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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