The number of people who associated with the behaviors I wrote about in ‘Stop Selling‘ brought home the realization that the nemesis is a lot more widespread than I thought. Even more interesting part is the longevity of the issue; a few readers reminisced their younger days ranging from a few years to a few decades when they behaved like that. It would appear that learning on selling IT has not evolved in the last few decades while the roles of the buyers have.

Every encounter in recent times across multiple vendors selling diverse range of products and services demonstrates consistency. In a competitive industry where decisions are not just based on price but also on quality of service or product, the difficulty faced by the decision makers and the CIO is to give a clear and unambiguous decision. Vendors need to learn to accept clear communication and respect the decisions conveyed to them. Eons back, having spent some time in sales, I know it is difficult to accept a loss of sale.

When you have spent a long time in the decision making role, relationships between CIOs and Tech Company CEOs are formed. These are leveraged on both sides in difficult times and also to pitch for a good deal or going beyond the contractual obligations. The alignment of objectives creates win-win situations and builds healthy respect between individuals and companies. Conflict arises when multiple relationships vie for the same business and their attempt to leverage this with the team and the CIO.

In Business-to-business engagements, hierarchical selling is practiced by every company. Engagements start with Account Managers talking to IT teams defining the solution, the discussion progresses to involve layers upward until the CIO and someone senior (VP, SVP, BU Head, CEO) agree and sign off endorsing the deal. Companies that do not get the deal make desperate and largely futile attempts to influence the outcome. I am not against this, however, when a company overdoes it not willing to accept the verdict, they get the CIO’s irritation and look like bad losers.

More than 5 years back a company had me talk to their sales team on “What CIOs want” or “Selling to the CIO”. I repeated this discussion with many large and small companies over the years with good results acknowledged by the attendees. Recently I had multiple meetings with leaders from the same company who could not accept that the decision had gone in favor of a competitor. Somewhere along the way with attrition the learning withered away. Or is it pressure of difficult times?

I believe that for things to change collectively we all have to work together; the CIO will have to be consistent in the way they give the message of success or lack of it. Transparency in evaluation, engagement and stating decision making criteria upfront will create a better platform for everyone. Complementing this, the vendors need to not rue over one transaction that did not go their way and work towards bouncing back such that relationships do not feel the strain.

Let me share an anecdote: An Account Manager desirous of his CEO meet the CIO tries to schedule a meeting based on his CEO’s calendar. Attempting to influence the CIO’s Assistant he brushes aside protests on the CIOs unavailability on the proposed time. He pushes her to reschedule other appointments to accommodate his CEO. When that does not work, he calls the CIO to meet the CEO while the CIO is in the general area where the vendor office is located. Even when the CIO declines, he insists and goes ahead. When the CIO does not turn up, he chides the CIO to say he cut a sorry figure with his CEO. No guesses on where this relationship will end up!

The CIO had great expectations when meeting the team from the most popular tablet vendor in the world who were pitching for an innovative solution. The large team comprising tab vendor, sales partner, and solution provider looked brazenly confident and rightly so considering the aspirational value of their product. Rarely were they in situations where they had to discuss the merits and advantages of their device; everyone justified internally why they wanted their solution and they just made truckloads of money.

The internal customers were already sold on the device not the solution despite its shortcomings for the specific business need which required significant internal change. The business head had been aligned to the device (not the solution) and the meeting was expected to be a cakewalk. Despite the iconic nature of the device, the technical team was wary going into the meeting; not many enterprises had deployed on the scale that was envisaged and in challenging environmental conditions.

The meeting started well with a summary of the proposed solution, similar deployment in developed markets though on a smaller scale and how they can change the way business is done. The technical lead started asking a few questions which the vendor team tried to brush aside. He persisted as the support burden would fall upon him and he had to be sure. With amazing clarity of thought he laid down the questions that would determine the fate of the project in the long-term.

The vendor sales head started to justify the value proposition by talking about how the device has gained popularity globally and caught the imagination of the consumer. Their dominant market share is a validation of how well their device works. The number of solutions available on the device outnumbers all other competitors put together. They have been continuously innovating on making a better device. He went on and on, on the merits of the hardware sidestepping the pointed questions.

The discussion was going nowhere so the CIO intervened and sought specific answers to the specific questions. He clarified that the decision was contingent on the ability of the overall solution including the device to work as expected. If there are no workarounds or ready solutions, then they will have to explore alternatives. The long stories cut no ice; come straight to the point and stop going round in circles. After moments of silence, the meeting proceeded to its logical conclusion quickly.

