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Go-to-market
Blunders are Inhibiting IT Vendor Sales in the
Midmarket
By James A. Browning
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Technology
vendors have significantly increased their product,
service and solution offerings to the midmarket during
the past couple of years. While some vendors are aware
of what it takes to sell into midsize businesses, many
continue to lack an understanding of what could make
them successful in this segment.
Midsize
businesses have very specific preferences and requirements
that influence their IT spending decisions. Vendors
must be aware of these when developing go-to-market
strategies including branding, solution offerings,
and channel preferences. Gartner has identified some
of the most frequent IT vendor mistakes that are hindering
the success of many vendors in the midmarket. We'll
take a look at some of these now:
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Pushing
the next big thing.
Vendors often believe that midsize businesses
share large enterprises' interest in leading-edge
technologies and expect them to significantly
adopt them.
In fact, for the most part, what midsize businesses
want today is what large enterprises were buying
two years ago. They want proven technologies at
a competitive price, and preferably those that
have been customized for their enterprise size
and vertical markets. Avoid wasting time on unwelcome
solutions!
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Offering
"tweaked" large business solutions.
The misconception that "lite" versions of large
business products and services are what midsize
businesses need is a recipe for failure.
In fact, even lite versions of large enterprise
offerings are too cumbersome for most midsize
businesses. They seek integration, vertical functionality,
and ease of implementation and support, and generally
choose to use integrated suites that can be bought
piece-by-piece.
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Competing
on price alone.
Focusing on purchase price as a main differentiator
is a dangerous proposition.
In fact, though price is important, midsize businesses
place significant weight on total cost of ownership
including the resources required to implement
and maintain the solution, post-purchase support,
familiarity of the current IT platform, and their
existing relationships. |
Watch
for more on fine-tuning your midmarket strategy in
the next edition of The Midmarket Report, then learn
more one-on-one
with Gartner experts at Midsize
Enterprise Summit.
James
A. Browning is Vice President and Research Director
in Gartner Research, where he is part of the Small
and Midsize Business Research organization at Gartner,
Inc..
References
Gartner
Research Note
Seven More Big Vendor Mistakes Inhibiting SMB IT
Sales
Publication Date: May 2, 2003
Authors: M. Yamamoto Krammer and J. Browning
Gartner
Research Note
Seven Big Mistakes Vendors Make When Targeting
SMBs
Publication Date: October 29, 2001
Authors: M. Yamamoto Krammer and T. Kempf
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