"These guys are crazy!", you say. "This
customer is growing and changing so rapidly that I can't possibly keep up with who's who,
who are the decision-makers of today or what this customer wants." Welcome to selling
at net speed. Things aren't going to improve for you - every customer you have will sooner
or later be making decisions at net speed.
This article is intended primarily for firms selling technology to customers who are
investing in the Internet and the World Wide Web. The first realization must be that this
customer set includes everyone. The obvious participants are all the Internet-related
companies. The less obvious participants are everyone else. To an ever-increasing extent,
the financial market analysts are evaluating all companies on the basis of their Web
strategy. Every corporation is realizing that it needs a Web presence in order to
communicate effectively with partners and to conduct transactions with customers. So, even
the most conservative of your customers will be dealing at net speed, whether they realize
it today or not.
Recently, I have conducted planning sessions and loss reviews with clients that have lost
business because they did not realize the requirements of selling at net speed. Here are
some of the characteristics of this new selling environment:
- One, and only one, consideration, governs customers who are operating in the web
environment: speed.
In this environment, elegant computing takes a back seat to expediency when the
requirement is to serve an exponentially growing market.
- The organizations responsible for Web projects grow and change extremely rapidly.
This, of course, results in hopeless confusion regarding influence and decision-making
power.
- The rapidly changing organization greatly compounds the challenge of
disseminating information about your product or service.
- Long-range planning and capacity planning are not part of this customer's
lexicon.
- These organizations routinely delegate technology decisions to seemingly
low-level managers, most of whom are from non-traditional backgrounds.
- Senior executives are focused on growth and market valuation and generally not
involved in the day-to-day technology decisions.
- These folks think they are a lot smarter than we are - and they are probably
right!
These folks know, if they are successful in the short term, they will soon be
rich.
Another interesting characteristic of these organizations is their attitude
towards vendors. These customers want "best of breed" solutions, regardless of
the difficulties these may pose for technology vendors. These customers will demand that
you cooperate with your competitor to provide the solution they require. While this
approach leads to short run heartburn for many vendors, in the long run it is probably the
way business will be done.
So, how do we cope with this new type of customer? Here are some of the lessons that we've
learned:
- Pay constant and very close attention to organizational changes.
- Understand clearly what constitutes a win for players at all levels.
- The best means of dealing with constant organizational growth and change is to
have solid relationships with your customer's senior executive management.
- You must use your executives to develop high-level relationships and information
exchange between your company and your customer.
- Your historical sales model is not likely to be effective in this environment -
you must convince your company that the rules have changed.
- You will need partners to meet the extreme time-sensitivity of this customer's
demands.
- You will need to develop new pricing methodologies, such as utility pricing for
processing capacity, storage, bandwidth, etc.
One thing is clear - the demands of this high-speed, web-based environment will
not diminish. The opportunity is huge for those who can adapt to selling at net speed.