In the post meeting debrief, many in the room almost in unison associated the past hour spent to the vendor making Jalebi. He avoided giving straight answers to most questions, instead, preferred to remain vague in his responses. Any love for the vendor by association to the device soon evaporated leaving everyone impatient to get over with the charade. Business does not and cannot accept the nebulous and imprecise when working to solve a determinate problem.

With tolerance levels reducing and options increasing to solve real business problems, vendors have their task cut out for them; the business and the IT teams are working collaboratively to arrive at solutions. The discussion is focused on what matters, the scenario is the same internally too; no more beating around the bush or running around trees. The Jalebi is great to eat not considering the calories it adds; go on a diet, keep it away from the meeting room.

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The solution expert across the table looked crestfallen; his manager besides him attempted to calm his frayed nerves while the account manager to his right did not know where to look. The CIO had advised them that the solution was not relevant to his future needs and the discussion was over. Breaking the uncomfortable silence, the manager sought to find a silver lining in the cloud, a sliver of hope that there may be a faint opportunity in the future? Firmly declined the CIO; then things started going out of hand!

The starting point of the meeting was the aspiration of the incumbent solution provider to retain the customer who had decided to move to a competing solution. Over the years that the company had been using the solution, the relationship was managed by vendors’ partners with the principle staying hands off. Challenges with the implementation and support were largely managed by the partner. As the company started feeling the pinch of a suboptimal deployment and support, they sought alternatives.

The alternative solution was not really an alternative but an industry leader with now a dominant local and global market share. After multiple futile attempts to reach across the teams of the incumbent provider, the CIO gave up and started working with layers of his enterprise to gain their support for a disruptive transformation and go with the market leading solution. As the news reached the incumbent, their leaders started arriving in droves to rescue the situation; this was one such meeting.

Unwilling to accepting “No” to his plea, the expert started challenging the decision, making criteria stating his solution was as good if not better than the competing product which had a higher TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). While the number of customers today may be lower, the new upcoming product would compete head on. All other things being equal, why did the CIO not get this? Why was he insistent on going with the other expensive solution with significantly higher license and implementation costs?

The exasperated CIO raised his voice a notch and stated that ROI and TCO were not the primary factors for the decision; the company had lost faith in the incumbent solution and the vendors’ ability to support the new business requirements. The company needed a better and globally accepted solution. Their solution has not found favor within the industry after so many years and neither has the vendor engaged with the company in a way that induces confidence; so no point continuing the discussion.

Desperation defying logic, the red in the face expert could not face the ignominy and wanted to know what he or his company could do to retain the business. How can he prevent the entry of the competing product and solution? He was now clutching invisible straws. The account manager wished the earth would swallow him, while the boss-man tried to pacify the agitated expert. The amused CIO simply said, “I don’t have to answer your questions; this meeting is over” and walked out of the room.

Selling is an art as much as a science. Peter Drucker postulated: “A customer never buys what we sell”. The transaction completes when the need to sell is aligned to a need to buy. In the absence of a balanced equation, the relationship sits on a weak foundation; then the possibility of successful execution is reduced leaving everyone vulnerable. Unfortunately an open dialogue is rarely understood or appreciated today in our target pressures driven by monthly, quarterly, or annual budgets.

I believe that vendors should learn to accept “No” as much as they like to hear good news. Every time every one cannot get a favorable deal; someone will be deprived of success. Don’t push beyond the break point, lest you end up compromising relationships. The CIO too should not be swayed by these tactics, pressure from other CXOs, or end-of-season sale kind of deals. The relationship is based on demand and supply as much as on trust and respect. Any change in the equation will have an impact.

A few days back, a senior editor of a respected publication that also conducts small gatherings of CIOs asked me if I would be interested in attending a dinner sponsored by a structured cable vendor. He spoke in jest wondering if he would be able to gather an audience numbering double digits. I kind of concurred with him as cabling was the last thing on my mind. I don’t remember when was the last time I reviewed cabling standards or attended a meeting with a cabling vendor.

I must have written many times on the new age CIO and the transformation over the last decade. I think that petabytes of information exists on this subject which any search engine will throw up. No event is complete without a discussion on what are or should be the CIO’s role or priorities. Everyone agrees that the IT leader is a business leader first and technology expert later. As a leader, s/he is expected to demonstrate behaviors no different from the CEO, CFO or any other CXO.

The CIO through his/her team gathers expertise on various technologies and related domains. These teams typically along with principal vendors, external service providers, and system integrators form an ecosystem that provides the basic and advanced solutions that enable and empower any enterprise. In every enterprise, the deputies who form the IT management and operations team ensure that every day billing happens, manufacturing plants hum, goods leave the warehouse, call centers receive customers, sales people sell, finance teams collate figures, and external partners get the information due. In a nutshell, the world continues to move on despite random failures that occur at all levels.

