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

Influencing the Influencers

Munn recommends five levers that will help vendors market their offerings more successfully and win more deals:

1. Build an army of advocates by making sure your customers have good experiences with the products and services you market, sell, and deliver.

2. Invest in relationship-building activities such as peer networking events, user group meetings, advisory boards, and councils where no sales talk is allowed. Activities such as these will make you a more valuable resource to your customers, positioning you as an advisor instead of yet another marketer jockeying for attention.

3. Influence the influencers. In the past, you could create buzz for a product or service by calling a handful of trade journalists and industry analysts. Today, the CIO responds to a much larger circle of influencers that includes peers, consultants, integrators, outsourcers, partners, advisors, and even bloggers. Make sure that your marketing also targets these influencers.

4. Balance “push” and “pull” marketing. The ITSMA survey shows that only one-third of the executives who have a need for a technology solution are contacted first by a vendor with their push marketing tactics such as direct sales, telemarketing, direct mail, or e-mail. The other two-thirds of those executives go out and proactively look for solution providers themselves by either speaking to peers or researching available options. That’s where pull marketing tactics such as search engine optimization, industry seminars, ...