Selling to industrial clients requires a lot more than mere salesmanship. It will certainly involve Marketing insight, namely when building bespoke solutions (Otherwise named co-marketing). Partnership Marketing is therefore very useful too, because selling goes – in this case – way beyond shifting boxes or even services. It means building actual long-term partnership programs, which can be described as industrial ecosystems. Even when industrial Marketing is not involved, i.e. when selling products or services are not so much based upon individual relationships, Marketing still resorts to project management techniques.

On the one hand, they are — rather classically — anticipating clients’ wishes and issues to get a better grasp of their markets, and on the other hand, they are requested to work as project managers so that they specify their requirements while voicing their clients' or prospects' wishes. In that case, ICT marketeers are two-headed beasts, who have to manage their market development project, and specify or influence the statement of requirements for the new product/service. Depending on how much management power ICT marketeers have, they may also be able to make technological choices, which is far from neutral. Developing new ICT products or services is very different from developing other products in so far as technological options actually have a major impact on the end-product itself. ICT Marketing therefore requires that one be able to match two apparently contradictory skills; one which is based on bringing realism into innovation (Marketing skill per se), and another skill, which is aimed at making the right technological choices, both in terms of robustness and competitive edge. Should we therefore conclude that being an ICT buff is enough to become a successful ICT marketeer? I don’t think so. One should make sure that a clear distinction be made between techno-evangelists and ICT marketeers. ICT marketeers have to share their vision and understanding of markets. For that purpose, initial training and formal university up-bringing are less important than flexibility, openness of mind and above all, intuition.

Key success factors of ICT marketing projects

Key success factors for ICT marketing projects, in essence, are not that different from those of other projects. Defining objectives, obtaining management support and strict project management (based on thorough planning and control) are true of ICT marketing projects too. Yet, a few significant differences need to be explained.

Shared vision, internal feuds and their impact on innovation projects

Amongst the most prominent inhibitors of ICT marketing projects, I would place conflicting objectives/interests in number one position. Indeed, however pointless they may seem, one should not overlook conflicting interests and views between engineers, marketing and sales staff. Most of the time, such conflicts are based upon misunderstanding and cultural differences as opposed to real, fundamentally diverging aims. Often, engineers relish performing product/service improvement just for improvement’s sake, and ICT marketeers have to ensure that technology remains a means to a marketing end and not an end in itself. At the other end of the spectrum, sales execs find themselves on the front-line trying to sell products or services that audiences do not always understand, not mentioning the times when such products or services have been badly packaged and targeted. It is not always easy to tell your sales execs they are part of an on-going product-design process, mainly when they have to suffer from it. Besides, sales people very seldom understand what the technological limit of a new product is, which sometimes causes a few problems: for instance, when considering bespoke services, when sales people do not understand how to stretch the functionality of their service, it may prove difficult enough to address the requirements of a potential client. Similarly, failing to understand the limits of stretching such and such functionality might also lead to an impasse.

Conversely, sales execs are also often tempted to specify new products or services just because they are under pressure from their clients. Yet, the fact that sales execs are facing customers on a daily basis, does not mean that they are apt to specify requirements; nor that such requirements are all must-haves. This is what I would call the sales & marketing paradox, whereby one should be wary of asking sales execs to act as ICT marketers. Confusing the sales and the marketing function almost always leads to the chain specification of contradicting functionality, which ends up piling up and inevitably produces unusable and unsaleable products and services. With ICT Marketing projects, one should try and manage the complexity and difficult balance between innovation and sound project management, and it is not always an easy task. The bad management of such a difficult balance is often the cause for ICT product failure and fiasco. As a consequence good resource management is key to ICT marketing project success. However, it is not always easy to turn any resource into an ICT whizzkid. It mainly depends on the specific domain on which you are working. For highly technical and/or very specific domains, working with dedicated specialised business developers will support your work-force and help uncover customer projects, before an RFP is issued.