sales team members must be able to switch roles and become the IT experts themselves.


Sales staff, Fetters says, must be able to field customers’ questions and requests for assistance, such as “Help me understand what I should be doing here.”


PRISM International


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