Think slow. Execute fast. Enjoy the success.
according2jb.com
Credibility. Do you have it?
Convincing
Authentic
Believable
What drives credibility?
True Value
Not the hardware store. True value is ROI + a mix of qualitative assessments which should inform IT investment decision making. Vendors should make the effort to build out a model that tells the accurate story of costs, benefits, risks and value creation.
Vendors should consider building a rigorous value measurement program that collects data directly from existing customers. What have been your costs? Benefits? What happened unexpectedly to your pleasant surprise? Data collection should include the kinds of qualitative assessments found in according2jb.com’s methodologies.
Providing a more transparent picture of all the business and technical issues the investing company faces before financial commitment, elevates the vendor to a value-added business partner role focused on complete customer success rather than just the sale and crisis manager. Such data and case study documentation would also highlight the buying company’s responsibility for investment failure; in the end, IT investment results lay at the feet of the investing company, not the vendor. Help it along the way.
The vendor’s real-world customer experiential data would form a reference class database, a signature repository of customer experiences that would guide and inform the potential customer’s decision making. The reference class database has been evangelized by Bent Flyvbjerg, a business school professor at Oxford, in his book “How Big Things Get Done” which has something to say about complex IT projects and the distortions in decision making causing them to go seriously off the rails very quickly.
Innovation
Risk mitigation is forever in the forefront of the mind of the buyer given natural risk aversion and the history of failed IT implementations. Managers are keenly aware of the risks to their reputations as well. [Nobody ever got fired hiring IBM.]
However, the days of the customer taking on no risk in IT investment are over. If your vendor organization truly offers any unique capabilities that require incrementally more risk from the customer, those opportunities must be clearly defined and should lead the sales effort. Show the enterprise what unique capabilities you can offer for a an incrementally higher degree of risk. Here is the potential source of innovation.
Differentiation
True differentiation brings immediate credibility because the marketplace values that difference. A differentiator is an attribute of a product, service or company that truly stands amongst competitors and confers dominance in a market because the buying public values it. Differentiation commands immediate respect for how difficult it is to achieve. Are your products really differentiated and do they truly offer differentiation to customers? There is a simple test to validate differentiation. Do you use it? A differentiator must be:
True
Independently verifiable
Relevant to the marketplace
Credibility is diminished when vendors proclaim differentiation but fail in one or all criteria categories.
Relevant marketing
Vendor credibility is undermined when content marketing artifacts lack relevance to technology buyers. Much content produced in whatever form offers useful information but still fails to speak to the specific needs of specific prospects. What to do? Creating highly personalized content rather than just boilerplate marketspeak leveraged by the vendor as a lead generation vehicle should be the aim. Consider an editorial approach that creates a universal informational template that provides a base-level of information that can then be customized with audience-specific facts and appeals meant for focused audiences [by industry or job title, are two ways.] More work? Yes. Will it drive greater interest? Try it with a proof of concept.
Content marketing artifacts should be viewed as highly valuable information that acts as the sales staff calling card and an opportunity to forge a relationship with prospects. There are ways to achieve this. Orient content marketing to the direct selling efforts of sales staff with a Just-in-Time content delivery methodology. Just-in-time worked for manufacturing physical goods. Why couldn’t it work for content? In fact, marketing should not be leading the high level, strategic direction of messaging in content marketing assets – whitepapers, videos, ebooks. Sales should.
