Want to sell to CIOs? Meet them at events

IT leaders reveal the best ways for vendors to interface with them at Computing's recent Technology Marketing Summit

A panel of IT leaders revealed the tips and tricks for marketing to technology professionals at Computing's recent Technology marketing Summit.

Sharon Williams, former MD of IT at UBS, explained that it's important to interface with a range of people at the target firm, not just one.

"If you impress one particular senior person that is only the beginning of the journey," said Williams. "You've got to ensure that the right people are engaged or you will get three quarters of the way down the line and you will be scuppered by accounts, or some global arrangement that the company has agreed to. It's not enough for them to fall in love with you."

David Wilde, NED at Mid Essex NHS Hospitals Trust and former CIO of Essex County Council echoed her views that it's important to network with several levels of your target organisation.

"I don't do rubber stamping but I'm not a control freak. At the end of the day I'm the one who'll get the sack if it goes badly wrong and that's what I get paid for. At the same time I don't have the time or the breadth of knowledge to make decisions at every level. I can use good business practice and good disciplined decision making to ensure that the people who are making recommendations to me have done that in a good way."

Wilde added that a conference is the ideal place to approach him or his team to discuss technology.

"If I'm at a conference on something it's probably because I'm interested in finding out more about that particular subject. That's a good time to strike up a conversation that's relevant."

He continued, offering examples of times he's met vendors who will simply bring up whatever they want to sell him, completely out of context of the event. For him, this was a definite turn off.

"We have events internally to engender and nurture interest," Williams added, pointing out that events are also a valued way to see technology passion cross-pollinating across an enterprise.

"We still do a lot of events like hackathons, and our people speaking at events themselves. We see technology can be nurtured in and of itself."

Wilde finished by advocating case studies as a way of understanding what works in a particular technology or business area.

"I'm a massive fan of use cases and case studies. They're a great way to triangulate and validate claims. They are well worth the investment because if you've got a customer is prepared to spend time and effort to build that use case that gets you on the ladder to start with."

Computing's next event is DevOps North, which will be held on 18th September in Manchester.

It is closely followed by Cloud and Infrastructure Live!, which will be on 19th September in London.

Our newest event is AI and Machine Learning Live!, which will be held on 19th November in London.

Sponsorship and speaking packages are available for all, and details of the rest of Computing's events this year can be found here.