The markeplace is broken!

What have I learned in the past several years both working with CIO’s and buying IT Services as a CIO?

That neither the buyers or sellers are happy with the current market dynamics. There are MASSIVE INEFFICIENCIES and DYSFUNCTION in this marketplace on both sides. For buyers (IT Leaders), finding and acquiring IT products and services from the RIGHT solution provider - remains one of the top pain points. For sellers (vendors/solution providers) demand generation programs are becoming increasingly inefficient and ineffective, while costs continue to climb.

To say it another way – the very marketing that is supposed to attract new clients to their products and services, more often than not is alienating buyers and causing them (you) to ignore sellers even more! They spend billions every year targeting CIOs and tech buyers, and are having less and less to show for it (except of course more annoyed CIOs and decision makers!).

How well is the spam and cold calling working these days? Does anyone even answer their phone from someone they don't know anymore?

Having worked as an IT decision maker, and working with hundreds of CIO's at the CIO Executive Council, I've come to some fundamental beliefs:

1. Practitioner and Peer experience trumps all other sources of trusted information

2. The marketplace to procure IT products and services is broken in its current form

3. Vendors approach to selling products and services needs to change

4. Business drivers of this marketplace need to be disrupted

How we can disrupt the marketplace and change the dynamic for both buyers and sellers?

For the buyer: Build a trusted, safe haven community of IT Leaders that is no cost to them. Using an enterprise class SaaS platform, give the community the tools that will enable them to:

- research and discover vendors
- connect with peers that have similar project experience
- post project requirements anonymously to vendors
- evaluate, manage and choose vendors side by side

For the seller: Build a platform that will allow them the opportunity to reply to REAL - IT projects that are in the pipeline of potential clients, in a manner that both cost and time effective to their organizations.
- connect with clients and prospects precisely when they are ready to buy
- work with a 1:1 lead to qualified ratio
- have measurable and hard ROI for dollars spent
- communicate - not aggravate your potential new prospects

More to come as we move through the process of building the platform! If you are interested in participating in our beta - let me know...

Thoughts?