In today’s world where most technology components (be it hardware, software, or connectivity) find it difficult to differentiate approaching commoditization, choices are influenced by the existing long-term relationships between enterprises or people; or a significant price difference. Quality of service is the only other determinant factor. New disruptive paradigms in the last few decades have kept every CIO on his/her toes to keep the enterprise competitive and current. But then there are some who haven’t.

So coming back to our battery vendor and the cable manufacturer, are these critical and high on the list of priorities of the CIO to demand his/her attention? Should s/he undertake strategic meetings with the management or board on the kind of cabling that is being laid or the merits of one battery technology over the other? What would happen if the battery bank failed and servers went down or storage disconnected due to a loose patch cord?

I believe that the IT infrastructure head and his/ her team under the CIO are tasked and are or should be empowered to deal with this. The ball, however, always stops with the CIO being answerable. But then every CXO depends on his/ her teams to deliver and does not necessarily get down to micro-management. On an analogous note, is the CMO in trouble if lights on an outdoor hoarding go off?

How do you create a link between responsive IT systems, enterprise efficiency, and business IT alignment (BITA)? The question had everyone stumped and the answer emerged as the lack of responsive systems would imply time wasted by the employees; thus, response times are important to efficiency. Intuitive and elementary; so what is the debate?

Taking another element of research over the last decade on significant portion (estimates vary from 50% to 90%) of IT operating expense is expended on maintaining the lights on or business as usual. So reducing this piece of the pie will presumably shift the budget towards innovation and not as savings. This shift of expense to investment if prudent and allocated to virtualized servers will improve the efficiency of the enterprise. And we will all live happily ever after!

If two unrelated pieces of research can be correlated through some magical process or non-empirical derivation, then as suggested by the Chaos theory, anything can influence the outcome of what the IT organization creates, manages, or improves upon. It could be sunspots, or a butterfly in eastern Asia, or global warming that might provide insights.

The above is just a sample; simplistic evaluation models defined to justify generic technology investment have almost become the norm. Even when the specific context may not apply, the push to sell is discomforting and creates an auto pushback. Confused, the CIOs have been struggling to divert the discussion to their technology team which is better equipped to discuss alternatives and how they align to enterprise architecture.

The elasticity of hypothesis amuses and at the same time frustrates. Nowadays the headline proposed at any event or by a consultant or vendor speaker has rarely any connect with the subject. The stretch of imagination belies conventional and sometimes unconventional wisdom. However, despite repeated occurrences, the bait still works in getting CIOs excited to come and participate.

The elasticity expected from the CIO goes against the business aligned IT leader with a dialogue that is expected to straddle server provisioning or data center cooling to improving customer service with process redesign using video analytics, or complex transport management. The diversity of expertise with deep levels of understanding creates a superman like persona who is discussing code optimization with the programmers and engaging the board on shareholder value.

The latter is still rationale and achievable with some hard work, some help and coaching, but the former in which unconnected factoids create an opportunity for specific technology breaks the rubber band.

Now, the CIO is usually attracted by headlines promising to transform the business, strategies to enhance business value, getting ahead of competition or additions to the corporate bottom line, to just name a few juicy titles. It does not matter what product or service the IT company offers — the titles are very similar in their stated intent to help the CIO in being a winner. Expectation mismatch?

The reality is more on the lines of a captive audience, subjected to what can be described as Auschwitz style torture by presenting presumptuous facts of a micro-segmented market that has no correlation to the reality (of the audience). They then propose the same old solutions around data centers, storage and server virtualization, wrapped on cloud computing enabling the business statements using logic defying rationale.

Recent times have seen the gas chamber (read conference room) pumped with cloudy trends and solutions suffocating CIO prisoners and adding to the confusion.  The CIOs’ silent cries are lost in the din of the collar-mike-d speaker who avoids eye contact with the victims, so as to not be cursed by their souls. Sighs escaping occasionally are drowned by the amplified voice of the person standing a head above the rest (on the stage). Basic decency and courtesy prevents the CIOs from walking out; a few regularly pass out, even as their snoring disturbs those who seek solace.

This cycle repeats endlessly, with the CIOs hoping in vain that IT vendors have probably taken their last feedback. That they have changed their way of using the precious face time with a group of decision makers. But no, it is as if the basic principles of customer engagement have been thrown to the winds. Forget the customer or his needs, sell what you have; it does not matter whether the customer needs it or not. Twist the message adequately to make the square peg fit into a round hole.

