Partnering With the CIO: The Future of IT Sales Seen Through the Eyes of Key Decision Makers

Growing the Installed Base

IT organizations that are truly committed to financial transparency actually make life easier for suppliers by providing them with the proof they need to show that their products or services are delivering genuine value.

Let’s take a moment to consider this idea. A mere 20 years ago, the notion that IT vendors were responsible for delivering value to their customers would have seemed completely misguided. Back in the 1980s, everybody knew that IT vendors existed to sell IT products.

Today we can agree that delivering value is not just a supplier’s responsibility; it’s the single most important factor in determining any supplier’s long-term success in the marketplace.

For an IT supplier, there are two prerequisites for maintaining stable relationships with customers: the ability to deliver value and the ability to prove that value is being delivered.

Stable relationships, in turn, are essential for expanding an IT supplier’s installed base. The supplier with the largest installed base has an advantage that’s hard to beat.

Resist the urge to measure the size of your installed base by totaling up the number of user licenses you’ve sold. Instead, measure your installed base by calculating the value created by the users for their organizations.

Just because you sell a bunch of seats doesn’t mean people are using your software. Think about that for a few moments. You made the sale, but nobody’s using the stuff you sold. How will you get customer references? ...