The Power of Inertia

It's not products, it's not technologies, it's not prices. It's uninterrupted

comfort level. That is what finally helps in selling. This was the CEO of a

leading IT company, not complaining, but stressing on what he called the

emerging trade secret. Provide your customers a minimum level of service and

maintain that level. Keep in touch with the CIO and his team. And that's it.

Repeat as well as new business will keep flowing in.

There are several reasons for this according to a CIO, who was earlier

in-charge of marketing of an MIS package. The first and foremost is the reducing

differentiators between competing products from various vendors. Most PCs or

servers or printers or even MIS packages offer more or less the same

functionalities. And they can run on most of the platforms, and can handle

similar applications. It really does not matter much which product a user buys.

Prices, similarly, are also very competitive.

IBRAHIM AHMAD CIOs today cannot spend a lot of time evaluating products or vendors. They do not want to take the risk of trying out new relationships, unless there are reasons compelling enough

Therefore, most of the time it is other things like delivery on promises,

flexibility in business relationships, and accessibility is what matters more.

Hence factors like availability and accessibility at trouble time, quality of

support, flexibility in payments conditions, are often more important for

winning deals rather than product quality or price. Plus, if there is a personal

relationship between the CIO and the vendor CEO, nothing like it.

Does it mean that CIOs will place million and billion dollar orders just on

personal relationships? No. They will get a thorough and scientific evaluation

done. But the fact is that CIOs and IT managers today are really pressed for

time. They have lots of pressure from the various departmental heads for faster

roll-out, quicker implementation, and zero down-time. They cannot spend lots of

time evaluating products or vendors. In fact, they do not want to take the risk

of trying out new relationships or products, unless there are very strong and

compelling reasons. So, if there were no major goof-ups by the existing vendor,

and if there are no great differences in the product, if the sales manager or

the sales director is known to the CIO and his or her team, the order will go to

the person or the company.

I did a quick check to see if vendors are really using their "good

customer experience and personal relationships" line in all the

communication they use. I mean their ad campaigns. If that is what really helps

in selling, will it not make more sense to flash them in the ads to potential

buyers, rather than keep harping about products and technologies. I checked our

own July 1st issue-the DQ Top20 volume 1. Out of a total of 175 pages of

advertisements in that issue, there were less than 5 that could be termed as CIO

endorsements.

Obviously, getting a happy CIO to say good things about a company and its

product or service, for an ad campaign, is next to impossible. Not only will

motives be assigned to the CIO but he will also spoil relationships with other

vendors.

Also, in this highly competitive world, no marketing manager will want to

share with the world his database of highly satisfied CIOs. That's committing

suicide-believe sales and marketing managers.

A few months back I had written about how a lot of IT buying decisions are

still taken on the basis of reasons other than



RoI. In fact, someone had mentioned that if every sale were to happen on the
basis of RoI, nothing would be selling. While IT is all about leading edge and

rapidly changing technologies, the interesting irony is that the buyers and

users of IT are



still human beings, whose views on personal relationships, risks, and
experiences do not change.

The author is Editor of Dataquest IBRAHIM

AHMAD