The conversation might be changing for solution providers, but Cisco distributor Comstor is helping them talk the new talk.

For the past five years, Tarrytown, N.Y.-based Comstor has been helping Cisco solution providers overcome one of their most significant challenges: breaking a decades-old habit of selling technology rather than business outcomes.

“From a high-level, what we are really proposing is that resellers get out of the business of selling technology and into the business of selling improved business processes and cash flows,” said David McNicholas, director of strategic business development at Comstor.

McNicholas, a former solution provider himself, spearheads Comstor’s Executive Relevance Selling (ERS), a training program and set of tools designed to help resellers shake the old habit of selling bits and bytes to sell instead what non-IT executives care about: ROI, cash flow and streamlined business processes.

Jed Ayres, chief marketing officer at MCPc, the $262 million Cleveland-based national solution provider ranked No. 89 on CRN's Solution Provider 500 list, said MCPc is starting to ramp up with Comstor’s ERS program and is already reaping the benefits.

"David [McNicholas] is one of those industry treasures, and just a fascinating intellectual that's really been on the front line selling this stuff,” Aryes said. “He's kind of [Comstor’s] secret weapon."

"[ERS] allows for a technologist, like one of our solution architects, to be able to come in and at a fairly deep level talk cash flows and return on capital,” Aryes said.

Launched in 2009, ERS leverages a mix of customized, in-person training and sales tools to help solution providers sell to buying centers outside of IT. 

It works, McNicholas said, by first requiring solution providers to take an in-depth survey on their sales and go-to-market approach.

From there, Comstor gauges how far along each partner sales representative is in their own “sales evolution,” and, depending on their needs, places them in a blended online and in-person training curriculum that lasts between 90 and 120 days.

The training program has four tracks: Fundamental, which focuses on the basics of Cisco and its technology; Technical, which dives deeper into Cisco technology; Business Consulting and Acumen, which focuses on a partner’s “financial fluency,” along with the basics of business cash flows and how executives make decisions; and Executive Relevance Selling, the final track, which pulls it all together into what McNicholas called Comstor’s “proprietary, codified and repeatable” sales approach that includes business modeling impact tools and templates.

Partners pay a fee for the training, McNicholas said, but because Comstor ERS is an authorized Cisco Business Learning Partner, many solution providers are able to put MDF or Cisco Learning Credits toward the cost.

And now, more than ever, seems like a good time to invest. Gartner in 2012 said that in the year 2000, only 20 percent of technology spending happened outside IT. By the end of this decade, that number will reach almost 90 percent.