The Delusion of Influence

My daughter should be able to drive in a few months. Yikes! But it started a search for an appropriate first car. Plenty of intelligence out there. Consumer Reports. Edmunds. Used car catalogs. Brochures from manufacturers. Impressive web 2.0 sites. Helpful salespeople. Aggressive salespeople. Walking auto encyclopedias like Brian Sommer.

Then my daughter kicks in. Cannot look at hatchbacks - Hyundai had a cute one. Costs more insurance. She's right. No way she is driving a Scion. Her peers think it is too nerdy. I told her it was a hot car with her peers in California. Not here, she counters.

And it hit me. A relatively easy family decision like that has so many influencers. Now think about enterprise technology decisions.

I once shared a ride with the VP of Sales of a mid sized software vendor. He was lamenting his sales force did not have the discipline when he was a young sales person at IBM. 27 sales steps - he said. If you do not check off every one of those steps, one will come back to bite you. He did not mention each of those steps has an average of 5 buyer reps (from business, IT, procurement, legal etc) and each has an average of 6 to 10 influences at each step (a conversation with a peer at another company, a sales demo, a downloaded white paper, a Gartner Magic Quadrant, a benchmark against other contracts etc). Pretty soon you are over a thousand points of influence through the process.

I shake my head at vendor Analyst Relations (AR) managers who in their need to justify their own budgets raise their favorite industry analyst to the high pedestal of "Grand Influencer". Sure the Magic Quadrant may get you past the first 2 sales steps, but few analysts help clients in the other 25 steps - say, during detailed due diligence or negotiation steps.

I laugh at Industry analysts who talk about their "influence" based on number of client calls they took in the last year or number of research notes they wrote. (Yes, I laugh at myself - I used to proudly cite those stats myself a few years ago)

Ditto with bloggers who claim to be A-Listers and those who strive to be on A-Lists. Marketing consultants who promise to help you understand the psyche of buyers and buying decisions. And every influencer out there convincing people how influential they are. Or those who ask to see resumes of influence. All this talk of influence is an insult to buyers.

We all have our roles to play - but put yourself on the grid of 1000 and see what steps, decision makers, and influence impact you have on a technology buying decision. I do it all the time on transactions I help with. It is a humbling experience to see how little I individually - and for that matter all other influencers and advisors - have in the decision.

Sometimes I want to choke my clients when they choose to ignore my advice or not involve me in a certain buying step.  Then I remember what the old wag said. "The Consumer isn't a Moron. She's your Wife".

And you know what - she is entitled to be fickle, take her time, listen to whoever she wants...Influence, Ha!

Comments

[ARonaut]

Thousands of influencers, yet few with real impact.

[Krishna]

That first car analogy was great, Vinnie.. Style (cool quotient?) figures right on top of her list of arguments. Quite rightly, given her age. If you'd noticed, the other influence(r)s can't get anywhere near her to dislodge her notions.

In the enterprise software scene, I just wish if customers were as specific. They get swayed by anything that moves or talks. Except one. Simplicity - To me, it means something that blends in seamlessly with optimal, good-for-now legacy systems.

Vinnie,

So what car did she wind up getting?

Regards, Zeev.

[vinnie mirchandani]

Zeev, no decisions yet...we have told her new car, but shared with family or old car all to herself...she has a few months to decide and if that turns to a few years, I wont mind -)

[Jon Collins]

Lovely post - to be stuck on the wall, figuratively speaking. Incidentally I was talking with Dean Bubley and Dale Vile about the role of "editor" bloggers, i.e. the ones that spend time reading blogs and summarising their content for us mere mortals. The ability to collate and edit is as useful as, and probably even more influential than, the specialist role taken by many analysts etc. I'll still be interested in Andrew Marr's take long after the political landscape has changed, for example.

Perhaps the most influential people have the humility to recognise it is the privilege of being at such a vantage point, that enables them to see as far as they do.

[vinnie mirchandani]

Thanks, Jon.. the great thing about blogs (so far) is we are not afraid to credit/link to each other, analysts, media. At Gartner I would never cite a Forrester or WSJ article...when the Enterprise Irregulars go to a vendor conference we typically ask for their execs to meet us as a single group...whereas the analysts and media insist on separate sessions