Do you understand your customer’s ambitions for the buying efforts and resulting projects that you are working with them on? Are you sure?
Ambitions are important. They contribute to and reflect mindsets. A positive mindset, supporting strong ambitions, are a critical component of success (as I blogged about recently–although my favorite team did hit a wall in the conference finals).
Unfortunately, the challenges businesses face in making technology decisions hit ambitions hard. Whether it is due to complexity, costs, competing priorities, or capabilities, the ability to stay true to your ambitions, or even extend them, is hard. In many cases, this will lead to a “no decision” on change or sticking with the status quo.
But many organizations feel compelled to do something, so they press on. They buy something, even if it is not in line with their ambitions. Unsurprisingly, most of these projects are on a road to failure. Settling has already struck hard against the will to persevere and push through challenges for success.
As a vendor, in a world that is increasingly subscription driven, this is not just a problem for customers; it’s a problem for you. If your customers don’t succeed, they don’t expand deployments or they are less likely to renew. This is not just an implementation problem–it’s a mindset problem that starts before the deal is even signed.
Gartner regularly advises clients to understand and be clear about their digital ambitions. It is important to having realistic expectations and framing plans. But if you establish those ambitions, and then compromise on them, where are you?
We need to help our clients achieve their ambitions, and it starts by truly understanding them. How? Ask them! Work hard to gain clarity on those ambitions, then connect everything you do to help them build confidence and consensus to those ambitions. You’ll be reinforcing a positive mindset and making sure that your customers don’t lose sight of what they hope to achieve against a deluge of information, options, and uncertainty.
Do you have big ambitions for your company? You’ll get there faster if you help your customers achieve theirs.
The Gartner Blog Network provides an opportunity for Gartner analysts to test ideas and move research forward. Because the content posted by Gartner analysts on this site does not undergo our standard editorial review, all comments or opinions expressed hereunder are those of the individual contributors and do not represent the views of Gartner, Inc. or its management.