Communicating with CIOs?

Good Morning Bill,
I recently read with interest several of your articles on marketing
communications to CIOs and CEOs. I am doing research on what are the current and
potential communication touchpoints for CIOs and their effectiveness, and I was
interested in any perspectives or work you might have done in the area. For
example, there are a wide range of conferences, webinars, podcasts–do CIOs
actually participate in these? Are there any good case stories on the use of
these touchpoints among CIOs?

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Best regards,

Anne K.

Bill Babcock replies,

The issue of communicating with CIOs is not simply what medium, but rather what motivation. Certainly some venues and approaches fit a little better, but really the way to get through to them is with the appropriate bribe. And I almost mean that literally. Before I explain myself let me make two digressions.

First, make sure you really want to talk to the CIO. We’ve cued up salesperson conversations with CxO level people only to have the sales force start talking speeds and feeds–an embarrassing waste of everyone’s time and the client’s money. I know the sales force SAYS they want to talk to the most senior level, but unless your marketing works in a vacuum you’re measured by what gets sold, not how happy you make the sales force. So be sure there’s more behind the targeting than wishful thinking.

Second, sometimes it really is the venue. I’ll illustrate with a story. Years ago we were asked by our primary client at Siemens to help with a high level seminar in the valley. The guy in charge micromanaged every facet of the effort. At one point I told him he should let us do our job–we really did know what we were doing. He replied, “I don’t need your knowledge, your experience or your creativity, I just need these invitations to go out the way I want them.” Fair enough. We did as he asked and I was surprised at the response rate. Stunned actually. I went to the event myself to see how it went off. Our client had all the top sales folks in the room, well prepared to initiate appropriate conversations. The catering was absolutely top notch, and there were a lot of senior Siemens people there. No presentations, no demos, not even any equipment–just conversations with peers and smart salespeople who understood how to build a relationship before trying to sell. I expressed my amazement to the client and he said, “Every CIO in the valley knows we do these events well. We just need to do them often enough that they don’t forget, and make everything the same so they know what to expect.”

But unless you can afford to nurture a reputation like that over a long time period, I’m not sure how that anecdote will help you. I don’t think Siemens even does that anymore.

Motivation for a CIO (or any other busy person with a gatekeeper) is “this will be worth your time.” Yes, they will come to a webinar, listen to a podcast, even leave the office for a conference or seminar if they are completely convinced that what they gain will be worth the time it costs them. That’s an equation with two terms: the amount of motivation and the amount of time.

If you want them to listen to a one hour podcast and fill out a ten question survey, you’d better have some mighty powerful motivation. Trim the podcast back to five minutes, make the survey the two questions you really, really, really want answered, and your motivator can be a little less powerful.

Motivation equals bribe, whether it’s some clearly valuable knowledge, a megatchotchke, a wonderful experience, or meeting someone they’d like to know. You’ll do a much better job of honing the offer if you think of it in it’s basest terms–bribe.