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

Delivery Is Everything

You won’t grow your revenue year over year if you can’t keep your customers happy. And you won’t keep your customers happy unless you consistently deliver on your promises. It’s a pretty simple equation.

Despite its outward simplicity, it’s an equation that many vendors find difficult to solve. Even today, after all the philosophizing and speechifying about the importance of “customer-centricity,” many vendors remain fixated on their products. They ignore or forget about their customers because they actually believe that their products are more important than the customers using them!

Blinded by their “product-centricity,” these vendors don’t have a clue. And they don’t even care—until they run out of money and go looking for investors to replenish their hoard of cash.

But when they sit down for a meeting with venture capitalists or investment bankers, here are the first two questions they hear:

1. Is your R&D solid?

2. Are your customers happy?

Perhaps not coincidentally, those also are questions asked by CIOs when they’re considering investing in an IT vendor’s product or service.

Like professional investors, CIOs aren’t likely to believe everything they read on your web site about your latest, greatest product. If they’re truly interested, they’ll pick up the phone and call around until they find a CIO who is already using the product. Then they’ll get the real scoop. If you’ve kept your promises to the client, they’ll hear good things about you. If you haven’t ...