I was intrigued by the story which appeared on Techcentral recently which argued many Irish technology companies were suffering because their attitude towards sales and marketing was far less developed than in other industries.
Personally, I find the results of the study, entitled New Approaches To Growth, surprising only for the fact that anyone could be surprised by the assertion that the IT industry doesn’t focus strongly enough on sales and marketing.
Think about it for a moment. Many IT businesses have evolved from an idea, usually from someone technical, for a product. That person, or group of people, probably had the idea in response to a particular issue or problem that confronted them in their daily work or life. And because he, she (or them) was technically savvy enough to write some code or put together some components and develop a product that surmounted that issue or problem, that’s exactly what they did.
Often, the product has the capability to resonate beyond its initial application to other organisations, so the person or people who created it decide to go out and sell it to other businesses, institutions or people.
You would think that this stage should be quite easy but there’s a world of difference for someone with a technical bent creating an application or product going out to try and sell it. That’s why very few people with technical backgrounds become sales people. To a large extent, the technical side of the operation and the sales side require such different skills (and personalities), that very few people can successfully bestride both camps.
When he launched the report, Colm Lyon, CEO at Realex Payments and founder of the Internet Growth Alliance, said companies were making "real progress" in adopting new business approaches to help them grow faster. In particular, they were testing, validating and measuring extensively "until they find the right product/market fit…but there is evidence that we need to get smarter in the sales and marketing arena which is important for global success".
Now, I would argue it’s not just about global success. Smarter sales and marketing, especially the latter, can make the difference between a flourishing business and a flop. And it’s at this point that we should highlight perhaps the most important part of the whole equation: marketing. Whatever difficulties IT companies find in striking the right balance between the technical and the sales parts of the business (and you can see this dynamic at play in all types of IT businesses from global vendors to local channel partners), marketing can often be the point at which so many of them fall down.
One of the problems is that, especially at a small company level, marketing is something that happens after everything else. At its most basic, a company needs a product or service to sell. That’s the technical and sales parts covered and often the people at the helm of most companies tend to come from one or other of those backgrounds. So it’s difficult for many companies to do a good job of the marketing side, particularly if it’s viewed as something that gets done after everything else because there’s no dedicated marketing person and the job is often an add-on task for the sales manager.
Typically, vendors try and alleviate some of this burden for channel partners by giving them access to marketing materials and running campaigns on their behalf. All well and good but it’s not easy for the marketing people at Giant Technology Corp to put themselves in the shoes of Very Tiny Irish Reseller Ltd (or of the people who buy products or services from it).
There’s also a historical problem with much IT marketing where the message has been concentrated on features and specifications rather than the application of a particular piece of technology. Thankfully this is starting to change, probably because vendors are beginning to get the message that the only people excited about talking in specs and speeds are the technical people, not the customers.
Sadly, not only has the IT industry suffered from a lack of focus on marketing but where it has gone in for marketing, it’s often been guilty of focusing on the wrong things.
Ltd