The vendors’ defense is typically on the lines of, “Listen to the customer? How can I do that when I have only 45 minutes of stage time? I have to tell them my story (the story that my company wants to propagate). I will read the slides, take a few minutes longer than the allotted time, so that there is no time for questions”. After all, I have spent some hard money to sponsor the event.

Over the last year or so, many CIOs have started excusing themselves from these excursions and invitations, in many cases at the last minute, citing business exigencies. This number is growing, and such opportunities will just wither away — unless the model changes to encompass “Engagement, Listening, and Empathy”.

Is anyone listening?

The group had a fair representation across industries from manufacturing, banking, insurance, retail, IT enabled services, and some more. The agenda was fairly simple, with the expectation to understand how different industry segments view VDI and what has been the journey thus far. Of course, it was about market sizing and qualifying leads that could result in some business from the vendor’s perspective.

Discussions started off with differing perspectives on filters that every CIO applied to their business operations to determine the suitability of desktop virtualization in their environment. Some amongst them included the kind of work undertaken (task, analytics, office automation, and graphics intensive work), volume of desktops per location, type of applications used, and not the least, ROI on such an initiative. In the same breath, challenges were also debated listing cost and resilience of connectivity (specifically in the Indian context), licensing impact, cultural issues, and again ROI.

Within some time, it was evident that the vendor and CIOs were talking different languages; the former talking about the technological innovation, and the latter focusing on business benefit. With no translator or moderator, the two conversations found it tough to converge on common ground. Thus, the anchor closed the discussion after about 90 odd minutes — with some CIO doodles labeling VDI as vendor driven initiatives or very dumb idea!

Post panel networking had an interesting insight shared by the vendor CEO with the anchor; the CIOs today are not willing to discuss technology anymore. This is making the task of selling to them a lot more difficult as compared to what it was. For sales persons to get into the customers’ shoes and then have a discussion requires different skill sets than currently available.

My rebuttal to that is “Mr IT Vendor, what else did you expect from the CIOs?” Over the last decade, expectation levels from the CIO have shifted from a technology advisor to a business advisor. CIOs have seized this opportunity (not challenge) and many have gone over the tipping point to take on incremental roles in business. To expect this level of discussion from the same vendors who always have “IT business alignment” as one of the top 3 priorities reflects that they too need to embrace the same change that they have been preaching so far.

The IT vendor evolution is a paradigm that I think CIOs have to start contributing to — else they will continue to be at the receiving end of inane discussions and presentations around technology — not winning with the business. Get started and do your good deed of the day, so that the next CIO they meet will not go through the same pain.

As a purely transactional arrangement, this works well, but many other value added opportunities get missed as this vendor is not our first recall. The CEO was aghast and promised to remedy the situation quickly through a strategic meeting with solution heads and domain experts; this was to be repeated every quarter, or on demand.

Six months passed, and nothing happened. Another chance meeting, and this time the CEO turned crimson on hearing the progress. In the interim, some more business went to their competitors. The chastised managers began the chase attempting to fix this meeting, which materialized after another three weeks. Time requested and granted — 1½ hours, scheduled start 2:30 PM.

D-day arrived, and this is how events unfolded:

2:30 PM came and went with no sign of the delegation; No call, no SMS, nothing. The audience comprising of the CIO and a few General Managers waited with some concern and amusement.

3:00 PM: Account Manager turns up. After 10 minutes, the second person ambles along. Meeting starts at 3:15 with a presentation on how the vendor sees the current market. They shared their beliefs about our challenges, and thus the opportunities for engagement. He talked about services that we have tried unsuccessfully with the vendor as the key unique selling points.

3:30 PM: The Sales head joins the meeting while the discussion was on an organizational matrix—a model that would support us in the collective quest to take engagement to the next level. As we started tabling issues, the vendor team had reasons for all that had nothing to do with them. An ERP upgrade, change in account managers, shift of support personnel, I am sure you get the point. But there were only fleeting regrets that they did not update us on open issues or orders despite multiple reminders.

3:45 PM: “What are your priorities and projects for the next 12 months?” and we quipped “To explore new and alternative vendors”. My colleague whispers that this meeting is worth a mention on Oh I See. Saving grace for them came in the form of an urgent phone interruption.

4:00 PM: The reception announces arrival of the last person who was to join the meeting. I get up and walk out of the meeting.

I wonder whether the vendor realizes what they (did not) achieve with the strategic meeting scheduled by their CEO with intent to enhance business with our company. Why does the IT vendor fraternity not teach its sales force to listen, engage, empathize and show some patience – the four tenets of retaining your customers? All of them (except a handful) are interested in talking, or presenting the great slides provided by their local or global HQ with inane survey data that normally has no connect in the local dynamics of business. Like every other business, retaining customers is all about creating a differentiated experience, unless you always compete on price.

