Gartner with new survey data of Tech CEOs of small and midsize technology and service providers.
Quoting from IDG Connect:
A majority of tech CEOs report that their organization has implemented a variety of changes to remain financially and operationally viable and improve its position for future recovery:
- Added/increased remote work:90% (35% are implementing short-term, while 55% plan to implement long-term)
- Adding/increasingflexible working hours: 81% (39% are implementing short-term, while 42% plan to implement long-term)
- Adjusting sales model towards remote selling:84% (39% are implementing short-term, while 45%plan to implement long-term)
Additionally, whilst a third (32%) made no changes to their offering, more than a third 39% created new products, 32% adjusted pricing to existing products, and/or 29% added free trials to better meet customer needs.
With this also comes adaptions to demand generation efforts, as tech CEOs reveal they will put greater focus on existing customers (55%). And when it comes to new clients, rather than broad targeting of prospects, over half (55%) of tech CEOs will be more precise in targeting specific prospect types, saving time and resources in the challenging market.
There’s a certain degree of obviousness to the results – shockingly, in a world of a pandemic, people are working remotely, being flexible on hours, and selling remotely. A bit of a “Duh”.
Here’s my take on changes to offerings – everything described is simply the acceleration of existing trends. Of course new products would happen or adjustments to pricing. Market conditions changed, so moves were made to compensate. I’d actually offer that only a third making changes shows conservative thinking, and the analyst is understating a lot with that “whilst”.
We’ve seen 10 years of ecommerce growth in 8 weeks. This survey says to me that stability was more the name of the game than rapid change.
Let’s link that to the data reported earlier in the week around best in class providers selling more cloud services during this time. That’s accelerant not change agent. Thus, we care because it seems the product offerings seem pretty solid. Don’t change products just because – instead, change those offerings when you identify a need.
Source: IDG Connect