Last year was a very turbulent year for IT spending. Most companies were trying to reduce their costs and weren’t spending cash on their IT infrastructure until the dust settled from the great recession of 2009. Luckily, the tech industry tends to rebound fairly quickly from recessions because it plays such a critical role in the business functions of Fortune 1000 companies. Without maintaining and innovating their IT infrastructure, companies are at a competitive disadvantage, and it can start to affect their revenues and customer satisfaction.

EMC is one of the largest sellers of enterprise IT software and hardware and they have been an industry leader in developing innovate technology for decades and have weathered many recessions. In January 2010 they released their quarter four earnings report and their CEO, Joe Tucci, had a lot of commentary on where he thinks companies will start to spend their 2010 IT budgets.

He stated the number one priority for CIOs in 2010 is storage. CIOs will use a significant portion of their budgets to optimize their storage systems and methods including back-up disks with data de-duplication, storage consolidation, unified storage, tiering of storage, and business continuity. Companies’ data requirements are increasing every second and their valuable data needs to backed up and secure. Data storage initiatives will accelerate throughout the next decade, and cloud computing will be a major player in the data storage industry.

Virtualization is another area that Tucci identifies as somewhere that CIOs will be spending their budgets. Virtualization decreases the amount of physical hardware and redistributes how networks and computers are allocated across the infrastructure. It reduces company costs and increases the efficiency of their IT systems. Along the same lines as virtualization, he sees security and governance, risk, and compliance spending accelerating in 2010. EMC is increasing their development of private clouds and are working with Fortune 1000 companies to redistribute their data centers using virtualization. All of this is great news for IT sellers trying to penetrate Fortune 1000 companies this year.

EMC’s CFO Daivd Goulden also commented on how spending started to increase in Q4 of 2009, “I think we also saw even maybe a little extra in some of that spending the customers didn’t do in Q1 and Q2 as companies got more confident in their next year 2010 business plans, they were doing a little bit of catch-up because I think they really starved their infrastructures in Q1 and Q2,” he said.

Now is the time to identify your prospects using sales intelligence resources and start forecasting your sales pipeline for 2010. Sales reps can’t rest on the laurels of 2009; they must identify current company problems and opportunities and then communicate how their solutions can help them leave the low points of 2009 behind.

- Mark Kilens
mark . kilens@salesquest.com
978.749.9999 ext. 118

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Over the past decade, companies have spent millions of dollars updating their technology systems and infrastructure in order to stay competitive and maximize their profitability. However, over the last two years, spending fell off dramatically as most businesses were looking to cut costs rather than invest money in their IT systems. Cost cutting isn’t over, but companies are starting to increase their technology spending in 2010. According to the December 2009 CIO Economic Impact Survey, CIO budgets and capital spending are both increasing from the previous years levels. When asked the same question in May 2009 only 14% of respondents said their budgets would be increasing compared to 40% in December 2009.

This is terrific news for companies trying to penetrate new accounts, up-sell current accounts or secure renewals. With that said, the competition going after these newly increased budgets will be extremely competitive. Reps will now need sales enablement resources to help them be the first to the deal and capture the attention and interest of their audience. Now, more than ever, it is crucial to stay on top of prospects and accounts, and using account plans and sales intelligence tools are a great supplement. Decreasing the time spent researching and qualifying prospects, and using that time to begin the relationship building process, can give you a head start on your competition.

Applications, hardware, and mobile/web were the top three areas that CIOs are going to be spending more of their budgets in 2010. New project spending is also predicted to go up, which will contribute to the company’s top line revenue. Most companies indicate they will be spending more of their budgets on their infrastructure and not increasing their employee count or spending budget on consultants. These areas, coupled with the top ten emerging technology trends, are shaping the next decade of IT strategies around cost cutting and greening IT, but productivity and improving the company’s bottom-line are important drivers for those strategies.

- Mark Kilens
mark . kilens@salesquest.com
978-749-9999 ext. 118

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Asking the right questions during the prospecting process, whether it be through outbound marketing, like e-mail blasts, or on a prospecting call, can help you save time and money by shortening your sales cycles and freeing up more time to spend with qualified leads and prospects. Understanding how decision makers qualify spending their limited budget is invaluable for two reasons: one, being empathetic to your prospect’s needs will build more trust with your potential client, and two, aligning your solution with a defined need within the company will show a clear-cut and more accurate ROI.

The best way to approach your research to ask the right questions is “backwards,” from the point of view of the buyer rather than the seller. Mark McDonald highlights the four drivers of IT budget that CIOs consider when making spending decisions on the Gartner Blog—approaching your pitch from the standpoint of the person that is spending the money will only strengthen your case. McDonald cites that:

• customers and markets,
• products and services,
• business process, and
• organizational structure

are the main drivers of IT spending. In creating a pitch, you should focus your research on which of these business problems your solution helps to resolve. Then, determine much as you can about the specific issues your prospect is having, whether it be a management restructuring or a new product implementation that is not going smoothly.

When you finally get a decision maker on the phone, you can fill in the blanks by asking specific, targeted questions. This will not only save you and your prospect time by avoiding introductory and basic questions, but your understanding of their needs will be clear, and your pitch will automatically be empathetic rather than “pitchy.”

Even in 2009, CSO Insights found that buyers felt that more than 25% of reps “needed improvement” in aligning their solution with the buyer’s needs, and less than 25% exceeded their expectations. Taking this approach to your sales pitch will not only ensure that you avoid falling into the “needs improvement” category, but it will help you to impress your prospect, earn their trust, and bring you that much closer to finding a perfect match and closing the sale faster.

- Carolyn Sebasky
carolyn . sebasky@salesquest.com
978.749.9999 ext. 107

©2012 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.