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Technology buying team

A technology buying team is a committee within a company whose members are responsible for making software and hardware buying decisions. Buying teams are the result of two important trends in technology. First, technology design is now increasingly driven by user business needs and ease of use rather than complexity of capability or depth of features. Second, the sales cycle for technology has become shorter and the amount of time for vendors to influence purchasing decisions has as well. This means that vendors have to be more aware of where customers are in the sales funnel and understand that there may be multiple decision makers.

While previously technology purchases were the province of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and influenced by other members of the information technology (IT) staff, today the technology purchasing process includes a greater number of business-unit decision makers and the people who will ultimately use the software and need to verify its functionality. So too, because most purchases now involve an extensive pre-purchase research phase to ensure features and functionality meet the necessary requirements, companies often enlist a team to develop a request for proposal (RFP) document and then evaluate potential providers as they demo their technology under simulated conditions.

Vendors are using technologies such as lead scoring, predictive analytics and account-based marketing to target potential buyers and influencers on the technology buying team, hoping to identify buying signals and capture customers earlier in the customer journey.


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