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What's New
IT Outlook 2010 Highlights:
Highlights were presented
at our most recent Wine & Tell events. The focus this year was the SMB
space where there are positive expectations of growth in IT spending,
albeit with cautious optimism. Bright spots were large propensity to
upgrade OS in next 12 months (about 70% of our 350 decision makers
surveyed) and high openness to learn about and evaluate what cloud
computing could do for their respective businesses. In addition, we also
presented highlights of our customer holiday spending index with focus
on spending on consumer technology items. For additional information,
please contact Shawn Fisher (shawnf@siliconvalleyrg.com)
Announcing Silicon Valley
Research Group Wine Aficionados:
As an extension
to our Wine & Tell events and in consideration of the fact that a large
number of our clients have told us they are wine lovers, we are
launching a Wine Aficionados group. The group is a Linked In group where
we will be exchanging wine recommendations and sharing ideas for food
pairings etc. We also have a couple of sommeliers who are friends of
Silicon Valley Research Group, who will contribute their knowledge. Data
points from our future trend reports and Wine & Tell sessions will also
be disseminated through this community. If you are interested in
joining, please contact Meadow Braly (meadowb@siliconvalleyrg.com)
Silicon Valley Research Group
Customer Reviews:
As part of our commitment
to continuous improvement, we gather feedback from clients at the
completion of each project. Following are highlights of our latest round
of feedback:
“I think Silicon
Valley Research Groups' attention to detail is excellent. We've always
gotten the information we needed and its been presented in a very
effective manner. We continue to work with Silicon Valley Research Group
because they solve problems for us.”
“The Silicon Valley Research Group really understands our business so
that when we have a need for these research projects, they're thinking
about the past and future and from a more comprehensive aspect.”
"The Silicon Valley
Research Group team is really intent on learning about what I want to
learn. They pay close attention to what I am looking to get from the
study and I see the results. The team is consistently and
uniformly great at taking feedback and then providing commentary to
ensure that their work is high quality.”
Our New Name is Taking Hold:
Most records including
vendor contracts have now been transitioned to the Silicon Valley
Research Group name. We appreciate your cooperation with our admin and
accounting staff during this transition. We are excited about our new
name and brand. In addition to making crystal clear our focus and
commitment to the technology space, we have also discovered an
additional benefit. When we contact high level decision makers to
conduct a survey or be interviewed for a client project, there is
immediate recognition that the intended topic is technology related.
This lowers the barrier to contact for what is normally a difficult
audience to recruit for interviews and surveys. Name change issues are
being handled by Lee Clements who can be reached at
leec@siliconvalleyrg.com
Follow Us on Twitter:
To follow Silicon Valley
Research Group on Twitter, please go to
http://twitter.com/SiliconValleyrg
To subscribe to our blog, please go to
http://siliconvalleyrg.com/blog/rss.xml
Coming in January:
High in the Cloud
Symposium: A series of roundtable sessions with top level decision
makers across a wide spectrum of industries to identify propensities,
barriers and bridges to adoption of public and private cloud
infrastructures. For more information, or to sponsor sections of the
discussion, please contact Chris Morgan (chrism@siliconvalleyrg.com)
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Al's Corner
What's your More Pull/Less
Push Strategy?
The big idea this month is how technology vendors need to approach
prospects and customers. For those of you who attended our Wine and Tell
events in early December, we presented data from our surveys
highlighting disparities between vendors’ sales approaches and customer
expectations. One of the highlighted items that customers demand is
“more pull, less push” What do customers mean by this and how can it be
achieved?
The core concept customers
are trying to convey here is that they are interested in buying and not
being sold. This calls for the following strategic realignments:
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Self assisted
information needs to map information needs of buyers, providing the
right information AT THE RIGHT JUNCTURE in the buying cycle.
In-depth explorations of customer buying processes can help identify
this and enable alignment. This may be the most critical realignment
of all with incredible payback in increased velocity, reshaping your
sales funnel into a cylinder! Silicon Valley Research Group is
currently working on an extensive in-depth customer buying cycle
mapping process for one of our clients. The results will enable
mapping of information assets into the buying cycle, enabling our
client to optimize timing and vehicles for information delivery.
-
More
Pull/Less Push requires making critical information much more easily
accessible and consumable. Many technology vendors shy away from
providing pricing information too soon, to keep prospects in the
fold for as long as possible. In a world of finger-tip ready
information, this strategy can often lead to frustration and cause
the prospect to abort the evaluation process prematurely. Complex
pricing structures can be conveyed through provision of quick
calculators and information highlighting what similar customers can
be expected to pay. This is also a great opportunity to present the
upside. For example, here is what you may pay for the software as a
service, here is what you will save, based on empirical findings.
The web page peppered, of course, with great customer testimonials
highlighting the savings. BOSE Radio print ad response rate went up
44% by the simple inclusion of customer testimonials strategically
placed.
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What then, is the
role of the salesperson, when he or she does show up? The sales person
is facilitating the buying process that has begun long before she made
the face-to-face call, seamlessly matched to the prospects information
requirements. The salesperson faces an informed prospect. What the sales
person needs to demonstrate, as corroborated by our surveys, is thorough
knowledge of the prospect’s business, their industry, perspective on key
issues facing the company and others in the industry and a deep
knowledge of what the competitor’s product can and cannot do.
Al Nazarelli is President & CEO of Silicon
Valley Research Group and can be reached at
aln@siliconvalleyrg.com
Al
Nazarelli is President & CEO of Silicon Valley Research Group Inc. He
divides his time between our San Jose and Seattle offices and can be
reached at
aln@siliconvalleyrg or
408-920-0361 ex 701. |
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