08-Jul-2019 12:00 PM
Posted by Prashanth GJ, CEO, Technobind
What
frustrates a CIO the most? It’s a pretty difficult riddle. Could it be the
shrinking budgets? Unrealistic expectations from the business? Fear of outage?
While all of these are huge concerns, I think the most frustrating experience
for a CIO is dealing with an outdated sales pitch.
Imagine
this: A CIO’s role has changed a great deal in the last one decade—from a technology
procurer to strategic influencer to business leader. Successful CIOs today
drive business outcomes. And, there is nothing more ironic than a solution
provider trying to sell ‘technology’ to a CIO. Because, a CIO today may not
necessarily be looking at tech solutions to everything. She is rather trying to
focus on strategic efficiencies. Organizations simply don’t spend on
technologies that do not have a business use case.
“I
often encounter questions such as ‘what are the technologies you’re investing
on? Is AI your focus area this year?’. If my organization doesn’t invest on the
hottest technologies, are we doing something terribly wrong? The basic problem
lies in this approach to technology—finding a solution and then trying to fit
it into a problem,” recounts a CIO I recently met.
This
is exactly what every CIO who listens to a conventional sales conversation will
feel like. So, if you’re a solution provider who still talks about how great a
product you have, vis-à-vis the competing products in the market—time to
change! Because it really doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is
whether you’re able to resolve a critical business pain point for your
customer.
Why Change?
In
recent years, I have met many partners (who indeed have best of breed
technologies and products) struggling to sustain a meaningful sales
conversation with decision makers of their customer organizations. I think it’s
time that the channel fraternity move on from our comfort zones to more
relevant methods of selling technology. It’s not just because the typical CIO
role has changed. It’s because the entire technology buying mechanism has
transformed.
Technology
is now being consumed and bought by an extended set of influencers, other than
the CIO, within an organization. The channel is now talking to a new set of
decision makers who has never dealt with technology. Business users now have
dedicated technology budgets in the digital era. But they think and consume
technology quite differently.
Besides,
IT consumption models have completely changed and are no more cantered around
yearly hardware upgrades or forklifts. Shrinking budgets, skills shortage and
the sheer complexity of IT infrastructures are prodding organizations to
explore new ways of investing and utilizing IT. Cloud is a great example.
In
the process, technology and business leaders are increasingly becoming informed
and focused. Gone are the days when IT leaders relied on the vendors or the
channel to keep abreast of market trends. By the time you sit across the table,
the customer has already formed his opinion and probably knows more than you
about a particular technology.
As
a data-focused specialized distributor, we have gone through multiple trial and
errors before we arrived at these three core rules of technology selling:
-The
legacy way of selling is becoming irrelevant
-The
brand is no longer the driver of demand
-Margins
lie in getting the right tech at the right place and at right price.
Our
use-case based approach to sales is derived from these core ideas and has had
many takers in a short span of time. Technobind partners have been able to
identify specific business pain points and align technology options to solve
that problem. They are able to add better value, create repeat business and tap
new opportunities while ensuring that their margins are higher, and sales
cycles are shorter.
With
the ongoing shifts in the market and the technology landscape, the deliverables
will keep changing for the channel. Let’s not miss the bus!