Almost all the organizers wanted to focus on how to improve data center efficiency, utilization, management and agility in provisioning new servers. According to all of them (without exception), the delay in provisioning a new server can lead to compromises in business agility, thereby adversely impacting the outcomes. Each vendor’s formula for success revolved around their solution for virtualization and (or) management tools, which allow quicker provisioning of virtual machines—allowing the IT organization to bring up a new application within hours, as compared to the days when physical servers were in vogue.

I find this unpalatable, as it presupposes that everyone in the IT organization is only focusing on the infrastructure, with no communication with the team members who create or buy applications. Or that we have a scenario where the applications team does not tell the infrastructure team until the last minute that they require some compute and storage resources to deploy their test, development, or production environments. The assumption is that the two factions are not on the same page on projects or timelines, which results in delay. 

Agreed that virtual machines can be provisioned quicker than physical machines—CIOs will also agree with this, but that’s only part of the story. If not enabled with policy, it can also lead to innumerable virtual machines (with limited or no use), thereby blocking resources and creating inefficiency. Virtualization continues to remain at the periphery of deployment, with core and large package providers as yet to certify their applications on virtual servers.

Typically, IT organizations are more organized in nature, with visibility of planned deployments and requirements of licenses or hardware. Dependencies are well known, and irrespective of the physical or virtual environment that the enterprise may prefer, this is rarely a cause of delay (or lack of agility).

In my observation, project delays are more to do with scope creep, signoffs or even indifference from business. It’s a subject that deserves a longer discussion on another day.

So has the data center become the cause of business angst? Well, I’ve never heard of such a scenario in the recent (nor the distant) past!

Coming back to the event under discussion, presenters sheepishly agreed to counterviews from the attending CIOs, and attempted to justify their stance by stating that their global research data had indeed given them such insights. Talk about assumptions!

My view is that vendors should refrain from such titillating titles to attract the audience. At the end of the day, vendors end up with the realization that most participants badly want to leave. The CIOs stay back only out of sheer decency and respect. As a result, vendors run the risk of alienating their key customers by continuing this play of words.

Coming back to the ready-to-eat snack, it was stale, oily and very unhealthy—causing heartburn and acidity. Most of the CIOs required gallons of liquor to drown the symptoms of disbelief and utter boredom.

Questions challenging the efficacy of currently deployed solutions were very similar across almost all vendors. Many data points from a multitude of surveys were bandied around in an attempt to make CIOs succumb to the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) factor.

A typical session begins with “Top 5 technology priorities”, and since the presentation was being made by security vendors, IT security figured prominently in these lists. To the hapless CIO, statistics reveal a scary world full of crackers and nefarious elements (who want to take away customer data, send spam, phish users, attack end computing devices, and sniff network traffic). It did not matter if the audience agrees with these or not. Irrespective of whether the displayed data is from the same geography or industry, the ground is set for discourses on why your enterprise is not secure if it hasn’t deployed the specific vendors’ solutions.

Almost all cases are built upon the premise that data is only stored electronically, and leakage can only happen in electronic forms. The exercise of data classification is touted as the starting point—except that beyond a point, this classification becomes irrelevant, as the imposed controls make conducting business a painful task. Mobile workers appear as the villains who will lose a laptop or connect to unsecured wireless networks compromising valuable data.

Yet another cry is a ban on social media. This does not acknowledge the fact that business also uses these channels for connecting with customers. The mantra is “you cannot trust these gullible ignorant employees, they are the weakest link”.

Yes, people are indeed the weakest link in security compromises; but they can also be the strongest. The biggest tenet of any business operation is trust. If the enterprise cannot trust its employees to be prudent in their usage of various communication modes or protect the data that matters, then I don’t believe that a technology solution is the answer.

Information security can be effective with help of education, continuous reinforcement by the management, a “zero tolerance” policy towards adverse incidents, periodic reviews, and finally the technology stack which is dependent on the business operations. Exception management is fraught with danger, and should be aggressively discouraged. Many mature organizations have found that making an example of truant employees enhances levels of security, and builds trust with customers in the long run. Attempts to hush such cases, or not taking strict action which may already be defined in the policy sends a message of tolerance, which can significantly compromise the enterprise.

Vendors need to listen as they engage (see Irrelevance of vendor presentations) the CIO in discussions on how they can help their customers in sustaining and improving their information security postures. This has to be based on an assessment, and not based on inane survey data that may be far removed from reality for the audience. Else, they face the risk of alienation from their prime customer, the CIO.