Offering white papers to get customer info

Theresa Schnetz, executive assistant to the CIO at a large hospital in California,  says that sales calls have increased significantly during the recession and that the cold-callers “are more assertive and sneaky”.

She cites the common tactic used by more and more callers pretending to be a personal friend of her boss, for example.  “They pretend they know (him); they speak casually. For example, ‘Hey, it’s Karen. Is Randy there?’”

Of course, the spike in cold calls during a time when business is bad, cannot be blamed only on new technology, tools and lists that are for sale; other sources of prospect data include enticing website visitors to submit contact
information when they download a white paper. And CIOs are noticing that this trade is happening with much greater frequency. “I find myself looking at fewer articles where they demand my phone number to read their article, because of the unwanted follow-up. IT people need to be able to learn about new products without being immediately harassed to purchase them,” says Fran White, director of IT at M. Rothman & Company. “I feel that vendors
are losing sales because of their hard-sell tactics.”

The findings above are part of study conducted recently by CIO Executive Council and CIO Magazine in collaboration with my firm.  Download it here and find out how CIOs want to be approached today.

Marketing and selling to skeptics (pt.2)

The brain of cold-caller (left) has been affected by the elusiveness of the recipient whose equally affected brain is shown on the right.

Actually, “skeptics” is a polite way to put it.  It’s ugly out there today, especially in the world of I.T. gear and the CIOs whose job it is to shop for it, negotiate a price for it, then install and manage it so their companies’ most critical missions can be accomplished.  Transparently and without fail, ever. If this sounds hard it’s because it is.

There’s a dilemma here that’s big and growing for buyers and sellers alike.  The published research we did last year in conjunction with CIO Executive Council, documented in CIO Magazine in February and featured in a webinar devoted to the topic, found that CIOs flat-out hate unsolicited sales inquiries.  In any form from anybody.  Cold callers get the brunt of the criticism (we feel their pain).  The reason, beyond the intrusiveness, has to do with the callers’ lack of knowledge and preparation.  Here’s the rub: things the CIOs want the hapless callers to know are, you guessed it, the very same things they refuse or are reluctant to tell them.  Like their budgets.  Their IT initiatives.  Their company’s strategy. Their inner-most concerns.

So, what to do?  There is a solution available.  In fact, it’s free to the CIOs and their companies.  “Free” in the literal sense because there’s no charge.  It’s an online portal that sits on the buyer’s web site.  A platform by which a vendor can share their value proposition and its relevance to the prospective buyer.   Rather than get shunted off into voicemail or an email spam file, the vendor is assured that their message has visibility and prominence.  It can be read by the buyer at a time of the buyer’s choosing.  After that, the buyer can discard or followup based on relevancy.  No charge to the buyer, but the vendor pays a nominal monthly subscription of $25.   A jaded vendor might ask, who in their right mind is going PAY to put a pitch in front of people?  Not so long ago, we would have said the same thing about sites like Ladders.com, or the premium pages on LinkedIn.  Twenty-five bucks to have your value prop front-and-center in a weekly report to buyers?  And a means to establish an online dialogue with the buyer at full attention?   Do the math.   If the numbers favor continuation of cold-calling, you might need a new calculator.

What CIOs hate the most about getting cold calls from I.T. vendors

The results are in from a survey co-conducted by CIO Magazine and us.   Seems that I.T. executives are fed up with the lack preparedness by cold-callers who are becoming more ever more aggressive.   It’s their number-one gripe.  And the calls are flooding in these days at a greater rate than ever. Sixty percent of the 277 CIOs who responded to the survey, representing the likes of DuPont, MetLife and Bank of America, say that cold calls are the most annoying thing they experience with vendors. Seventy percent complain that the calls, and the email spam, are becoming more prevalent.  The survey will be the subject of a teleconference moderated by CIO Magazine on Wednesday, February 10 at 1PM (ET).   It will feature some of the execs who surveyed, and a panel of vendors.  It should get interesting.  An exec summary of the survey is available from Turner DeVaughn Network.

Selling to CIOs

Couple of months ago, I weighed in on topic familiar to just about all of us: B2B cold calls epitomize the gap between sellers and buyers

CIO Magazine agrees with the premise and takes it a step further with a survey of chief information information officers. The intent is to use what they learn from the survey to formulate guidelines for vendors on how to sell more effectively.  Good idea.  It’s also an attempt to make life just a tad easier for beleaguered CIOs who are having to do a lot more today with fewer resources.  (Hey, a lot of us can relate to that.)  The thinking is that if suppliers were hearing it straight from the people they’re trying to supply, it might help them use everyone’s time more wisely.  No knock on a vendor trying to make a buck.  It’s that in today’s economy, “aggressive” doesn’t always equate to “productive”.  And aggression is the order of the day when it comes to trying to get the order, as in sales.   A little background on the survey explains this, too.  Studying the survey can help anyone trying to sell anything today.