Preaching to the CIO

The other day I attended a congregation of CIOs with a dozen odd vendors sponsoring the event. It was a gathering of 100 odd CIOs who took time off on a Saturday to amongst other things patiently listen to the spiel. With representation across industries and a mix of senior and evolving leaders, the learning and networking potential was expected to be high. The investment of time from these leaders carving out a portion from their personal time was expected to yield reasonable value.

Now every sponsor vendor always seeks to disseminate information on their offerings and pitch their wares to every target segment. Traditionally this has taken the form of slide presentations that no one wants to hear; at times even the presenter is struggling to do justice to the content as s/he is not the creator of the slides which have in many cases lost relevance. Futile attempts to change this model of engagement have left the participants numb as they grace such time with their physical presence but rarely with the mind.

Before embarking on the merits of doing business with their company, setting the context with the audience has always been seen as a good idea; and this is what they started off with. The first one off the ground started with data from respected research companies.

What is the business reality today ? Not necessarily in order of priority, they are: expectations of growth, exploring new markets or products, driving operational efficiency, cost containment, IT lead innovation, and customer centricity. How do these impact the CIO ? The CIO is expected to be a business leader shedding off the technologist skin; s/he should transform and work with other CXOs, overturn the iceberg of IT expense by reducing the operational expenses and allocating higher amounts to new initiatives. Slides titled “Changing Role of the CIO” advised the need to wake up and get going. However, the best part was how their old offerings now enable this shift.

Storage solutions, Security service providers, system integrators offering RIMS, data centre solutions, virtualization solutions, and even network solution providers found a way to connect the dots and make the CIOs appear like cretins and kids in school who needed to be reminded of how their performance will be measured. Best part was the repetition of content with the context lifted from the same reports.

We all know that CIOs are a patient lot and do not ruffle feathers easily. But when speaker after speaker repeated the cliché, the unrest in the room began to take the shape of a mutiny. Half way through the program, sparsely occupied seats greeted the incoming speakers; those present had no interest and thus engaged each other on the table in discussions detached from the proceedings in voices loud enough to send a clear message across. Over coffee the vendors were chastised for their immature behaviour with a clear message:

We know our reality better than you ever would; we transitioned to being business leaders a long time back; however you are still trying to sell to IT Managers believing that the past is frozen. We did impact the expense line and it was not about IT expenses only which is why you believe that we are not connected to the reality. Our CEOs and other CXOs do not look at us the same way they did a decade back; they partner with us, seek our advice and work together towards the common business objectives. We are not enamoured by hardware, software, new technology, we seek to solve real life business problems, sometimes with help from technology. So, stop debating the changing role, it happened while you were busy trying to figure out why there is no traction any longer with the CIO. It is you who need to change to align to the new age CIO.

Do you have one big message ?

Earlier this month, I was in a conference of retailers discussing how IT can contribute to growth within their business and to the industry at large. The event had its usual bevy of IT vendors who had availed of speaking slots as well as many deciding to exhibit their products/solutions to target potential customers with their offerings. Attendance being large with representation across retailers, it was a great opportunity for the sponsors to engage.

Now this was one conference that was crafted together by a panel of CIOs and vendor representatives in conjunction with an industry body. The panel engaged with the sponsors through the planning process defining expectations and providing the suggested format of their participation in the event. Vendors presenting the traditional way using slides were expected to send their presentation to the Committee of CIOs to validate the context aligned to the theme and to ensure that it made sense to the participants. Thus, the agenda, content headlines and topics (de-jargonized by the CIOs with some catchy titles) were fairly relevant to the audience comprising of a mix of business and IT representatives across the layers of management.

Every marketing executive when provided with the opportunity to deliver an address to a captive audience attempts to put in everything that the company does whether it makes sense to the target audience. The result is that anyone listening is more confused than s/he was prior to sitting through the presentation. Charts and multiple boxes with bullet points are the norm. Animations and pictures add to the already crowded slides.

With a few exceptions, the changes to the pitch comprised of slashing the number of slides to fewer than 20 and making them readable even to people sitting in the back of the room. The clear message to everyone was what is the one big message you want to leave with the audience in your allotted 30 minutes ? Can you engage and provoke thought rather than outline the menu of options your company has to offer ? Given the task of reviewing 3 presentations each and ensuring that the changes are in line with expectations, the CIOs were a harried lot by the time they got into the conference. Few still escaped censorship by either citing unavailability of global speaker slides or by simply not responding.

The end result ? Few chose the case study route to deliver the benefits of their product or services; the compliant presentations created a wow for almost everyone, visible from the crowd outside their stalls. Vendors who did their own thing found the audience twiddling with their smartphones, chatting to their neighbours, dozing off, or simply walking out midway. If I was the speaker, it would be totally demoralizing for me.

In the day end debrief with one such vendor, he insisted that there is no other way to inform the audience of what his company has to offer. If the customer is not aware of the entire spectrum of offerings, how and why will s/he think about his company ? According to him, when he puts across 10 points, a few will be remembered. He refused to believe that his speech was delivered but not received.

Sigh ! some people don’t learn.

Strategic vendor meetings, slip between intent and execution

I met the CEO of a global market leading hardware and services vendor recently – he’s from an organization which has been engaged with us for many years. He was earnestly seeking customer feedback on how is his company contributes to the success of customers and what is required to sustain or improve the mutual value. My submission to him was that all is well and hunky dory; we think of their company when we needed something. Once the transaction is over, the Account Manager as well as my team part ways until the next requirement comes up.

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.