Grab More Market Share: How to Wrangle Business Away from Lazy Competitors

Who Says Geeks are Meek?

The companies who specialize in computer data storage, storage clouds, visualization, and so on, work in what some call a brutally competitive, one trillion dollar market. Leaders in this industry include EMC, IBM, Hitachi Data Systems, 3PAR, NetApp, Brocade, and at least a dozen others. But don't kid yourself. These companies are on fire; some growing from 20 to 50 percent in 2010. With that much money at stake, these storage sharks can smell blood several continents away.

I attended a meeting where Data Storage Company “A” announced, without apology, that they were targeting the biggest money customers in the world—and laying out the tactics necessary to win market share from giant Data Storage Companies A, B, C, D, and E. They had grown nearly 30 percent during the recession and were intent upon world domination. They also wanted to emphasize extreme customer attention matters . . . in that their current clients were equally vulnerable to a takeover.

As an example, a senior executive told the crowd of 2,000 salespeople that Data Storage Company “B” had been taking “secret” meetings with one of Storage Company “A's” biggest customers. When Storage Company “A” found out, they went to Defcon 1 (in military terms, Defcon 1 is the highest level of defense: it literally means “pistol cocked—war is imminent”). Company “A” took this threat seriously and were not about to lose this major customer without a fight.

Company “A” calmly got their client to give them ...