What’s a better way of selling IT?

IT decision makers are against the wall with demands to reduce spending, so that means suppliers will have to sharpen their pencils in 2010 to ensure they are on board when the upturn comes.

Technology suppliers can be a CIO’s best friend and worst enemy. They work collaboratively with a customer and deliver more than was expected, thus earning trust and respect. Or they can misinterpret requirements, waste time and money and just be booted out in the first opportunity.

So what is the key to a healthy vendor-user relationship? According to Graham Benson, IT director at online retailer M&M Direct, many ‘partnerships’ – where the client/supplier relationship grows closer and beyond a purely transactional basis – have floundered and both parties became cynical, as both sides often have different desired outcomes.

Benson believes that the way to go is to have a shared outcome, which should be long-term, integrated, cost-effective and mutually beneficial. Here are his tips for suppliers to agree and deliver against that vision – and maybe start to use the ‘p-word’ again…

Consultative selling is much better (and personal) than commodity selling. Suppliers should develop products and services FOR, or better still, WITH customers.  Don’t sell them just what is in your portfolio, be flexible and work with them to understand their unique needs and the circumstances behind WHY they need what they need and then build empathy by designing a solution that meets their needs.

Be confident about the quality and cost effectiveness of your offering. Don’t be obsessed about trying to encourage customers to sign long-term deals to secure competitive pricing. Surprise with short-term deals, regular market reviews with associated break clauses - inertia rules in procurement, so if we were happy about price and service, why would we change?

How about shared risk/reward? Suppliers should ‘put some skin in the game’ in terms of more punitive poor performance-related penalties, such as reduced payments and shorter notice periods. This goes back to the principle of suppliers demonstrating confidence in the quality of the goods and services provided – the upshot of this is that if you aren’t prepared to commit quantitatively to the assumed success of your offering, why should we believe that you are as good as you say you are? As the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words…