You don’t have to sell to IT departments if you want to sell IT, but it helps
We’re all too young to remember the Ford Model T – at least, I hope we are given that it was first produced in 1908 and the last one rolled off the production line in 1927. I have only a passing interest in cars, but the Model T is interesting because it was the first mass-produced affordable car. I think I may have alluded to this fact before many many columns ago.
Anyway, one of the interesting things about this particular car is that it was produced on an assembly line and was only available in one colour, black. Thanks to Wikipedia, I know that the second fact isn’t strictly true as the car was originally available in a a few colours and none of them was black. Nevertheless, by 1914 black was, as the old song says, the colour.
I was put in mind of the Model T while reading an interesting story on the MicroScope website based on the results of a survey by Gartner.
Let’s start with the rise in the number of buyers that channel partners now have to deal with, as budgets and buying decisions have spread across a wider number of lines of business, reducing the amount of funds held directly by the IT director.
That’s clearly resulted in more effort being expended to develop contacts with the various parts of the business although, it should be noted, that others have taken advantage of this situation to bypass IT and get a foothold in the door with their products and services adopted in what you might call a guerrilla fashion. It’s no longer a case of going through IT and only IT, now there are other ways to infiltrate a potential customer.
The other point made by Gartner which I thought was possibly more interesting was that this state of play is also causing unwanted issues for customers. According to the survey of B2B buyers, “unhealthy conflict” is arising as the lines of business have differing perspectives on what they needed.
“Buying groups are more diverse than ever, ranging from five to 16 people across as many as four functions. Each member may have differing priorities and opinions,” noted Delainey Kirkwood, principal of research in the Gartner sales practice.
She suggested the best solution was to foster consensus among buying groups and minimise conflict by getting them to understand each other’s viewpoints. That would be the best way to “secure a higher number of high-quality deals”.
As an aside, can I just note that the channel has had to deal with all manner of conflict in its history but internal conflict across a wider range of buying groups in the customer seems an unwelcome addition to the list.
One vision
Anyway, a good way to solve the issue would be to tailor messaging to the buying group or organisation, Kirkwood argued, although she warned that “content with individual-level relevance can lead to confirmation bias, reinforcing individual perspectives so that stakeholders are less likely to embrace a unified direction as a group”.
I think I get the substance of the argument. To bring back the Model T example, it would be analogous to one buyer asking for a green convertible model and another demanding a yellow version with alloy wheels, losing track of the fact that all you really need is a car that can take everyone to where they need to go.
This is where, sometimes, technology can appear a little strange to anyone looking at it from the outside. To revisit the car, it would be as if you were trying to buy a car but everyone in it wanted his or her own controls – each supplied by a different company – and they were all demanding a bunch of extras customised purely for them. They might believe it would make the journey better for them individually, but it wouldn’t necessarily be the smoothest trip. And you wouldn’t necessarily want to be the one supposedly driving it.
As for the person trying to sell the car, they could be forgiven for thinking that maybe Henry Ford had a point with the Model T.
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