I don’t consider myself a salesperson. People are always shocked when they find out I’m in sales. I’m not a super extroverted person. I don’t have finely coiffured hair or wear lots of gold. Sales people generally get a bad rep. At iXsystems, our sales process is consultative. I’ve found that the key to our success is under-promising, over-delivering, having a high degree of integrity, and listening to our clients to help formulate solutions.
We pride ourselves on providing clients with the iXsystems experience—it’s about understanding the problem, being problem solvers, understanding the client’s needs, and working with them to find solutions. We spend a lot of time with every client to make sure they understand the value that iXsystems and our products provide.
Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.
—STEPHEN R. COVEY, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
I consider myself a very ethical person and from the co-founders down, there’s a mentality of “do the right thing”. We don’t engage in underhanded sales tactics. We maintain standards of integrity and the sense of morality comes from the top down.
Does this always benefit us? Not necessarily—but in the long run, it provides us with a stable foundation for building relationships and partnerships. That’s why we have as many long-term clients as we do. In everything we do, we consider the needs of the client first. It’s how you become a trusted partner and grow business.
Sometimes that means telling customers, “no, it can’t be done.” We’ll tell them the reasoning behind our suggestions. We’re not box pushers, we don’t just want them to give us an order. We’re experts and we want our clients to leverage our expertise and best practices to grow their operation. We make sure our customers get the total experience. We have excellent turnaround time, top-quality production practices, an experienced sales team, and outstanding post-sales support. I truly believe we’re the right partner for most companies who need servers or storage solutions. We may not be the cheapest but we are definitely the best value. We just have to get them in through the door. It’s virtually unheard of for clients to only buy once from us, which speaks to the experience that our clients have with iXsystems.
Last year was our best year ever, but I can’t help but think we’re just scratching the surface as a company. We’re just getting started!
Matt Finney
iXsystems Sales Director
