Logicalis is leading by example when it comes to IT solution sales. 

As the company, No. 26 on the CRN SP500, transformed itself from a classic reseller to a solution provider, it realized customers are going through the exact same transition, said Ed Konopasek, Logicalis VP of cloud and data center solutions. While Logicalis is changing the way it sells IT solutions, customers are transforming how they consume them, Konopasek said.

"The thing that started to occur to us over the last couple of years is that this transformation that our company has gone [through]...This is the same journey our customers are on – we're just sitting on the other side of the desk," Konopasek said.

Leveraging that common link is a huge sales advantage, Konopasek said.

When he goes into a sales conversation, Konopasek said that he takes clients on a "trip down memory lane," sharing how Logicalis has evolved from selling on-premise infrastructure to a consumption-based services business with remote monitoring, management, help desk and cloud offering. The conversation isn't necessarily about sales, he said it's more of a discussion to share with clients how Logicalis has transformed itself over the years. Then, he said, he adds "by the way, we're reselling this to hundreds if not thousands of customers globally."

For example, Konopasek said he recently had this conversation with a large manufacturer in the Midwest that was using a third party application for its warranty system. The application wasn't very effective and had a lot of problems. Konopasek said he told the company the story of how Logicalis implemented ServiceNow within its own organization and showed how it had improved workflow capabilities. Then, Konopasek said he showed how the tool could be used to upgrade the problematic warranty system.

The large manufacturer wasn't the only company this approach has worked on, Konopasek said. He could name at least 50 successful examples of this type of conversation, he said.

"Those are the types of interesting conversations that we're getting into today and what we're doing is telling the customer we'll work with you and bring your own in-house IT and optimizing it and reducing the burden to keep it up and running. Now, you can repurpose your IT staff to solve those problems," Konopasek said.

The bottom line is that it adds credibility to the sales pitch by showing how Logicalis has been there, and done that when it comes to advanced technology solutions, Konopasek said. That credibility allows Logicalis to "talk at a higher level" about clients" services strategy and build an IT transformation journey to accomplish those business goals, he said.

"We're unique in that we've done that on a global basis – that's what gives us the credibility to go in at a higher level," Konopasek said. "We're not just talking a big game, we've done this."