It’s fairly well documented how IT buying decisions are no longer made by one or two people within an organization. Rather, there is usually a type of “tech buying collective” that holds influence over decision making, with an average of six to eight key stakeholders possibly weighing in on the purchasing process of cloud technologies, show surveys by business IT member community Spiceworks. Often larger companies will have even larger buying collectives made of 10 decision makers or more. The research also suggests that the larger the group of decision makers, the longer the buying cycle. “There’s no single B2B buyer persona that accurately represents every IT buyer making purchase decisions,” said Spiceworks researchers. “Instead, stakeholders with unique needs, preferences and objections make up a buying collective.” Generally included in the buying collective are IT decision makers (ITDMs) who manage and support the technology on a daily basis and line of business decision makers (BDMs) who might be end users or might oversee the approval process. While this certainly means there are now more cooks in the kitchen who must be engaged and persuaded, the marketers and sellers of cloud solutions must be careful in their efforts to “convert the entire kitchen” not to lose sight of the fact that ITDMs are still the head chefs in the room, and their influence remains strong throughout the entire purchase process. Cloud marketers must speak to a circle of stakeholders, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of underestimating the prevailing influence of IT decision makers. IT’S STILL ITDMS’ KITCHENS By Martin Vilaboy BUYERS SIDE 16 CHANNELV ISION | SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2022
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