CIO Talk Radio Blog

In my previous post I shared my experience negotiating Demand Pricing and Data Ownership concepts as part of contracting with a cloud provider. Today I’ll tackle what I consider one of the most difficult components of a cloud contract, Security. I’m hoping others will share their experience in this area, because I don’t believe anyone has the final answer for how to negotiate these complicated concepts, especially when one considers the myriad of types of cloud providers and services offered.

New technologies mean that businesses have had to think through the nature of a sales event.It is traditional, per Death of a Salesman and Glengarry Glen Ross, to think of a salesperson as the one who precipitates an event, and the event has been conceived as the face-to-face encounter of a nimble-tongued sophist (whether a Socrates or a Thrasymachus) and a prospect. The sales event was thought of as analogous to a point on a line, with particular emphasis on the “close,” the supreme importance of this instant. But today’s technologies have brought about a revolution in information—making it more abundant, yes, but also more available. And there is no longer a sales event proper (as there is, for instance, a gunshot in a Conan Doyle tale). Furthermore, it is unhelpful to remain in the habit of thinking in terms of such an event.

There is irrefutable evidence that companies cannot flourish without integration of IT and sales-force functions.  According to Peter Ostrow (Research Director for Sales Effectiveness, Aberdeen Group), “Companies that use co-browsing or screen-sharing solutions within their sales organizations typically see about 73% attainment of the annual sales quotas (as against 60% for companies that do not use it) ….Companies that use real-time Web visitor tracking have representatives that hit their numbers annually 54% of the time (as against 40% for companies that do not use this technology)” (33:30-34:41). It isn’t just that sales people need good, relevant information readily available while making the sale.  Good sales is much more than persuasively informing a prospect, and it is not the art of mastering a discrete relationship, that of the sales situation.  What is not sufficiently appreciated is that sales efforts are contextual and that IT plays a major role in context formation.

John Goodman (author of Strategic Customer Service, Co-founder Tarp Worldwide) estimates that only one in ten companies provides the kind of IT-informed support for lasting retention of customers.   He claims that almost 50% of companies are lulled into the unverified belief that good support obtains due to the fact that the company gathers its general impression from the small number of aggrieved customers that call.  However, it is just the case that only about 10% of customers are sufficiently motivated to act on their complaints.   Additionally, 50% of companies, says Goodman, view customer service almost exclusively as a cost to be minimized.  In other words, there is nothing like widespread enlightenment on the positive relationship between good support and the bottom line.